[Koha] is koha right for our project run by volunteers?

Wed Mar 8 05:59:44 NZDT 2017

Hello Rebecca!

First of all, I should say that like everybody else on this list I'm biased--I think Koha is wonderful, user-friendly, and a great product. That it's free and open-source is icing on the cake. It's also supported by a great bunch of people.

Still, as much as I love it, I wouldn't recommend Koha unreservedly for everyone for all purposes. It's a fully-functional ILS, and it does take a little time and effort to learn. A few considerations:

What do you want to use it for? Do you want an online catalog for in-house use, or will it be available to the public? If the latter, you'll need a server connected to the outside Internet. I don't know what services are available in the UK; for some of my Koha projects I use Digital Ocean (U.S. based but with servers in Europe as well)--they charge as little as USD$5 per month for their most basic service. For that you get a server and operating system (Linux), you install and set up Koha yourself. If you want to run it on your synagogue's Intranet, it's a bit easier.

What kind of computer experience do the people in your group have? Once Koha is set up, it pretty much runs itself, but it does need some occasional tending. You need to do upgrades every now and then, log files fill up--things like that. Nothing horribly complicated, but it helps to know very basic Linux commands. There's probably someone in your synagogue who could help you.

Cataloging the books: as a couple of people have said, you can use Z39.50 to get a lot of catalog records so you don't have to do original cataloging on each one of your 4000 books. But the more obscure* your books are, the less likely it is that you'll be able to find records--you'll probably have to do some cataloging as well as edit the records you download. But then, you'd have to do something similar with any system you choose.

Back in 2013 I was able to set up Koha and migrate our data from our old system by myself. (We have approximately the same ILS budget that you do.) I had minimal experience with Linux (we're using Ubuntu) and it was the first time I had set up an ILS. But then, I'm a geek.** I've been using computers since the late 1970s and I seem to have a knack for it. I also think this kind of thing is fun.****

As I said, once you have Koha up and running, it doesn't require a lot of tending and it's easy to use. You don't have to learn everything at once, or at all--if you need to refresh your mind as to how something works, the information is usually available.

But let me go back to my second paragraph--Koha isn't for everyone and it may be more than you need. I'm on another listserv where people occasionally ask about affordable software for a small library. Though I always recommend Koha, a lot of people there decide to go with LibraryThing, mainly because they find it easier to use and they don't need all the (wonderful!) features that Koha provides.

Rebecca, feel free to contact me off-list if you'd like more information. Everyone else, comments welcome, on- or off-list.

Fred King
Medical Librarian, MedStar Washington Hospital Center
fred.king at medstar.net
202-877-6670
ORCID 0000-0001-5266-0279

If Teresa May put out a cigarette on her tongue it would make me feel a a lot better about her being Prime Minister.
--Susan Calman (News Quiz, BBC Radio 4)

*For example, I have a collection of 1000+ cartoon books--New Yorker, Lawrence Lariar's yearly collections, etc. If I ever get around to putting them in Koha, I don't think I'll find a whole lot of them via Z39.50. I could be wrong. Right now they're in storage, so it's going to be a while before I find out.
**My front teeth are chipped from biting the read-write heads off hard drives.***
***That joke might not travel well. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_show
***Told you I was a geek. :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Koha [mailto:koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Rebecca Shtasel
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2017 9:30 AM
To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
Subject: [Koha] is koha right for our project run by volunteers?

Hello

We are a small group of volunteers (one of whom is a retired school
librarian) who run our synagogue's library in the UK.  We would like to produce an online catalogue and are interesting in using Koha for this purpose as we haven't much money.  The library has about 4000 books covering a variety of classifications (fiction, history etc) all related to Judaism.  The original accessions book was lost when the library had to be moved a year ago and we have a notebook with handwritten entries for the accessions we have received since the library moved to its new home.
Looking at the information to do with koha it appears very technical and we are wondering if we will be able to use it for our catalogue.  We would literally be taking books off the shelves to input their information, not importing the data from elsewhere and  none of us has anything more than basic computing knowledge.

Given this, do you think koha is too complicated for us to use or amongst all the information related to using koha is there a very basic guide that would suit beginners like us?
If you think we would struggle using koha, could you advise us on software that you think would be more user-friendly and is not too expensive?

Thanking you all very much in advance for any advice you can give.

Rebecca (on behalf of the group)
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