[Koha] preliminary info about Koha needed

[Philip Charles]

On Sun, 23 Feb 2003, Raj Shekhar wrote:

>
> I have been asked by a small temple to automate the library system
> their. The system they are currently using has been made by a total
> dumb wit using MySQL as backend and VB for creating the frontend. THe
> code and the database organization is so bad it can bring tears to
> the
> most stone hearted of the developers.

These religious libraries!  Te Waipounamu is a Maori Anglican (Christian)
Diocese and sounds very similar to your temple's library.

> Anyways after doing some research on Freshmeat, I came across Koha
> and
> was struck by the elegance of the system. After I showed them Koha,
> they were very willing to shift their whole system to GNU/Linux and
> start using Koha. However as I do not know much about a Libray system
> I wanted to clear a few doubts about Koha before moving the existing
> system. If you can just point me the relevant web pages I will try to
> work out the rest myself.

Te Waipounamu's library computer is not networked at this stage.  This is
from memory as the HDD I was working on is now installed at Te Waipounamu.

I spent some time playing with the installation scheme (Koha 1.2.3) on a
separate Debian (3.0r1) installation getting to know mysql and apache and
discovered that,
1.  Several perl modules need to downloaded for Koha, so an internet
	connection is needed.  One non critical module did not work.
2.  Port 8000 needed to used for OPAC
3.  Each book needed a unique serial (barcode) number.
4.  The only cataloguing system I could get working was Dewey Decimal.
5.  The automated installation works.

>
> - Can the book numbers be generated by Koha? The librarian at the
>   temple too has not much idea of managing the library, he is doing
> it
>   as a social service. The library has started only a few days back
>   and they have not numbered the books. So they do not have any
>   preferences as to which system is used to give numbers to the book.

Each book has to have a unique barcode (serial) number and this can be
used to identify the book.  The formal cataloguing systems (Dewey Decimal,
Library of Congress) are ways of sorting books on the shelves in some kind
of subject order.  If you the serial numbers, then the books will not be
sorted in subject order.  You have to enter each serial number by hand.

> - Some of the books have been donated. Can these be shown separately
>   when an inventory record is generate?

The are several places where notes about a particular book can be entered.
If you choose the right one then a search will list the particular books
and show up when the book is issued.

For the record, and before I forget, it is a good idea to backup the
original /etc/apache/httpd.conf as well as /var/lib/mysql/Koha.  I found
it quicker to reinstall Koha rather than clean up the mess on several
occasions.

Phil.

--
  Philip Charles; 39a Paterson Street, Abbotsford, Dunedin, New Zealand
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