On April 5, 2018, Göteborg University Library announced that they are using Koha as an integrated library system (ILS).
The library’s adaptation of Koha’s ILS has included a wide range of development in areas such as Elasticsearch, libris import, edifact orders, loan card registration forms, custom-designed front-end folders, as well as, interface customization and integration with surrounding systems such as discovery, remote lending, printing systems, group room booking, public computers, etc.
The Primo Discovery System is integrated through a proprietary order application, where borrowers make their orders via links in the Primo hitlists. Additionally, sample lists with current accessibility information are retrieved via a Koha-cgi.
The process of introducing Koha was initiated by a comprehensive process mapping conducted by representatives of the business. The library’s staff have continuously contributed to the foundation, through testing completed development and reconfiguration. This is a fundamental reason why a useful system has been delivered.
Before the library went live, a Koha training was conducted where all employees participated in the introduction and offered in-depth training in each process. The library also developed its own training material.
Göteborg University Library is an academic library with 8 units, 198 employees, 47,000 active borrowers and 1.6 million bibliographic records in Koha. The library uses Koha for circulation, cataloging, periodicals and acquisitions.
A public project report is under way.
For more information please contact the Göteborg University Koha team: koha@ub.gu.se
The Lund University Library invited on the 29 November 2017 to the Swedish Koha User Group’s first Hackfest.
The hack fest begun at 9 am in the beautiful main building of the University Library in Lund. From Sweden and Norway 18 people met up during the day to develop, hack, and discuss about Koha and related topics. Both Koha users (mainly from Swedish Universities) and Koha service providers attended the hack fest.
After the hosts welcomed everyone with some Swedish “fika” (coffe and cake/sandwich) the meeting was divided into six different tracks. Each track had their own meeting and after a work session the whole party rejoined for a quick check up before lunch. After lunch subgroups were again formed into the different tracks (this time with a somewhat new constellation of participants). At end of day a wrap up and summary of the day took place that concluded a successful day.
The different tracks that took place during the day and what was discussed and worked upon were:
Kreablo: storing personnumer, using patron attribute (generic text field). Would like to do validation on the field and place it at the top of the borrower page
Fetching data from Navet. Technical vs. political issues. Talk to Viktor Sarge.
Track 3: Local work flows and infrastructure
Local infrastructure, patching, git workflows
Proposal from Benjamin to join in a common Nordic fork of Koha
Deichmanske workflow
Lund, Gothenburg, SUB workflow
Track 4: OPAC
Customising the OPAC
Facets
Logging in
Integration with library home page
Customisations of staff interface
Track 5: ILL/Libris integration
Sharing ideas/code snippets, discussion
Identified Libris changes that will impact Koha (IDs changed)
Libris new/updated records available (nightly ftp –> OAI-PMH). Harvester waiting to be signed off (SUB/KB-sponsored).
Track 6: ElasticSearch, auth rewrite, REST
Talked about authorisation rewrite (Deichmanske) CGI –> Plack (easier to plug in LDAP, Shibboleth, CAS, etc.)
Experiences with ElasticSearch (issues, history, advantages over Zebra, benchmarks)
REST API (old API more stable but performance issues, new stuff in the new API, but not stable right now, constantly changing, but getting more stable)
Architectural improvements ongoing in Koha
Idea: have an event bus in Koha
Nordic fork, or rather collaboration on any point where we have mutual interests, faster integration, easy to maintain, close to the community version
Different opinions in the group! Does it mean you are happy with running your own patches on top of the community version?
Pragmatic, realistic views
Difficult to maintain forks over time
Why not spend more time on working with the community version (i.e. signing off each others’ patches, joining the QA team)
Structure? Development group in Swedish Network (more to volunteer!)
Slow process is also good, bugs are discovered, etc.
How long does it take to get a new feature into the community version?
Sign-off (independent), QA, Release Manager
Benefit of knowing people and engaging in the community. Communicate your efforts and plans!
Extending the network?
Plugins (GUB)
Use plugins
Code in their fork which facilitates plugins (hooks in the code to trigger the plugin)
Will submit it to the community version eventually.
Between 4-5 October 2017 the Swedish Koha User Group held its fourth meeting at the Kristianstad University Library. About 65 people from Sweden but also visitors from Norway and Denmark attended the meeting.
For the first time Koha service providers, including BibLibre, imCode, Kreablo, and Librotech were present outside of the meeting. The Koha service providers had their own stands where they could market their services to the participants.
The meeting started with the host Kristianstad University Library welcoming all participants. The Steering Committee of the Swedish Koha User Group was presented.
The Technical University of Denmark, DTU, held an introductory speech talking about how they moved from 28 years of Aleph to a Koha platform with a custom built OPAC front-end “DTU FindIt” and cataloging service. The migration work is still ongoing and in 2019 all systems are expected to have been migrated completely. DTU has a two year full-service agreement with BibLibre including free upgrades.
Then Katrineholm Public Library presented their approach to Koha. It is a library composed of 3 regular branches and 16 school library branches. Katrineholm Public Library has signed an agreement with Libriotech for migration, support and maintenance.
Following this the delegates formed discussion groups after the Open Spaces model and discussed fruitfully various Koha related themes. The themes were:
Koha and Inter Library Loans
Koha and the OPAC
Koha and Fees
The Swedish Koha User Group – why should we have it? How should it be developed?
Koha and translation into Swedish
Koha and Technology + Development
Koha and Reports
Andreas Hedström Mace from Stockholm University Library held a presentation on the Koha QA process and introduced the delegates to the koha.se Wiki platform.
Viktor Sarge from Region Halland held a presentation on the Koha translation process.
The first day finished with the host giving a guided tour of the University library and after that many delegates shared a meal at a local restaurant.
The second day started with Stian F. Kristensen presenting the major Koha project that Deichmanske/Oslo Public Library is pursuing. The City of Oslo is opening a brand new Public Library premise in 2020. The project is ambitious and new technology and services are required and sought after in this new library space. In the spirit to support this Deichmanske decided to move to Koha and also to “Linked Data”/RDF technology. Everything developed in this project is open source and can be found here: https://github.com/digibib/ls.ext
The meeting continued with hands-on workshops having four different sessions. The sessions were:
Doing translation work in Koha
Doing the QA-process in Koha
Mingle with the delegates
Meeting the Koha service providers
After the Workshop and some Swedish “fika” (coffee and cake) Amelia Andersdotter presented the latest news on the new General Data Protection Regulation that is affecting virtually all organizations in the European Union. Amelia was previously member of the European Parliament representing Sweden and the Swedish Pirate Party and is now working for the privacy-focused NGO Dataskydd.net (https://dataskydd.net/).
The meeting ended with summary of the two days and the effort to make an initial Swedish Roadmap within the User Group.
Svenska Kohanätverkets fjärde användarmöte i Kristianstad 4-5 oktober 2017Svenska Kohanätverkets fjärde användarmöte i Kristianstad 4-5 oktober 2017Svenska Kohanätverkets fjärde användarmöte i Kristianstad 4-5 oktober 2017Svenska Kohanätverkets fjärde användarmöte i Kristianstad 4-5 oktober 2017Svenska Kohanätverkets fjärde användarmöte i Kristianstad 4-5 oktober 2017
On the 21 June 2017 Lund University Library decided to go for Koha as their future ILS. The plan is to make the switch from their current system during summer 2018. The Swedish Koha User Group congratulates Lund University Library on the decision.
