Monday Minutes: KohaCon24

by Jessie Zairo on Sep 23, 2024

In this week's Monday Minutes, Nick and Jessie talk about all the programs and events for the KohaCon24 International Conference in Montreal, Canada happening this week.

KohaCon24 Resources

KohaCon24 Program - overview and schedule of all presentations

Online Registration - register to attend online

KohaCon24 LiveStream on Youtube (English) - watch live

KohaCon24 LiveStream on Youtube (French) - watch live

ByWater Staff and Partners Presenting

We are very excited to present alongside our partners and fellow community members. Below is a list of ByWater Solutions staff members, partners, and community members presenting at kohacon24.

Monday, September 23, 20224

Streamlining Borrower Requests: The Ultimate Guide to Koha Bookings (11:00am)

• Fiona Borthwick, Head of Sales and Account Management, PTFS Europe
• Jessie Zairo, Director of Library Sales and Outreach, ByWater Solutions
• Rebecca Ranallo,Literacy and Learning Director, Cuyahoga County Public Library

The ability to create bookings within Koha was introduced in the 23.11 release and has generated significant interest from libraries across all sectors.

This presentation explores how health libraries in the United Kingdom and a Public Library in the United States have leveraged the bookings functionality.

Additionally we will look at the upcoming enhancements planned for the 24.11 release which aim to extend the capabilities and usage of this feature, addressing the needs of libraries.

Koha funding and foundation (1:45 PM)

• Brendan Gallagher, CEO, ByWater Solutions
• Jonathan Field, Managing Director, PTFS Europe Limited
• Paul Poulain, CEO, BibLibre​

We will be giving a short update on the OLF foundation, the voting results, and setting us all up for a community workshop on Thursday morning for the next steps in the process.

$(‘.patron’).focus() : Patron-centric Koha Customization (2:30 PM)

Patron Focus is one of the guiding values of the SEKnFind shared catalog. This session will share customization work we’ve undertaken using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML to improve the patron experience both internally via the staff client and externally via the OPAC. Strategies for focusing in on projects that put the patron first, and the limitations of customization will also be discussed.

• Jason Robb, SEKnFind Coordinator, Southeast Kansas Library System

Saving the most cows: QA in the Koha Community (4:30 PM)

A talk about some methods and practices for QA in the community that I have found useful, and an introduction to the MoStCoWs method for QA, adapted from the Moscow method for project management.

• Nick Clemens, Head of Development, ByWater Solutions

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Sharing the Love: A Deep Dive into Rotating Collections (9:00 AM)

The sharing of materials among libraries is critical to achieving our shared mission of providing patrons with access to a wide variety of resources and information. This has a particularly significant impact on smaller communities and those with limited funding. We would like to discuss three of the features present in Koha that facilitate materials sharing among libraries: Floating Collections in Circulation, the Rotating Collections Tool, and the Stock Rotation Module. This presentation aims to cover functionality and setup, example use cases, known issues (important bugs, etc.), and the path forward for each of the three with particular attention paid to the Stock Rotation module.

• Heather Rommens, Educator, ByWater Solutions
• Martin Renvoize, Head of Development and Community Engagement, PTFS Europe

Growth and Implementation of Koha’s ILL Module (9:30 AM)

Sharing knowledge is a core part of libraries and inter library loans are a large part of that. We’ll discuss the Koha ILL module, some recent improvements, how some of those improvements were implemented by the INN-Reach ILL plugin, and future bugs that may be of interest for the ILL module.

• Lisette Scheer, Koha Development Support, ByWater Solutions
• Tomás Cohen Arazi, Koha Development

SIP vs NCIP – Old school or new tool? (10:30 AM)

This presentation will survey the capabilities, pros and cons of SIP and NCIP, two of the most popular library interchange protocols and the specifics of their implementations in Koha.

• Kyle Hall, Director of Development & Operations, ByWater Solutions

Reality vs the Search Index: All about reindexing, rebuilding, ghostbusting, and touching all (11:00 AM)

Indexing mismatches in Koha incite confusion when search results do not accurately reflect the reality of the catalogue. In this presentation, I’ll go over the common problems related to indexing, as well as solutions, from both the staff interface and command line, giving scrutiny to both Elastic and Zebra indices and their respective challenges. I’ll review community tools that are of particular use, and briefly touch on the touch_all scripts, where they are needed, and how they differ from reindexing.

• Valerie Burnett, Data and Migration Librarian, ByWater Solutions

The Consortia with Something for Everyone (11:30 AM)

The AspenCat Consortia features 159 libraries, including public, academic, school, special, prison, and mental health types of libraries. Thanks to the flexibility of Koha, each library has a custom environment tailored to their needs, coexisting together despite a wide range of customizations. This is accomplished through a creative use of the various settings Koha offers, and could only be done using Koha.

• Bob Bennhoff, AspenCat Services Manager, Colorado Library Consortium

Journeys Through Koha: Personal Stories and Professional Growth (1:30 PM)

Join us for an engaging panel where members of the Koha Community share their personal and professional journeys. Hear about their first contributions, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. This discussion offers a unique insight into the impact of open-source collaboration on individual growth and the future of Koha.

• Aleisha Amohia, Technical Lead, Rōpū kohinga, Catalyst IT New Zealand
• Marie-Luce Laflamme, Data Analyst and Front-Line Support, Solutions inLibro
• Brendan Lawlor, Systems Manager, CLAMS (Cape Libraries Automated Materials Sharing)
  

Thursday, September 26, 2024

Koha in the Open Library Foundation (OLF) (9:00 AM)

In June 2024 the Koha Community voted in favour of a proposal to move the Koha open source project into the Open Library Foundation (OLF). The practical steps to make this happen are in motion but there are key decisions for the Koha Community to make about what kind of a structure we want to have for governance, roles and responsibilities, management of finances and resources, setting of project priorities, fundraising and making the most of the benefits of being part of the OLF.
What is the shape and purpose of a new Koha Community foundation board/committee?

• Do we have sub-committees and what for?
• What current resources are there in the community (people and hardware/tools) and how do we bring them under our new foundation structure?
• Are there temporary roles while we get this going? Who’s volunteering?
• How soon, and how do we start fundraising?

Following a presentation on Monday 23 September by Brendan Gallagher giving a status update to the community, and outlining the next steps, this workshop is for all of those interested in getting some of these tasks done and potentially volunteering for short and longer-term roles in what will become the Community’s new governance structure.

• Andrew Auld, Commercial Director, PTFS Europe Limited
• Brendan Gallagher, CEO, ByWater Solutions
• Jonathan Field, Managing Director, PTFS Europe Limited

Friday, September 27, 2024

Care and feeding of your Koha testing docker

Talk about good processes for keeping your KTD up to date and troubleshooting problems users may have encountered.

• Nick Clemens, Head of Development, ByWater Solutions