[Koha] New to KOHA

[Marie Wardall]

Our school district is building a new K-5 building to open in the fall and we are looking into opening the library using KOHA.  I will be the librarian in the new building and have been looking into and trying things out in the KOHA demo.  Our new school would be the pilot school for KOHA in the district and if things went well then it would be inplemented throughout the district. Currently our district uses Library software from Follett.

The other librarians in the district have a lot of concerns about KOHA and are hesitant on change.  I want to be able to show them that the things they are used to now and some of the improvements they would like to see can be achieved with KOHA.  So here are some things that come to mind after looking at the demo and speaking with my collegues:

*Currently, when checking out a student, the picture of the student appears on the screen so that we can verify who the student is.  This is more important at the secondary level, but also relied on in the elementary level when you are getting to know who the child is.  Is this possible in KOHA?

*WE use a Student Management System called Starbase to dump student records into Follett each Fall.  This is crucial in getting ready for classes each fall because it is a very big time saver.  The little I know about how different systems work I would think that we would be able to do the same with KOHA...am I correct?

*Barcodes-Our current barcodes are 5 digits long with a leading T for a material barcode and a leading P for a patron barcode.  Looking at the demo it appeared that the barcodes are 8 digits long.  Can this be changed when going through the setup of the system preferences?  If we would go with KOHA and the rest of the district would get switched over we would need to be able to keep the same barcode numbers on books because re-barcoding the collections would be an enormous job.

*One last thing for now, as I am sure I will have others as I investigate more and am able to work through the setting up of the system preferences, is that in the Cataloging on the demo there is a Default Marc record framework and a Test Marc record framework I could choose from.  I'm thinking I could set up different frameworks here for the different types of materials that I catolog such as book, video, DVD, CD, equipment and an easy MArc for when I don't need or want a complete marc record.  Once I set up those different MArc frameworks when I would catalog I could just choose the framework and put in the information that was needed for that type of material or item...right?

Thank-you for any insight or comments you can give regarding these questions/comments.  My questions are lees technical than the others I've seen here, but are important in educating myself and they others in my district about what KOHA can do for us.

Marie J. Wardall
Teacher-Librarian
Rothschild Elementary School
Rothschild, WI  54474
715-359-3186 ext.5424
mwardall at dce.k12.wi.us