Diana Weaver, Liz Rea and Mickey Coalwell shared their experiences using Koha and Wordpress.
Koha is an open source ILS that has been implemented in many of the state's libraries, including the Northeast Kansas Library System. They have a shared ILS called NExpress
One of the perceived challenges in implementing open source is that there is no 800 number to call for troubleshooting, support, or enhancements. This appears to cause staff the most discomfort.
Solution: google it to solve problems; solve problems yourself; it's actually fun to search for answers to the problems!
The three presenters attended KohaCon in April and were
impressed by the number and caliber of attendees. The general
philosophy of participants:
- knowledge should be shared, information should be open and free
- coders have same philosophy of libraries
- technology is supported by people who believe in that philosophy who share their time & create new stuff to share
Implementing and finding solutions:
- look to the community of developers
- there are numerous blogs and wikis - type in your problem and usually someone fixes or creates whatever is needed - passionate people who believe in open source
Presenters experiences with implementation of Koha
- definitely a learning curve but they felt it was worth it to understanding the open source community philosophy
- they are interested in all the intracacies - theory & practice with librarians and coders who are passionate about open source
Tools being used to interface with the communities
- blog created to interface with participating Kansas libraries
- back end of My Kansas Library on the Web is a wordpress.org platform
- Wordpress itself has great documentation - the Codex
- Wordpress for beginners, how do I get my widget to work, css, etc
- includes Forums (live help)
- post your problems with your installation to get help
- IRC (internet relay chat) is another tool they use for sharing - kohakansas on freenode
- they use it to talk about Koha across the state of Kansas to compare notes & issues
- there's an international Koha chat they participate in - have found these are good communities where questions and problems can be addressed and solutions found; IRC appears to be common to various open source platforms
- Koha project uses Bugzilla to maintain its bugs repository - used to report and check on status of bugs
- GIT repository - contains codes contributed that patch bugs
- Mail lists are also used for open source projects
Challenges of open source communities
- requires a 180 degree mindset change to accomplish if you're used to working with vendors
- with open source, requires thinking differently about accomplishing goals
- have to learn what an open source environment is
- lot of opportunities right now for libraries: open source can change the way libraries do business
- collaborative environment; a lot of power & energy in this community
- they've been live with Koha about a year - have seen daily changes vs. the stable environ of most proprietary systems - now change is constant, and it's a challenge for folks to adjust to this new reality. Open source is tremendous reservoir, confluence of ideas to make libraries work better for the patrons - old systems had limitations so you got used to working around it to do your jobs; open source works FOR us to make things better
- NEKLS has been on Koha about a year - they've seen daily changes vs. the stable environment of most proprietary systems - now change is constant, and it's a challenge for folks to adjust to this new reality.
- Open source is tremendous reservoir
- confluence of ideas to make libraries work better for the patrons
- old systems had limitations so you got used to working around it to do your jobs
- open source works FOR us to make things better
NEKLS is contributing documentation/training materials for a worldwide community
- it doesn't mean you have to be a coder
- showing best practice: 'how we did it' - easy to connect to those
Posting to forums
- you should review existing documentation & forums before posting
- know your audience - they are programmers
- etiquette - describe what software version being used, running on what, describe problem - be specific as possible
- and remember: google may be your best friend
- secret to finding things: even if search results don't initially give you the answers, gleaning through the 'wrong' results may lead you to right search terms
There is now a Koha users group called Kudos which met for the first time at ALA.
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