Using Koha's Quote of the Day Feature

by Kelly McElligott on Nov 23, 2021

We are going to show Koha users about a commonly overlooked feature in Koha called, Quote of the Day. This is a built-in feature in Koha that allows libraries to utilize literary quotes, patron quotes, local history quotes or others to be highlighted on the library OPAC. This is a great opportunity to advertise something unique each and every day on the OPAC allowing it to look fresh and new!

System Preference

There is a system preference in Koha that will need to be turned on to activate this feature. This system preference is called, QuoteOfTheDay. Once this has been set to enabled, then we head over to the Tools module to finish the setup!

Tools- Edit quotes for QOTD feature

Within the Tools Module, under Additional Tools, the option to configure the quote of the day - is called "Edit quotes for QOTD feature".

There are two options to add quotes to your Koha. A library can manually add them one at a time, or create a file (.csv) to import them into Koha.

To add a quote manually, click the "Add Quote" button. This will create a blank area to add the 'Source" and 'Text' into the Quote of the Day Chart.

To import a file of quotes, you can create a .csv file. This .csv would just need two columns, 'Source' and 'Text'.

Here is a sample .csv to get you started. You do not need the column names, as Koha will understand the first column to be the source (where the quote came from) and text (what the quote is).

Once you click "Import Quotes", you will upload your file and see the results that come from that .csv. Here is the sample .csv (linked above) imported into Koha:

Cleaning up quotes is also possible from this tool. If there are quotes that your library no longer wants in rotation, you first will click the Quote ID line that you wish to delete, which will highlight that quote in a grey tone. Then you will click 'Delete Quote' in the options above. Koha will give the user an alert to verify that the quote or quotes selected are going to get deleted.

If text needs to be altered in any of the quotes, clicking the text area such as the Source Name of a specific quote will bring a text box allowing the user to change the text.

OPAC

Once the Quote of the Day has been enabled through system preferences and quotes added to the Tool. The Quote of the Day will start populating on your OPAC. Here is an example of a library using this feature and what it looks like on the OPAC:

Other Options

Libraries have taken this Quote of the Day feature and customized it to fit their library, for example, a library decided to use this feature for "Word of the Day" instead. How great is Koha to be able to customize this into something that works for your patrons and community?