KohaCon13: Introducing Libki

by Melissa Lefebvre on Oct 17, 2013

ByWater’s very own Kyle Hall, presented on LibKi an open source kiosk management system that includes a time management piece along with a reservations system at KohaCon13. Kyle wrote this program back in 2009 to “avoid interacting with teenagers.‚Äù While working in the public library Kyle looked at various open source kiosk programs and after not being satisfied with what those programs offered and true to his inner developer, he opted to write his own.

When as an staff member you log into the Libki admin you can see all the logged in clients. You can cluster computers by physical locations and those groups will show up together helping staff just monitor those computers in their area/floor. Staff can flag accounts as disabled, and also patrons as “troublemakers‚Äù so that the patron can’t log in. It was discovered that kids would share usernames/passwords so that they could log in repeatly, once a librarian flags an account as a “troublemaker‚Äù they won’t be able to log in and get a message to go speak with a librarian.

The patron side has two customizable areas, where you can add events, logos, etc. As soon as they are logged in patrons will see the time remaining, and will get warnings before their time is up so that they can save their work. Patrons can log in various times during the day and their time will remain. So if they log in for 15 minutes the first time they can come back and have 30 remaining, etc if the library as a 45 minute time limit on computer use.

Another really cool feature in Libki is that librarians can link back into Koha and check the patron’s account right from Libki. Libki does has a basic reporting module that will break down all the unique users that came in during particular dates and times.
There’s lots more to come with Libki, including possible fine restrictions, print management, etc so stay tuned and check out our blog regularly for more information. If you want to help out, documentation is needed, web developers are needed for the server side of things. Contact Kyle at kyle@bywatersolutions.com or visit http://libki.org to sign up for the listserv, and read the wiki.