[Koha] SIP-2 support?

[Thatcher Rea]

Hello,

We are in fact using Koha in conjunction with a 3M RFID solution. Here are
the basic details:

We initially started with a 3M RFID solution back in April 2008 when our new
facility opened - our current facility houses over 40,000 items in our local
holdings. We have 2 RFID based SelfCheck stations for the public, as well as
2 SmartChute stations for automatically checking books in when they are
returned.

We are also part of a larger, shared catalog with 15 other libraries in the
northeast area of the state of Kansas, meaning that all 15 libraries share
their collections with one another - this comes to a total of approx. over
300,000 items in the shared catalog.

We initially started using Sirsi/Dynix as our automation system, but found
that the operating costs were too high for the level of support we were
receiving. The consortia made the decision to move to Koha, in order to
enable us to receive better support, and to keep costs down. We are
currently using Liblime (http://www.liblime.com) as our support/development
partner for Koha. While I can tell you that the overall experience with Koha
has been very good, there are some points to consider in using RFID:

RFID *does work* with Koha. That being said, some things are not currently
working as intended:

   1. Holds did not initially process as expected on the SelfCheck machines
   (this has been corrected with modifications from Liblime)
   2. Meaningful transit/exception slips from the SmartChutes currently do
   not print (ie, send this item to this library - being corrected by Liblime)
   3. The 3M specs for SIP do not accommodate UTF-8 (Joe Atzberger has
   mentioned this previously in this list)
   4. General lack of meaningful error messages when problems arise on the
   SelfChecks. (usually there is an "undefined error" style message displayed).

All of these are derived from "live" production scenarios. While we are the
only public library in the State of Kansas to have implemented an RFID
solution (and a 3M one at that) I do feel like we are positioned in a good
place for the future, and the relationship with our development/support team
at Liblime has been favorable. Their continued assistance and modifications
of the Koha system to suit our needs has been a benefit, and one of the main
reasons why we feel that our decision to migrate to an open source
automation system has been a wise one.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have further questions.

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Liz Rea <lrea at nekls.org> wrote:

> The Basehor Community Library in Kansas is using 3M RFID systems with
> Koha. It's not perfect, but it does work.
>
> Liz Rea
> Network Administrator
> Northeast Kansas Library System
>
>
> On Dec 16, 2008, at 2:02 PM, Joshua Ferraro wrote:
>
> > Hi Oliver
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 11:10 AM,
> > <Oliver.Bernuetz at canadabusiness.ca> wrote:
> >> Hi there,
> >>
> >> Does Koha feature SIP 2 support?  We're looking at RFID so I need to
> >> know this.
> > Yes, Koha 3.0 supports SIP2 via the OpenNCIP libraries
> > (http://openncip.org) and has been successfully connected to
> > Self-Checkout systems like those by 3M, Authentication with search
> > services like VDX(tm), as well as other SIP2 applications. I'm not
> > aware of any Koha libraries using RFID, but I don't anticipate any
> > major barriers to that provided the implementation relies on the SIP2
> > 3M spec.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > --
> > Joshua Ferraro                       SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
> > CEO                         migration, training, maintenance, support
> > LibLime                                Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
> > jmf at liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS
> > _______________________________________________
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>
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-- 
Cheers,

___________________________________
Thatcher Rea
Technology Services Coordinator
Basehor Community Library
Email:  trea at basehorlibrary.org
Phone: 913-724-2828
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