[Koha] Questions about Koha

[Owen Leonard]

> Are records in standard MARC format?

Yes.

> How will the schools be organized, separately or together? We need to have
> them separate.

If you're running one instance of Koha, your schools will be sharing a
database. But Koha has options for separating the operation of
"independent branches," allowing, for instance, librarians from one of
your schools to circulate their own patrons and materials but not
another schools'.

> What are the reporting options? If there is a user friendly query module
> that allows us to pull whatever report we need that would be ideal.

There are some reports available, some of which can be customized.
There is rudimentary tool for building custom reports, but it's still
in the early stages of development. The tool does give you the option
of inputting custom SQL to query the database directly.

> Can we import records from other sources?

Yes. You can import MARC files in batches and you can use z39.50 to
import individual records from public sources like the Library of
Congress.

> Will we need to rebarcode all seven collections? No way we have the
> resources to rebarcode 100,000+ items.

You would only need to rebarcode if you had items which have duplicate
barcodes (my library went through that when we first brought all our
branches together into one system). Other than that Koha doesn't care
what kind of barcode format you use.

> Does the system support AR information? How?

Perhaps someone can answer that who knows what AR information is? :)

-- Owen

-- 
Web Developer
Athens County Public Libraries
http://www.myacpl.org