Update 3: NZ Koha trademark

We have received a response from PTFS to our letter outlining the grounds on which we object to their trade mark application and inviting them to transfer their application to the Trust.

The response advised that they are considering organisations as possible candidates to hold the NZ trademark and we were welcome to submit a proposal which would be required to address a number of criteria set by PTFS.

Te Horowhenua Trust, trading as Horowhenua Library Trust, is the nonprofit body elected by the Koha global community to hold community assets in safe keeping. We have spent a number of years negotiating with PTFS and would prefer now to trust a transparent and defined process conducted through IPONZ as to the proper ownership of the mark in New Zealand.

Update 2 on NZ Koha Trademark

Well things have been very quiet on this front while the lawyers work through the process.

We are being represented by Andrew Matangi from Buddle Findlay with input from Rochelle Furneaux and feel very confident that he has a good understanding of the Koha journey over the last decade or so and how we have got to where we are. He is also a specialist in this area so we have been quite relieved to have his hand on the tiller and plotting the course. These things take time and have to be done discretely of course, but a key date has passed and I think it is okay now to update everyone on progress.

A letter was sent to PTFS on the 19th January essentially outlining the grounds on which our objection to their NZ trademark application is based and asking them to assign their NZ trade mark application to the Trust. We also attached a Koha Trademark Usage Policy which the Library Trust recently adopted, following consultation with the Koha Subcommittee. We advised that unless a response was received by noon NZ time on the 1st of February we would file formal opposition.

Well that date has passed without word and so a formal Notice of Opposition is being prepared. The process from here is set out on the IPONZ website.

So there it is, due process being followed and no resolution in sight but we are still very confident that the right decision will be made.

Update on NZ Koha trademark

Who would have thought that one little blog post on a Tuesday morning would have generated so much interest and debate and support.

Horowhenua Library Trust have been bowled over by the generosity of a global community who are as concerned as we are at the PTFS New Zealand trade application to register the mark Koha in relation to software.

We have received hundreds of emails offering support for fighting the ‘good fight’. I haven’t quite replied to them all yet – but I am trying . The press have provided balanced coverage with Radio NZ, TV1 and TV3 all reporting the story pretty accurately here, generating much discussion in Maori and mainstream media forums.

We have accumulated donations of about $12k, mostly through $20 and $50 donations from individuals around the globe (including many Americans) and the generosity of the legal profession offering free representation is amazing.

We have accepted the services of Sacha Judd, Andrew Matangi & John Glengarry from Buddle Findlay, assisted by Rochelle Furneaux, who have agreed to work pro-bono for us (bless them all I say). They have been guiding us for the last few days and are busy preparing a objection to the PTFS / Liblime application should one be necessary.

We believe we are well placed now to mount a strong legal challenge and we think we have enough in donations to cover filing fees, document costs and other disbursements. While It goes completely against my nature to turn down donations to Horowhenua Library Trust, in all conscience we should stop the fundraising drive at this stage. Rest assured if is necessary to challenge the PTFS application all the way to the High Court then we may well be coming back cap in hand!

PTFS have issued a press release saying they are willing to hand the NZ Koha trademark over to a non-profit representing the Koha community. That organisation is the Horowhenua Library Trust, elected by the Koha global community, and we would be delighted to accept that offer and add the NZ Koha trademark to the store of other Koha community property we currently hold in trust ie domain names and trademarks. It would be a very simple matter for PTFS to assign the existing application to Horowhenua Library Trust and we invite PTFS to do so. The Library Trust has never stopped any Koha user or developer or vendor from carrying out their business. Our track record over the last 12 years of releasing the Koha code and supporting the Koha community to go about its business unimpeded is exemplary and we have no intention of ever changing that approach.

My keynote from KohaCon11

It Takes a Village

View more presentations from Joann Ransom

School yard bullying is alive and well

Remember the schoolyard bullies of childhood?

Two groups of kids playing similar games on adjacent courts. One group, slightly nerdy maybe and certainly not the 'in' jocks of the other group, seem to be having heaps fun. Laughing, loads of kids on each side, all playing together, really friendly, with rules tweaked as the game progressed to even things up a bit so everyone can play.

The other court has a small team of uber-jocks playing hard and fast 'properly', right number of players on each side, referee, complicated rules, lots of people standing on the sidelines just watching. Slowly, one by one, the onlookers start drifting away from the jocks to the nerds; just watching at first then joining in to play as well.

The jocks look around and realise that they aren't the centre of attention anymore because of this 'mad' inclusive game on the other court which anyone can play because it doesn't need expensive gear, or insider knowledge or years of training.

So the jocks barge onto the court and take the ball, claim they own the court and the rules of the game are xyz. The nerds cry foul but the teacher just nods and says oh thats ok - they don't mean any harm.

The game carries on for a bit but the bullies don't get the nerd game, keep trying to bring in the old rules - not remembering that the nerds had already walked away from the old rules to play their own game.

The nerds try to play nicely but dont get a lookin with the bullies, they eventually wander off, find another place to play, a grassy paddock, another ball and carry on. The grassy paddock is pretty good actually, heaps softer to fall on, makes the game even better. Heaps more people join in. People still come to the courts to find a game, but its not the one they heard about. Their ears pick up the happy noises over in the paddock where the 'real' game is being played and they wander over and start playing too.

The jocks don't get it ... they took the ball, got the court - why havn't the nerds just given up?

Koha bullying
Well this is not dissimilar to the situation the Koha community finds itself in with LibLime / PTFS.

The game was library management systems. Some of us couldn't play - couldn't afford the gear and didn't really like the game that much anyway. So we started a new game, Koha, and pretty soon heaps of people were playing it to. Soon the 'real' library management systems started noticing that people were moving over to Koha. Funding issues just made Koha seem even more attractive, and of course the game was one anyone could play and it evolved really fast because everyone has influence.

So LibLime PTFS grabbed a piece of Koha. They took the ball, the code, and played with it a while cutting out the orginal players by not pasing it back in the way of bug-fixes and enhancements. They got the court too, koha.org.

After a while, the koha community realised that it just wasn't getting a look in and decided to go get its own court to play on, koha-community.org and they have another ball, the code. Everyone is welcome to join in and the community is strong.

PTFS just dont get it.

They keep calling their forks Koha - but they are not. Its a different game. LEK and Harley are Koha forks because they were both built on the Koha open source code at some point in the past. They are not Koha now. PTFS have just released a new LibLime website where they still call their forks Koha and have invented a new logo for Koha. This is provocative, aggressive and just not on.

I was told off in Twitter today for swearing - and yes, sometimes I feel so angry and so helpless against such bullying that I do resort to swearing. I am so annoyed that our philosophically beautiful Koha is getting sullied through association with such ratbags as LibLime and PTFS who think nothing of lying in order to 'win' the game.

What is the game we are playing folks? What will a win look like to PTFS? Total domination of Koha by a single vendor? That will not be a win for anyone.

Powhiri at Kawiu Marae

Koha Conference attendees are invited to Levin on the 28th October for a very special event.

The Library Trust is honoured that Muaupoko, the tangata whenua or people of the land, are hosting us at Kawiu Marae following the Mayoral reception in Council chambers. This is a first for the Library Trust and the purpose of this post is to encourage Conference attendees to join us for what will be a very special evening.

We will be welcomed onto the Marae in a traditional manner. This will include the karanga where we are called on the Marae, a wero or taiaha challenge (to see if we come in peace), the laying down of koha, speeches, waiata (songs) a hakari or meal and kapa haka entertainment (singing, poi, haka). Information about the various components of the powhiri and what to expect can be found here.

There are also a few basic rules or tikanga which visitors will need to beaware of:

1. Do not sit on the tables ANYWHERE,
2. Do not smoke or drink alcohol,
3. Do not throw food AT ALL,
4. Do not pass food over anyones head.

The cost of the trip is $75 per person which includes return travel between Wellington and Levin, plus koha for our hosts and the entertainers. Partners and children are very welcome to join us (no charge for kids). Prepayment and bookings are essential so we can confirm arrangements with our hosts. To book and pay online click here.

KohaCon10 : the World comes down under

Our baby is grown up and out there doing its thing in the world, so it is with real pleasure that HLT welcome the 3rd International Koha Conference to NZ this October.

Koha is now used by hundreds of libraries around the world and supported by many international vendors. This year, to mark the 10th anniversary of its release, the conference is will be held in Wellington from Monday 25th October - Wednesday 27th October. Previous conferences have been in Marseilles and Texas.

The conference speakers are a veritable United Nations: UK, France, Nigeria, Taiwan, Pakistan, Malaysia, USA, Australia and NZ - and conference attendees hail from more countries than I care to list. The full programme can be found here.

This is an amazing opportunity for NZ librarians to see what all the fuss around Koha is about and mix with a truly international bunch of people who love Koha and have made it so successful overseas. It is somewhat odd that NZ, its country of origin, has been so reluctant to support this home grown product. A prophet is indeed a stranger in is own land.

The conference is free so there really is no excuse not to come and find out more. Registrations are open now on the conference website.

Personal highlights for me are:

George Oates - Integration with Open Library
A big success at NDF where she talked about her work with Flickr, George now works with Open Library team. She was responsible for creating the Flickr Commons (flickr.com/commons) and was the award-winning lead designer of Flickr itself.

Nicole Engard - How you can help
Nicole is a human dynamo and I have no idea how she squeezes so much into her life. She is the Director of Open Source Education at ByWater Solutions in the States, she is a prolific writer being published in several library journals and keeps the library community up to date on web technologies via her website "What I Learned Today...". In 2007, Nicole was named one of Library Journal's Movers & Shakers and in 2009 she was the editor of “Library Mashups,” a book published by Information Today, Inc. and in 2010 she will publish “Practical Open Source Software for Libraries” with Chandos Inc.

Mark Osborne - Koha in schools
Albany Senior High School is New Zealand's first open source high school, and Koha is one their key online environments. This session will be about how Albany is using Koha to promote literacy, community and high achievement.

Lee Phillips - Ask a librarian : Why I love Koha
Lee is the director of the Butte Silver Bow Public Library (BSB) in Montana, the first open source public library in Montana. The library runs Ubuntu OS on the public PCs and Open Office suite on both the public and staff client servers.

As an alumna of the University of Washington's Information School, Lee's MLIS focus was on human and computer interface, consortia culture and open source applications in public libraries. Her collection development plan was featured in the Spring 2010 OCLC newsletter.

Currently Lee is serving as a Montana State Library Commissioner by appointment of the governor of Montana. In the past year she has secured 150,000 dollars in grant funding for her library to develop programming that puts technology in the hands of library patrons.

Francois Marier - Freedom in the library: Convincing your boss that sharing is good
I hear "We can't use Koha because Council IT dept won't let us" far too often and this presentation is just for those people. Francois will show how the concepts of sharing, freedom and public domain are embodied by the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community. After describing what is meant by FOSS, we will look at how fairness is promoted through the choice of copyright licenses. Then we will examine the benefits of this freedom and of the related communities (for example, Creative Commons) it has inspired.

Mark Piper - Risk, considerations and realities of running a public access network
Mark is an independent hacker and will talk at the bigger picture of providing network & end-user systems for library membership to access Koha & the internet. He will explore the risks & mitigations of real world attacks.

Just for the record

It has been reported to me that a senior male PTFS employee told people at ALA that Horowhenua Library Trust (HLT) sold the Koha name and domain to Liblime and that we are now asking for it back for free.

This is a lie.

In 2007 three Katipo staff went to work at Liblime. The code that had been written by Katipo employees, the koha.org domain and Katipo clients went with them, including HLT. At that time Liblime had a good reputation in the community and it was believed that the domain would be held in trust for the community, exactly as Katipo had done.

HLT had nothing to do with the sale apart from being one of the clients transferred to Liblime. A number of NZ and Pacific Koha clients were treated very badly by Liblime with support contracts not honoured, commissioned enhancements not delivered and significant amounts of money lost. None of the libraries involved have ever talked publicly about this, choosing instead to act with discretion and integrity.

The trust in Liblime was misplaced and after 2 years of shameful behaviour the global Koha community asked HLT, as a trustworthy charitable trust, to seek the return of koha.org to community hands. We asked Liblime, and then PTFS, what would be required for the return of the domain.

HLT have never asked for it to be given back for free.

In asking PTFS what would be required to bring koha.org back into community hands we were acting under directions of the wider community. PTFS have a total misunderstanding how FLOSS works, and seem to think they have bought Koha, or that Koha was something Liblime could sell to them, or that Katipo could sell to Liblime. HLT has been asked by PTFS to move the community back to koha.org. This is not something HLT can do even if we were prepared to be blackmailed - which we are not.

Please judge HLT on our actions not on malicious and untrue rumours designed to cause dissent in our community.

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!

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!"

Kete : a job well done.

The Kete Vision
A couple of years ago a bunch of us dreamed of Kete, a digital archive of local arts, cultural and heritage material in a variety of media formats coupled with social media techniques to make it 'zing'.

Our ultimate goal was to get to a point where a user entering a search in Kete Horowhenua would be shown results from other neighbouring Kete who might hold Horowhenua material due to historical boundary changes, plus other databases including Koha the Horowhenua Library catalogue. We also dreamed of being able to draw search results from big national repositories of digital content like Te Papa, National Archives, National Library etc. regardless of what content management system they were using.

Digital NZ
Digital NZ is the National Library site which currently 'harvests' records from 67 contributing organisations throughout NZ. Here is a diagram showing how it works and here is a list of who the current contributors. Incidentally, Digital NZ also have a Kete for collecting content from organisations who don't have their own digital content management systems :)

Federated Searching
Late yesterday the final enhancements were turned on and all of this is now operational. An added bonus is that the new Koha will also pull results from Kete Horowhenua.

A few links to have a look:

• A search in Kete showing results from Digital NZ,
• a search in Kete drawing results from another Kete, our Library Trust as an organisation Kete which is distinct from the Horowhenua community one,
• and a search in our test Koha 3.0 site drawing results from Kete Horowhenua.

The HLT Kete is proving quite useful as a collaboration tool in the Library 2030 work we are working through.

Where to now
This is all very exciting looking ahead. Manawatu Horizons member Councils are working through a project to build a shared digital archive using Kete. This will then be searchable from other Kete thus opening access to the vast wealth of local authority archival material currently held by a bunch of neighbouring Councils.

Kapiti Coast are in the process of starting a Kete collecting the digital resources from all arts, cultural and heritage organisations from within its area, setting up a separate basket with its own theming for each main organisation thus enabling individual identity within a shared database.

Providing that the new Council cemetery records, At Home Care and Youth databases have all been built on open standards then these to will also be searchable through Kete.

I think we can call this a job well done!

Liblime forks Koha

Horowhenua Library Trust developed Koha, the world’s first open source library management system back in 2000. We gave it to the world in the spirit of community. We are very happy, delighted in fact, for any organisation or individual to take it, improve it and then give their improvements back.

Recipricocity is the keystone which gives strength to the Koha Community.

We do not begrudge vendors taking our gift and building a commercial enterprise out of it, as Liblime, Biblibre and any number of others have done, but the deal is that you give back. This has worked well for a decade and Liblime has been a strong, valued and much appreciated member of the Koha international community over that time.

So it is incredibly sad and disappointing that Liblime has decided to breach the spirit of the Koha project and offer a ‘Liblime clients only’ version of Koha. Let's call it what it is: vendor lockin and a fork.

Technically, because Liblime offers hosted Koha what it is doing does not breach the GNU GPL licence conditions of Koha. Liblime has said it will continue to push new developments – but its actions show it is not contributing code or participating in the community anymore. Other developers are sharing their public Git repositories but there is no sign of Liblime's yet. An important principle of FOSS is that you release early and often allowing the community to share in the development and benefit.

Long serving, reputable staff with a proven track record of commitment to open source have, I assume, chosen to not work in the new Liblime culture. They have moved to other vendors committed to the FOSS ethos - people like Nicole Engard who late last week accepted an employment offer from Bywater Solutions and Biblibre.

The other thing that us Kiwis don’t understand is how Liblime could have trademarked the word ‘Koha’. It’s a simple and common word in New Zealand; it would be like trademarking the word ‘thanks’ or ‘gift’ or ‘hello’ in America. Liblime has also registered a Koha Foundation which strikes at the very soul of the Koha community. Liblime has taken the name, the domain and the foundation away from us all. The company has said publicly that it is just holding them in safe keeping for the community and will hand them back to the Koha community.

The real loser in all this is the WALDO consortium who seem to be bearing much of the fallout for Liblime's divisive decision to fork the code. Much of the new development work that Liblime is going to be withholding from the community is being funded by WALDO - $USD600k worth:

* Acquisitions: Purchase Orders, Budget Hierarchies
* Serials: Serials Binding, Improved Prediction Patterns
* Cataloging: Holdings Structure (3-tiered), Authorities Control
* Circulation: Offline Circulation, Proxy Patrons
* System Administration: Granular Permissions, Enhanced Reporting

This could be a great contribution by WALDO to the Koha open source project, and a splendid reciprocal payment for being given Koha in the first place… except that Liblime is taking it, keeping it and robbing WALDO of the kudos and goodwill that they should be earning by sponsoring this development. Why WALDO are letting this happen is anyone’s guess but I sincerely hope that other Liblime clients don’t let this happen to them too.

Koha in the latest Code4Lib Journal #7

How hard can it be? : developing in open source

Over recent years, Horowhenua Library Trust (HLT) has been receiving a steady trickle of enquiries and surveys from Library students the world over wanting to know about the development of Koha. What were the conditions and mindset that allowed a little public library in Levin, NZ to not only imagine they could, but actually develop the world's first open source library management system?

So, with help from Chris Cormack, the main brain behind Koha, and Rosalie Blake, the guts and courage, I have written our journey up and it was published today in issue 7 of the Code4Lib journal.

From the introduction:

"We were a very ordinary public library in New Zealand, we had hardly any money and a library management system that was going to stop working on 1st January 2000 …. What else could we have done? And how hard could it be anyway? The librarians would tell the programmers how a library works and they would make it so. And we weren’t going to make a big deal of this ok; 3 months is loads of time."

I do want to thank Andrew Darby from the Code4Lib editorial board for his wise and patient guidance and advice which meant getting our story published wasn't that hard at all!

Tara Robertson on FOSS in Wellington, NZ.

Tara is a freelance librarian from Vancouver, Canada who has just moved to Wellington, New Zealand for a year. She has been a breath of fresh air, in person and online. Apart from the appeal of her vivacious personality she is really passionate about open source software, with particular experience in Evergreen and digitization projects like the Queer History Project.com access to information, intellectual freedom and travel (and Japanese cookery with dog .... weird but true).

So she has slotted very easily into Wellington, arguably the coolest city in NZ :) She has been writing a series of blog posts about Wellington's thriving Open Source community - and I was suprised to learn how much is going on.

Her first post in the 'Get Your FOSS On' series outlines the regular geeky events held in the city and the second one focus's on Wellington Library geeks including our very own Chris Cormack, Walter McGinnis and Horowhenua Library Trust.

Can't wait for the 3rd one - good on yah Tara!

NZ Koha Users Group Meeting

Horowhenua Library Trust invite existing and potential Koha users and vendors to a meeting to be held on Friday the 17th July at Horowhenua District Council building, Oxford Street, Levin, from 9.30am - 4.30pm.

An agenda will be finalized on the day, but come prepared to share:

• what version of Koha you are running,
• any plans to upgrade to 3.0,
• anything you are proud of or want to show off,
• any enhancement or bug fix work underway,
• any bug fixes or development work you'd like to see done,
• any problems or areas you'd like help with,
• future plans and ambitions,
• anything else you can think of!
  

The room will have a wireless broadband conenction, projector and whiteboard.

There is no charge for this meeting. Lunch can be arranged for $15 a head (anyone care to sponsor this or shall we charge per person?)

Please feel to extend this invitation to anyone you think may like to attend.

For catering purposes I would like to know numbers attending by 10th July so RSVP jransom@library.org.nz.

Cheers Jo.

Photograph by Trevor Heath : http://horowhenua.kete.net.nz/trevor_heath_photography

Thinking about Item Types in Koha

I am writing this post to record the process I have been through to review our existing use of Item Types in Koha 2.x, in preparation for a move to Koha 3.x.


OPAC centric
I focussed this exercise from the library users point of view. What would our patrons like to ‘see’ as a search result in OPAC interface?

Search Result:

• Title, author etc
• What format is it?
• Is it on loan or available ?
• If on loan when is it due back?
• If available, which library is it currently at?
• Which area of the library or which collection do I go to get it? Which collection or ‘Living Room’?
• What is its shelving position ie dewey or filing letters?

Advanced Search:

• Only items not on loan OR all
• Only items at a specific library Or all * Particular formats ie Book only or DVD OR all
• Particular audiences ie children’s, teen or adult OR all
• Particular genre: romance or mystery etc
• Particular collections: easy reader fiction, picturebooks, local history etc

Item Types OR CCodes

There are two very different ways to organize a collection in Koha 3.0. Either heavy use of the Item Types OR heavy use of CCodes. My understanding is that you have to choose 1 or the other for advanced search, but not both.

Item types – These are used to set circulation policies. These are not format descriptors (GMDs). They can be set as advanced search options, and display as icons on the search results screen. The codes are never seen by the public, but informative descriptions add real value as a finding tool for patrons.

CCodes – Collection Codes can be set as advanced search options too, and can be set to display as text on search results.

Having minimal Item Types can greatly simplify the creation of circulation rules. So you could have just 3 or 4 Item types, and then use collection codes to shape your collection into ‘clusters’.


eg. Item Types:

• G General collection 3 week loan period, no rental
• GR General rental collection 3 week loan, $3 rental
• S Short term loan 1 week loan, no rental
• SR Short term rental collection 1 week loan, $1 rental

with a bunch of CCodes:

• ANF Adult nonfiction
• CNF Children’s nonfiction
• TNF Teens nonfiction
• AF Adult Fiction
• JF Junior fiction

Or even by genre or Living Room:

• FM Fiction mystery
• FW Fiction Western
• FR Fiction Romance
• BNP People and Places

Alternatively, we could create as many Item Types as we like to reflect a finely granulated collection at Item Type level, with or without the use of Collection Codes.

If we go with many item types then I will need to craft the circulation rules carefully, loading the default position first and only creating rules for the exceptions. My old way of creating a rule for every single combination of patron and item types will be a nightmare!

If we go with Item Types I will assign icons which reflects the format or GMD (ie all book item types have a book icon). The full text description of the item type will display in the OPAC search result enabling the patron to see what format the item is at a glance.


Test Scenarios.
I created a bunch of test scenarios in order to see how applying each of the various options and combinations could best meet my objective of delivering the most useful information for the patron.

In placing a heavy emphasis on Item Types I could end up with about 100 different item types, if I fully utilized this method to reflect genres within fiction, rental fiction and large print, and also ‘living rooms’ or subject based sub-collections within the non-fiction.

I also wanted to test an option where heavy emphasis is placed on Collection Codes. This would streamline setting up circulation rules drastically as only 8 Item Types would be required, but I would still have to create a whole heap of Collection Codes. I could group a bunch of Item Types into 1 collection, or a bunch of collections into 1 Item Type.

Several scenarios were tested:

• Total granulation as far as possible, for all genres and living rooms, within all collections (about 100 item types).
• Granulate for all major collections, but not for genres. Rely on the subject headings – which are hotlinks to find related material. (about 60 item types).
• As above, but enter the Genre in the Call Number field as well.
• Minimum number of Item Types created, 1 for each class of circulation eg 3 weeks & no rental, 1 week & $2 etc.

I have a document showing the detail of the tests but I'm not clever enough to create tables in this blog... so contact me directly if you want the whole document!

Conclusion

All 4 test scenarios struggled with displaying the Fiction genres in a useful way for the Patron. This is because we do not shelf them by Genre.

Our Fiction Collection Manager suggested we just stop adding them in to the catalogue, and use the subject headings instead, which would actually be more useful because different aspects of the book could be catalogued. We would not be forcing a book into 1 genre. We can still add Genre stickers to the spines if we wish, which is where they really come into their own for shelf browsers, but the catalogue will not reflect that.

This made live easier.

The reason against making loads of Item Types is the pain of creating the circulation rules table – and its not a bad enough reason to out weigh the benefits of many, finely tuned and well descibed, Item Types which would add real value to the OPAC search results.

We will create Item Types for each collection and Living Room, but not by Genre for each of the 3 Fiction collections: free, rental and large print.

Thanks to Owen, Brooke, Nicole, Caitlin, Larissa and Rosalie for helping me work through the issues.

Interested in Koha as your LMS?

Koha Con 2009

Press release from the Koha list:

"February 3, 2009.

The creators and developers of Koha, the first open source Integrated Library System (ILS), today announced that KohaCon 2009 - a conference for current and interested users of the Koha Integrated Library System - will be held in Plano, Texas, April 16 &17, 2009.

KohaCon 2009 is the sequel to the first ever KohaCon - held in Paris, France in 2006 - which brought together users and developers worldwide.

KohaCon 2009 will feature an international slate of speakers (both Koha users and active Koha contributors) conducting presentations and workshops on a diverse range of topics. Topics will include technical information on how to develop for the various modules of Koha, support options, and even panel discussions featuring users of Koha talking about their experiences with the software.

"We expect this event to have wide appeal," said Paul Poulain, BibLibre, CEO and Release Manager of Koha 2.x "The conference is for both techies and non-techies. In addition to presentations on the technical side of Koha, the conference will serve
as a hands-on introduction to how users and developers around the world collaborate to make the Koha open-source software possible," Poulain explained.

"Kohacon 2009 will be huge, everything is bigger in Texas. Plus you get to hear from some of the veteran Koha developers, complete with funny accents. What more could you want?" said Chris Cormack, one of the original authors of the Koha version 1.0, and current Translation Manager for the Project.

This is a FREE conference. There is no registration fee, but conference organizers are requesting that all attendees pre-register using the registration form found at:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pMSkZuQLLHD_R8MFCGWz4OQ

Details (travel, hotels, tentative agenda, etc) can be found on the Koha wiki at:
http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=kohacon2009


About Koha
Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). Gifted by Horowhenua Library Trust and now in use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. The impressive set of features available in Koha continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. Koha has lived up to its name, which means 'Gift' in the Maori language of New Zealand.

To learn more about the Koha project, visit: http://koha.org


Press Contact:
Paul POULAIN
http://www.biblibre.com
Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l'info-doc
Tel : (33) 4 91 81 35 08

Koha community defending the Open Source ethos.

Very interesting to see this press release from a bunch of leaders in the Koha community, defending the ethos of the open source Koha community by publically slamming a company who refuse to play by the rules.

Koha Song

Check out this YouTube video of Karen Hixon and Judy van Acker from a small rural library in Colorado. They successfully downloaded and installed Koha and then sang about it... you go girls!

Thanks to Kathryn Greenhill for blogging about this!