Be A Part of the Koha Community!

by Kalleen Marquise on Jun 17, 2021

There are many benefits of utilizing open source products including freedom, flexibility, and affordability. One of our favorite things about open source at ByWater is community. The communities built around Koha (and the other platforms we support) have led us to meet and form relationships with amazing libraries, organizations, and staff throughout the world. We have travelled to new places, seen first hand how these people and places serve their communities and patrons, and have worked together to create better tools for people to access information freely. It really is a special thing to be a part of! If you are not involved in the open source community, we invite you to join us in one or more of all the ways there are to get involved.

Koha Community

Koha originated in 2000 (21 years ago!) in New Zealand. Since then, it has spread worldwide to thousands of libraries and helped millions of library users! The Koha website is a great jumping off point to get a foundational knowledge of Koha history and information on ways to get involved. This can be found here: https://koha-community.org/get-involved/

World-wide Users Groups - information on the international Koha User Groups

Koha-US

koha-US is a proud partner in a Global Community. They strive to be a hub for the US users of Koha, and encourage those users, with the rest of the Koha community, to participate through the various resources listed below. Find out more here: https://koha-us.org/about/

• Bugzilla - Set up an account in the Koha Community ticketing system to suggest new features, comment on other's suggestions, and vote for your favorite enhancements/features.
• jQuery Library - JQuery modifications are a great way to customize the look and feel of your Koha install.
• Koha Community - Participate in the Koha Community where you can find information on upcoming meetings (calendar), how to get involved, IRC information, and much more.
• Koha Dashboard - Stay connected to developments through this high-level view of work happening now in the community.
  
• Koha IRC Chat - Community Chat
• kohadevbox - a VirtualBox ready to do development and signoffs on the Koha project
• Sandboxes (Test online!) - Sandboxes have been developed with the goal to lower the barrier for testing patches for Koha. You can set up a sandbox with a current development version of Koha, sample data and the patches of a bug applied for you. Once you have finished testing, you can use a form to 'sign off' on the patches and move the bug report to the 'Signed off' status from where it will continue into QA.

Contribute to Development

Do you want to submit patches and become a part of the Koha Community? Here are some resources:

• Coding Guidelines
• Koha Perldoc
• Enhancement Submission Guidelines
• RFC Guidelines
• Bug Reporting Guidelines
• The Koha Git repository is located at http://git.koha-community.org/gitweb/ and is hosted by ByWater Solutions

Koha Crowdfunding Site

In 2015, ByWater Solutions launched a Development Website to create a resource for libraries across the world to gather ideas, share projects, and contribute funds to create new features in Koha that everyone would be able to benefit from. From that site alone, dozens of developments have been funded and put into the hands of all Koha users, for the greater good of the Koha Community.

Access the website here: http://devs.bywatersolutions.com/

Annual Events

There are a variety of events held throughout the year to get involved in the community! Here are some past and upcoming events to see what types of opportunities are available. You can also check the Koha Community Calendar for information: https://koha-community.org/calendar/

• The Koha-US 2021 Hybrid Conference September 21st-24th, 2021 McKinney, Texas
• KohaCon is a yearly international get together of the Koha Community.
• Join the ALA Core Open Source Systems Interest Group.

Past Events:

• Koha Virtual Hackfest
• Koha Global Bug Squashing Day
• Kohathon

Educational Resources

At ByWater, we offer a number of training resources and educational opportunities to grow and learn about Koha for free!

• Koha tutorials are available here.
• The full training table contents for Koha materials are here.
• Our Educators will host webinars and put together training materials around releases.
• We send out Monday Minutes, short training videos, each week.

Social Media

We share our educational materials, community news, releases, and much more on our social media channels. What a great way to interact with the community! Like, share, comment, and engage with the community on the following platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
  
• Linkedin
• Twitter
• YouTube

ByWater Solutions Partners Have Even More Ways to Tap into Community Resources!

Our partners at ByWater Solutions have even more ways to get involved in the community! If you are one of our partners and do not have access to one of these, please reach out to outreach@bywatersolutions.com so that we can get you in!

• Slack- Our partner Slack workspace is an opportunity to chat in a variety of channels on specialized topics, share information with other library partners, and chat with ByWater staff.
• ListServ- Our partner listserv has been used to gain feedback from other libraries on Koha, special projects, inventory, programming, purchasing suggestions, and much more! Tap into the knowledge of other libraries we support and share ideas and resources!
• Unlimited Support- We never charge per support interaction. We are always available for additional training, backend support, and helping you with customizations you want to achieve!

We hope this helps you see what amazing and unique opportunities are available to get involved in the open source community! We hope to talk to you soon!