[Koha] KOHA Newbies

[Doug Dearden]

Hi Barbara,

I didn't see any responses to your post and thought I would see if I
could help.  These are rather general questions though, so hard to
answer specifically.  I am the tech support where I work and did an
in-house conversion to Koha, and we are a small academic - not public
library.  Just so you have some idea of what I don't know about your
situation.

Q: Do we need to close during a conversion?

I wouldn't think so.  You can get koha up and running, and import your
marc records into it.  What you will need to do on conversion day is get
your current circulation and patron records in, and any changes added
that occurred after the marc import.  I usually run a conversion after
hours, with a backup plan to fall back on if things don't go right the
first time.  You can get koha up and import test data all you want.  You
will need to have a plan in place to switch over.  I think this depends
on how big your library is - number of branches, OPAC terminals, etc. 
Put together a team of the appropriate size to get it all done over
night.

Q: What is the average time for conversion as experienced by other
libraries?

Of what size?  In house or using outside professional help?  What skill
level do the people handling the migration have?  Too many variables to
answer this easily.  I can tell you that taking this from scratch to up
for us all by myself took me around two months (not working exclusively
on koha, but putting in a lot of time on it).  I had worked with Linux
before, but in a limited way.   I had to get my Linux skills up to par
and do a lot of trial and error.  I installed Koha multiple times.  If
you are using an outside support partner, they will be able to give you
a better estimate as they have the experience.  If you are doing it in
house or with a local consultant it will depend entirely on their skill
level with all of the pieces involved.

Q: Are there any common problems we should look out for that other
libraries may have gone through during the conversion process?

Read the recent posts on the mailing list and you will find a number of
things.  What went easy for me may have caused problems for someone
else.  Your next question though ...

Q. Is there any tweaking of our MARC records that would make the
process 
smoother?

Yes.  Take a look at how Koha uses the 952 record to store item info,
and how your current system stores item info.  Also make sure you don''t
have bad data in other marc fields, or data that is in the wrong marc
field.  This is where time spent now pays off dividends for years. 
Clean up your records, make sure all the info you have is being mapped
into the correct place in Koha.  I migrated our data, using the koha
default locations rather than change koha to point to other fields - our
old system had item info in the 852 record.  I believe getting it into
the default koha layout will make it easier in the future when updates
come along or just when asking questions.

I think the best thing to do is get koha working on a test server and
try it out.  That will give you some idea of the challenges involved. 
When you run into problems search the mailing list first - you will
probably find the answer there.  If not, post a question with as much
info as possible about your situation including configurations that
might apply, error message, error logs, etc.  You will be more likely to
get an answer.  

Good luck!

Best,

Doug




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