Monday Minutes: Let's Talk Labels Part 1

by Kelly McElligott on Feb 5, 2024

In this week's Monday Minutes, Kelly and Jessie are joined by Lucas Gass to discuss Labels. Koha has a built-in Label Creator tool but there is also a Label Creator plugin. Today, we explore the advantages of using the Koha Label Creator and how it can work for your library. Next week we will discuss the Label Creator Plugin and how that also can have advantages for label creation for libraries. Lucas Gass is part of our development team and is our in-house web-design guru.

Label Creator

Koha's label creator tool will allow libraries to use layouts and templates that will assist in the creation to print spine labels and barcodes. A library can create customized label layouts, and custom label templates. A single label or a batch of labels can be printed out using a designed layout and template.

A step-by-step guide to both the creation of the template and layout can be found in the Koha Manual:

Creating Labels

Templates

Our Koha partners will have two templates built into the Koha system, a generic barcode label and one for spine labels. If your library does need to add a new template to Koha, the best advice we can give is to Google the brand and associated number for your label. Most of the information in the Template form within Koha can be found from the label provider and then the information is simply put in the boxes.

Label Layout

The layout is where a library can determine what lives on the label! There is no limit to the number of layouts (or templates) that a library can have in Koha.

Within the layout, a library can assign specific item fields and specific MARC fields that will be printed out on the label. Font, justification, and size will also be determined on the layout form.

Koha Manual - Creating a Layout

Label Creator vs Label Creator Plugin

Some Pros of the Label Creator we discussed in the video:

• Splitting of Call Numbers by the classification
• Easy setup to create both the layout and template
• A lot of the fields libraries want to incorporate within the label can be identified within the Layout.
• Commonly used templates installed pre-populated for easy start up.

Question on Splitting Call Numbers

Question: What If I don't click split call numbers checkbox in the layout section of the lay creator in the cataloging module?

Answer: If you do not click the split call numbers check box, the call numbers will not split. In the screenshot below you will see the first example were the checkbox is checked to split and the second which is not checked.

Label Creator Plugin

For those who would like to see how the Label Creator Plugin works, we did a Monday Minutes with Lucas a while back:

Label Creator Plugin Part 1

Using the Label Plugin in Koha Part 2

Monday Minutes: Enhancement to Label Maker Plugin

See you next week!