What's Coming Down the Koha Pipeline

by Nathan Curulla on Dec 24, 2014

As you all know, being an open source product Koha has hundreds of new features being developed for it all the time. There is a constant innovation and improvement going into Koha with every new release and dozens of companies and developers working to make Koha better all the time. There are a few features, however, that I am particularly excited about:

ByWater has just sponsored the integration of 5 different e-content services into the Koha catalog. These products will include Overdrive, Axis 360, Recorded Books, Serials Solutions and Freading. This development will completely integrate the content found in these products and, when possible, allow patrons to check these materials out without having to leave the Koha catalog. ByWater is working with Catalyst in NZ on this development and we hope to have it rolled out soon.

Another huge development in the works right now is the Accounts Rewrite development that was done by our own Kyle Hall. This development will drastically improve the reporting capabilities for fines and will allow for the integration of PayPal for patrons to pay off their fines. Awesome!

Another huge one in my mind is the EDI development currently going through testing in the community. This development was submitted by PTFS Europe and will allow for electronic ordering and invoicing, a feature that has historically only been available to much higher priced systems. Forget that! Everyone gets the best when they use Koha!

The speed enhancements that have been released and are being worked on are another huge improvement to the architecture of Koha and will open up the possibilities for much larger institutions to adopt Koha in the future. We already have Ajax for the checkout processes and are working on the same for checkin. We are also close to releasing Plack for both the staff and public interface. This will also add to the overall speed of the system which is great! Another large component to the speed enhancement is the application of Elastic Search to the system. Once this is complete libraries will be given greater flexibility when searching and will also have a much faster response time from the system for both staff and patron interfaces.

These are just a few of the great projects being worked on in our vibrant, collaborative community. Thank you all for making Koha what it is today and what it will be in the following years to come!