Koha 3.2 : reflections on going live

Its been a long long time since I wrote for this blog, way to long, and I'm taking this cold wet Sunday afternoon to look back over the last few months.

Koha 2.2.9 > 3.2
Back in September 2008 we made the decision to upgrade from Koha 2.2.9 to Koha 3.0. We realised very quickly that this was not going to be a mere upgrade, but effectively an entirely new system. The biggest change was the shift from our RDA-like biblio-group-item arrangement to a biblio-item arrangement. This change was essential to make the MARC work nicely and MARC is the key to all the groovy stuff that made 3.0 so attractive.

Delay
After investing a couple of months getting to grips with what the change to 3.0 would mean the decision was made to wait for 3.2 since the upgrade was going to be so huge it was better to wait a few months more and go the whole 9 yards. Looking back, this was a very good decision and meant we went through 1 delayed upgrade n0t 2 in 12 months.

Our Goal
We decided early on that our Koha had to be developed from the patron's view not the staff's and the OPAC would double as our website homepage too. We also wanted our Kete Horowhenua digital content to sit alongside Koha search results. We asked Katipo to write the html required to customize our Koha using the built in system preferences in Koha , and also help us to create the 'inside' pages which included setting up a Trust Kete.

Preparation
I also needed to delve deeply into the system preferences and tools and make informed decisions about the myriad of system settings. This was a significant and important step. When a library chooses open source software its different to choosing a proprietary system. The responsibility lies with the library to make the software do what you want it to do, and of course if it doesn't then you can make changes or develop enhancements so it will do what you need it to do.

Lets do it!
So the Koha upgrade was shifted to a back burner and a year passed, and then at the end of March 2010 the decision was made that we would go live in 8 weeks - ready or not. That right there is the reason I havn't posted for a while :) We couldn't wait for the official 3.2 release as our funding was good for 2009/2010 only. If we didn't spent the upgrade budget by the end of June 2010 we'd lose it.

That decision to go live in 8 weeks was another good decision looking back. It forced us to get on with job, make decisions, assign priorities and just do it. We focussed all our efforts for a very concentrated, intense period of time. We had to decide what had to work on day 1, and what could be left for day 2, day 3 etc. 3.2 is still in development and the code was being enhanced constantly throughout the 8 weeks leading up to Go Live, and in fact continues still.

This takes a bit of getting used to if you aren't used to the rapid pace of development that happens with Koha where things can be fixed from hour to hour. Our ex Head of Libraries Rosalie Blake was dragged out of retirement and asked to 'learn' 3.2, prepare tutorials and then train all 25 staff .... identifying, reporting and fixing bugs throughout.

Go Live
We had a soft launch 2 days before we officially announced it. We had signs up in the library and all staff wore badges saying we were in training in the hope that people to be kind with us - and they were - which is good because we really were making it up as we went. One problem which tripped us up was the slowness of 3.2 compared to 2.2.9 but changing browsers from Firefox to Chrome saw an immediate improvement.

I have no regrets for our seat of our pants approach. There is nothing like the first day of a Go Live to test software. Very little didn't work well enough because we had tested all circulation and accounting aspects pretty thoroughly. But some stuff wasn't perfect on day 1. This meant that all staff were involved in identifying bugs; not just saying 'this is broken' but "this is what happened and here is how you can replicate it". Some of the stuff we would never have found in a testing environment and I completely endorse the advice of going live when its close enough not when its perfect -- coz it never will be. Just make sure you have your staff are on board and stay calm, and that your Tech-Guru is on hand to fix things as they crop up.

OPAC
Our OPAC is the jewel in the Koha crown and staff are so proud of it and get such a buzz out of the public's response to it. We have added so much value to the patron's experience and when things settle down we will hold sessions showcasing the new features. We spent a bit of dosh buying in supplementary content so we could launch with a stunning OPAC. Library Thing for Libraries, Syndetics and Amazon all add value to our catalogue, plus a 3.4 enhancement which draws on our 10 year store of issues history to provide a 'people who read this also read these" service.

Reregistration
To maximise the value of our OPAC we really needed to issue passwords to all our library borrowers - and of course showcase the new functions that were now available. So 3 days after Go Live we started reregistering all our borrowers. That was 2 weeks ago. And what a fortnight. But also what a fantastic opportunity it has turned out to be. We have had 4 staff working flat out issuing new library cards to patrons and in the process we get to point a few things that they might find useful, based on clues picked up in the 2 or 3 minutes it takes to check the Patron's data and assign user logins and passwords. The power of conversation: don't underestimate it as a marketing tool.

What next
2 weeks post launch and we are pretty much there. A few wrinkles in acquisitions to iron out and a few enhancements but thats about it really. Overall this has been a remarkably stress free upgrade. I'm glad it was hard and fast, 8 weeks of concentrated effort really, and the next task is to maximise the PR value of the new system and use it get out and connect to as many different pockets of our community as possible.

Final Words

• Identify what your priorities with Koha are. Our primary goal was a fantastic OPAC because that's that makes Koha 3.2 a great LMS compared to the others. We also needed a solid acquisitions module with a clear audit trail,
  
• Think about how to 'present' your collection to library patrons in the OPAC,
  
• Get totally familiar with all the system preferences and how different combinations can be used because Koha is very powerful and flexible and highly customisable,
  
• Just do it: go live when its good enough and tie the loose ends up as they appear,
• market, market market because 3.2 is fantastic.
  

The 'value' I get from Twitter

I am starting to 'get' Twitter now and was thinking this morning about what the 'value' is that I get from investing time using it.

I may be a slightly odd Twit because I prefer to keep the clutch of people I follow quite small. I check Twitter maybe 6 times a day and I want to be able to quickly scan the tweets since my last post without having to troll through too many screens. I compare it to a dinner party where I can't 'hear' all the conversation in the room at once so I join a small group and then move to a different group of people when I'm ready. So no offence if I drop you from my list of followees for a bit; I'm just working the room!

The value I get from Twitter falls into 4 different categories:

• Firstly, as a professional development tool in terms of libraries in its broadest sense. I tend to keep following people who share links to interesting stuff. Its like reading newspapers in companiable silence with a mate and you share snippets with each other. I follow briankelly, citegeist, mstephen7, gnat and littlehigh for this reason.
• Secondly, its a way to keep informed about business because I currently have a horrified fascination with whats happening in the world economy; bernardchickey is fabulous for posting interesting links as he comes across them.
• Thirdly, as a Koha-ian, I want to become familiar with members of the Koha global community. I want to 'personalize' or get to know who the people are who post to the Koha list. Its amazing how you start to add 'colour' to an image of someone you only ever 'see' as a name online - all from just 140 character posts each day.
• And lastly there are people I know personally, or care about, but don't get to see or talk to very often so its nice to stay in touch. Its like waving at someone across the room

So thats me. I started writing this post to promote a couple of blog posts about Twitter and librarians:

Twitter basics for librarians by Leora Wenger (leoraw on Twitter) and 14 UK information professionals to follow on Twitter by Brian Kelly (briankelly on Twitter).

The Unimaginable

Let's just for a minute imagine that your teenage daughter and her friend went to the well populated park at 4pm one afternoon in full daylight.

Imagine how your daughter might feel if her friend was then attacked by a girl called, oh I dunno - lets say 'Jax', and lets imagine that 'Jax' thumped your daughter's friend to the ground but the friend, who was fighting for her life, managed to hold her own against 'Jax'. And lets imagine that at that point anther girl, lets say her name was 'Desiree', then leapt in and dragged your daughter's friend a metre along the ground by her hair and then started kicking and punching the friend as well.

And imagine if dozens of other kids were standing around watching. Stay with me: try and imagine it: 2 girls beating 1 girl surrounded by abut 50 kids, all just watching. Oh and recording it on their cellphones too, and then imagine that one of those girls, lets say her name was 'Eden', posted that video clip up to YouTube. Imagine then that dozens of kids in the town are emailed the video and then it is bluetoothed around school classrooms.

You can't really imagine that bit though really. No one would be so stupid as to use their personal Youtube account to upload a video which showed their friends beating up another girl, a girl whom the video shows did nothing to provoke or encourage the attack.

You would probably have no trouble imagining that the Police would take action against 'Jax' and 'Desiree' and 'Eden' so that these 'young ladies' learned that it was not okay to beat the crap out of another child. Maybe charges of 'grievous bodily harm' or 'common asault' or something like that would be laid. Maybe the school would even do something that would give the message:"This is not ok".

You would never in a million years imagine that 'Jax', 'Eden' and 'Desiree' would get away scot free because they are protected from prosecution by NZs youth laws.

To Dewey or not to Dewey . . .

We are seriously rethinking our use of Dewey in the Horowhenua Library Trust libraries. We know that there are a number of 'rationalized Dewey' systems being used around the place eg putting all gardening books together rather than having them in a number of different places ie 635.9 + 728s + those 600 numbers, the trains in the 620s and 380s etc. For years we have been kind of doing it anyway on a very minor scale with our countries and history books but maybe its time to extend it into more areas.

Living Rooms
We are also giving thought to breaking the non fiction down into sub collections and shelving them in distinct groupings, called living rooms at Palmerston North Library NZ. We wonder too whether we should do a bit of both, given that we have a district collection which may be at Levin (with room for a bunch living rooms) but could equally be at Foxton (with room for only 2 or 3 living rooms) and Shannon with room only for a standard running sequence.
I saved this link in the New York Times a while back, about Harry Courtright, director of the 15-branch Maricopa County Library District, who came up with the idea of a Dewey-less library and uses living rooms. The plan took root two years ago after annual surveys of the district’s constituency found that most people came to browse, without a specific title in mind. This happens in our libraries too . . . in fact I sometimes wonder whether we invest way too much time on our cataloguing at the expense of other activities (I am of the quick and dirty school of cataloguing!)

“The younger generation today is wired differently than people in my generation,” said Mr. Courtright, 69. “What that tells me is we as librarians have to look at how we present materials that we have for them the way they want it.”

Open Shelves Classification
It was interesting too to read of Tim Spalding at LibraryThing who is calling for librarians to help him develop an open source alternative to Dewey. He is looking for bunch of librarians willing to take leadership on the project, much in the same way that Jimmy Wales is 'in charge' of Wikipedia:

"I hereby invite you to help build the Open Shelves Classification (OSC), a free, “humble,” modern, open-source, crowd-sourced replacement for the Dewey Decimal System."

While the motivation behind this project appears to be to break away from the formality and control of the OCLC structure, which I'm not convinced about, some interesting possibilities may arise from this initiative.
Colormarq
All this thinking leads onto the issue of spine labelling; how do we accommodate the differing needs of the 3 libraries who share the collection? While visiting Woodands Public Library in Singapore last week while attending the Bridging Worlds conference (totally inspirational conference) we saw the Colormarq colour coded spine labelling system. (Thats it in the photo at the start of this post) Talking to the sales rep today he tells me that 15 million items are being managed with the system in Singapore and that Taiwan have recently converted their collection simultaneously with implementing an RFID system. (and thats another post all on its own..)
The Colourmarq system looks very cool and I am surprised that so few libraries are using it in the Asia Pacific region. Its not outrageously expensive, about $NZ1 a book all up, but this is partly offset by not having to buy barcodes, spine labelling tape (whic is ruinously expensive) and logo stickers. Would be interested in hearing anyone with an opinion on the system.

The Koha Community rocks!

Absolutely flippin brilliant day ....

Early this morning a Koha Community meeting was held to discuss, yet again, the community assets problem. The whole LibLime thing is still dragging everything to a near-standstill .....

But today, well the community just said enough - in the nicest, most polite way possible - we took back control of our community to make sure we had the tools we need to keep Koha rockin' along. Its just a temporary measure mind, just until the whole LibLime - PTFS thing is settled and PTFS have had time to work out what their customers want and what they want to do etc etc. And while we understand and are happy to give them the time they need to get their stuff sorted out, we need to still be able to function as a community.

The biggest problem over the last 18 months has been the lack of access to the koha.org site and having no way to expose the up-to-date Koha information, news, demos, documentation, pay for support options etc.

www.koha-community.org
Anyway, the big thing to come out of the meeting was the decision to make a new temporary website for the Koha community, to carry us through until the LibLime/PTFS thing is sorted. We brainstormed names, voted, grabbed a domain and within a very short time - like a few hours - we have a community website again!

irc has been an amazing place to be today. Developers and users and vendors all working together, volunteering support, hosting, mirror sites, content, testing - whatever they could and whatever was needed to get a Koha Community place up and running again. Liz Rea has done an incredible job on the website - and so fast!

The news just got better as the day progressed:

• Galen tagged v3.02.00-alpha in Git, thereby kicking off the alpha period for 3.2, with a tarball to be available tomorrow,
• Chris showed us the git stats which highlighted how many people have been making commits; the work on Koha over the last year has truly been the work of many many hands.

Today I saw in action all that is good in an open source community; and the Koha Community rocks!

Woo hoo: Koha Con 2010 bus trip

So I am thinking it would be really nice to meet people coming into Auckland for Koha Conference and drive them down to Wellington. We could take a few days for a quick detour through Rotorua and heartland NZ, driving down through the North Island via Levin.

Current thinking is:

Day 1: arrive in Auckland, dinner at the harbour area.
Day 2: travel to Rotorua (3 hours ish) afternoon at Te Puia thermal area, Maori cultural night in the evening, spend night in Rotorua.
Day 3: drive down the island, afternoon tea / civic reception at Levin (4 hours drive), travel to Wellington for evening meal and the night.
Day 4: either a spare day in Wellington or day 1 of Koha Conference.

So what do you reckon? If there is enough interest I'll grab some indicative pricing together.

Users vs developers : not in my universe!

Today I went to Wellington to have lunch with Bob Birchall, CEO of Calyx, and Chris Cormack from Catalyst IT. Through a serendipitous crossing of paths we were joined by Simon Blake from Citylink; Rachel Hamilton-Williams, CEO of Katipo Communications; Mason James, CEO of KohaAloha and Brenda Chawner from Victoria University.

Thats 1 user, 1 Academic / FOSS commentator, a network engineer and 4 Koha vendors. Driving back home again I got to thinking about this group in relation to the discussion on the Koha list about users vs developers.

Owen Leonard has written very eloquently about this and I have used below big chunks of his email to the Koha list made in response to a comment made that Koha "users" and "developers" are at opposite ends of a pole.

Owen:

"I'm a Koha user. And in using Koha I saw that I could make Koha better, and in time became a Koha developer. There is no Koha developer out there who is developing Koha features just because they think it would be cool to do. Koha developers are doing their work because they *see* a need, in an actual user or an actual library. Or developers are getting paid by libraries to develop the features the libraries need."

He goes on to list the occasions when users and developers are in opposition:

• "When a company decides to develop a feature that they think will help sell a product, even though the feature doesn't meet any actual need,
• When a company throttles or cripples a feature in a product because they want to charge extra for a particular feature."

Now I have been around Koha for a decade now and I agree with Owen that no self-respecting Koha developer or Koha support company is doing that kind of stuff.

The LibLime experience has hurt the Koha community in the States. I get the distinct feeling from reading various blogs and help requests on the Koha list that LibLime clients have been having a hard time of it, hence their very valid wish to gain more of a 'users' voice than they have had in the past. I suspect this applies more specifically to Liblime clients than Koha users in general though. It is also a real risk when Libraries abdicate responsibilty for their own systems by handing it over to a vendor: a traditional client-vendor relationship.

Brenda mentioned today that her research is indicating that contributing to FOSS projects has a direct correlation to satisfaction levels. This is a critical point and one which I raised in the presentation Chris and I made at LIANZA 2009.

As librarians we are comfortable with a traditional client-vendor relationship. But the times are a changin folks and as librarians we have to change to. We need to be taking back control of our industry tools; Dewey and Ranganathan were both librarians and the originators of Evergreen and Koha were librarians too.

We have to learn new ways of working if we are going to maximise the value of Koha to our organisations:

• think about what you WANT not what we are given,
• learn basic system admin skills and take responsibility for your own Koha 'settings' to customize it for how YOU want it to operate,
• become comfortable with irc as a networking and community meeting tool,
• become skilled at identifying, describing and reporting bugs, and then testing the fixes,
• think 'what if' and log enhancement suggestions,
• and then join the discussion to ensure the developers understand what you want and how you want it to work, and work out how to make it fit into the main development trunk,
  
• fund a developer to 'do' if if you aren't a programmer yourself,
• learn to ask for help and give help to others,
• share your thinking and decision making processes, tips and tricks and inhouse resources like staff training tutorials or videos,
• become adept at collaborative working on wikis,
• fund work for the 'greater good' not holding it selfishly to yourself,
• and co-fund significant developments with other organisations to share the cost so we all benefit.

I'll leave the last word to Owen:

"Let's get together as users and/or developers and figure out how we can get some stuff done. Let's put together a structure by which Koha users can spec out new features and get them funded, collectively. Let's put together a structure by which Koha users can communicate with their vendors without fear of exclusion or reprisal. Let's not talk about a users group breaking down some barrier that isn't really there; let's talk about strengthening and leveraging the connection that we already have!"