Waiata: Māku rā pea

Māku rā pea
Māku rā pea
Māku koe e awhi e
Ki te ara, ara tupu
Māku koe e awhi e

Te Kahu Rolleston is spoken word poet, mental health worker and educator from the tribe of Ngaiterangi in Tauranga. He has been called ‘The Taniwha of Poetry’. His work often honours his ancestors, the land, and the ongoing Māori struggles for Tino Rangatiratanga. His poetry speaks to what it means to be Māori, combining mythology, history and modern politics. Te Kahu was the 2014 winner of The National Slam Poetry Competition. In 2015 Te Kahu was invited to attend The Banff Centre’s Indigenous Writing Programme alongside Witi Ihimaera. He won the world pacific poetry slam at Festpac 2016. Te Kahu is extremely passionate about the power of words, and the actions they can trigger.

Anahera Morehu (BMIM, RLIANZA) is a descendant of Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kahu, and Ngāti Whātua iwi. To date, her library career is a long and illustrious one with a particular focus on Māori and Indigenous issues. She has presented at many Indigenous fora. Anahera is the current Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA) President and Kaiārahi at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Business and Economics. Anahera is the National Coordinator for the Mātauranga Māori programme within New Zealand libraries, Ngā Kaiwhakahau member (National Council) of Te Rōpū Whakahau, Governing Group of Ngā Upoko Tukutuku, on the LIANZA Professional Registration Board, and past Tumuaki of Te Rōpū Whakahau.

The Valnet consortium has 46 individual libraries across 15 hierarchical groups. We use jquery to customise a variety of pages to fit the needs of individual libraries and groups within the consortium. This presentation will focus on troubles faced by consortium and how we solve them.

We’d like to share how we use Koha as central catalog, especially for small libraries and share bibliographic data between our system and with their Koha.

Everyone likes using documentation – from helping to solve immediate problems, to tutorials and guides, to learning how to do something new. However, it is challenging to organise, write, translate, and keep up-to-date. How can the Koha community improve our documentation to support and keep up with the needs and expectations of our worldwide community, now and in the future? This session will share what the documentation team is doing now, and planning for the future.

While everyone at Kohacon20 already knows that Koha is the premier ILS on the planet, there are still thousands of libraries not yet convinced. As hard to believe as that is, the perspective from the sales side of Koha can help all of us understand what libraries are looking for as they change systems. Focus will be given to what potential partners ask about, don’t believe and ask for as developments. Marketing of Koha to the masses can be much better, but how do we do that? Shout it from the mountain top – Koha is amazing.

Creative problem solving is more than simply brainstorming ideas. It is a critical skill that everyone needs in any field. We’ll review the four part methodology of creative problem solving and explore ways this process can be applied to virtual teams, software communities, and diverse groups. Everyone is capable of creating innovation solutions to problems.

Three of the original project team members reflect on how we got here.

In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) had been implemented in May 2018. A lot of new enhancements had already been added to Koha, but libraries could be in difficulty with the obligation to provide statistics asked by state institutions. That could have an impact with the financing they benefit from the state. Kohala (French Koha non-profit group) was asked by its members to finance developments regarding anonymisation. I would like to raise several questions. What is anonymisation and what are the technical possibilities to achieve it?

Hear from people within the Koha community from all over the world.

Discover the Koha plugin catalog: Its purpose, its use, and how you can contribute

Koha is an impressive integrated library management system that can also be used creatively, for example to inventory media devices at a school. However, it cannot be all the things to everyone, and it can be beneficial to integrate it with other systems. In this session, I would like to brainstorm integration ideas with the audience to connect Koha to a learning management system, an ePortfolio system, and others. How can we harness the rich data that is is in Koha and make it available in other systems? Are there are any common scenarios that people have asked about in the Koha community or that have been discussed at organisations working with Koha? At Kohacon we have the chance to brainstorm these ideas and maybe even develop them further during the workshop days.

This study aims to find out the reasons for adopting Koha ILS, determines the problems faced by libraries during its implementation, and gets the perceptions of librarians about the performance of Koha in Pakistan. The result will be discussed with the international community regarding the adoptions of Koha in Pakistan. The study will comprise all Pakistan librarian and libraries which are currently using Koha ILS in libraries. The main issue will be highlighted regarding the option of Koha ILS. The research will provide a brief picture of libraries’ perceptions about Koha adoption and satisfaction levels. The selection, implementation, and usage of the Koha software in their libraries.

It takes multiple perspectives and a variety of expertise to build a successful open source library system. As the Koha community looks toward the future, it must continue keeping the needs of libraries and their patrons at the forefront of development. How does this actually work? How do these relationships form, and how are they maintained? How does the patron experience influence development? This talk will explore the communication flow between patrons, librarians, and developers in the Koha community. It will also share a case study from one Koha library showing how an integrated library planning process has helped contribute to the Koha development cycle.

This presentation will demonstrate co-operation between the libraries that use Koha in Finland. The co-operation covers all library sectors: national, academic, and public. Koha-Suomi Ltd is owned by almost 100 municipalities and purpose of the company is to organise Koha services to public libraries. The academic libraries have the organisation of their own. This organisation and Koha-Suomi Ltd have a keen co-operation relationship to develop Koha for Finnish libraries. For example, the system developers communicate daily and have meetings together at least once a week. The presentation will also describe how the co-operation works at the different levels of the organisations (library directors, admin, and library staff).

As a support provider, we obviously provide solutions and troubleshooting for all of our partners as our most important role, however, there are umerous ways we can further market Koha to enhance our partners’ experiences, and often make our support efforts easier. Learn how one support company is making and sharing news about Koha and other open source projects to hepl improve how libraries use those products.

A quick introduction to using OpenRefine for tidying up messy data and getting it ready to import into Koha. (http://openrefine.org/)

As we know, Koha is in use in hundreds of libraries around the world, but all libraries have their own workflows and ideas of how features should work. From the point of view of rolling out new implementations and handling support, I’ll give examples of contrasting requirements for features or behaviours and I’ll offer some ideas on “twisting” Koha to fill the gaps.

What is accessibility? It is the practice of making web content accessible to people with disabilities, and the degree to which people with disabilities can use and access content. The benefits of accessibility include: more people can access your online libraries, compliance with accessibility standards, improved usability and SEO, and opportunity to demonstrate social responsibility. People with disabilities use the Internet in various ways, such as screen readers, screen magnification, keyboards, and visual information. Julius will outline five steps to make your online library more accessible – descriptive images, keyboard accessible elements, accessible forms, sufficient colour contrast, and correct semantic structure. Julius will leave us all with a call to action.

Finnish public libraries are efficient and innovative libraries that are highly respected around the world. All the public libraries use progressive library systems and use of automation is common. Almost 80% of all Finns use annually public library. Loans per capita last year were 15,4. Total amount of the loans was almost 85,000,000. The presentation will describe the story behind the success. The presentation will also point out the meaning of the library system to the efficient library work and the quality of customer service.

In July 2018, Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology went live with Koha, hosted and supported by Catalyst. This followed a four month implementation project. The project team needed to migrate data from two different ILS (Voyager and Liberty) into Koha, integrate the EBSCO EDS plug-in, implement SSO, integrate with Ozone for patron data, configure our specific requirements, carry out comprehensive UAT, and much more. The project was highly successful, with Toi Ohomai senior leadership commenting that this was the smoothest IT project they had ever been involved with. This presentation will cover what made the project so successful from both a relationship and technical perspective. It will include the groundwork involved, including, communication between project members, unified policy development, and technical expertise. As with any project, there were lessons to be learned, and these will also be explored. Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology was formed on 1 May 2016 as the result of a merger of Bay of Plenty Polytechnic and Waiariki Institute of Technology. Toi Ohomai is the largest tertiary provider in the Bay of Plenty and is one of the largest regional ITPs in New Zealand. Toi Ohomai is home to more than 14,000 students, more than 1000 staff, and offers more than 150 programmes ranging from certificate to postgraduate level. Toi Ohomai’s five main campuses are in Rotorua, Taupo, Tauranga, Tokoroa, and Whaktane. We teach from more than 68 delivery sites around the Bay of Plenty and South Waikato. There are two campus libraries, 23 library staff, 80,000 physical items, and an extensive collection of online resources.

Piloted in 2011, the Open Source Academy is a Catalyst initiative designed to provide training and work experience for young technologists. The creation of Catalyst’s Arduino Academy soon followed in 2013. Through a combination of classroom sessions and hands-on project work, Ian and his fellow tutors and mentors work with students to show them how to participate in open source projects and the wider community. Both Academies attract a large number of interested and enthusiastic applicants.

An update on what Koha-US has been up to since Portland Kohacon 2018.

This session will take the user through the steps of building a fully-functional ILS using Koha, a Raspberry Pi 4, MarcEdit, and a chicken (option) for a total cost of under $100 USD. The presenter (and chicken) will show how he installed Koha on the Raspberry Pi 4, then used MarcEdit to harvest MARC records using Z39.50. This is not a system for a large library with hundreds of transactions per hour, but might be used by a small library with an extremely limited budget that would like to set up an ILS. The presenter (and chicken) also hope to convince potential users that Koha is a lot easier to use than they might think. He’s a community college drop-out – if he can do it, so can you.

The Koha journey in Pakistan started in April 2007 with a discussion among a few IT passionate libraries on PakLAG Yahoo group. There has been no turning back since then. Pakistani library professionals joined hands to learn, customise, adapt, and implement Koha in libraries. There were numerous challenges to adopt the open source solution, such as poor ICT infrastructure, lack of IT skilled libraries, lack of trust in open source solutions, and budgeting. Some selfless learners became volunteer mentors to other libraries for Koha training and implementation. Over the yars, now more than 50 libraries are using different modules of Koha. However, several Koha training, intengration into formal LIS education and acceptability does not reflect the large-scale implementation of Koha in Pakistan. This presentation will throw light on the Koha journey in Pakistan, and outline what went well and what went wrong. The study will show guidelines for developing countries like Pakistan, and the Koha community to understand the challenges of adopting Koha and how to avoid pitfalls. It will also guide national strategy to lead a successful transition to open source ILS solutions.

A quick guide to what it is, how to edit it, and some practical uses for libraries (https://www.wikidata.org/)

Kelly and Jessie took the question, how to continue to educate Koha users as the software grows and flourishes each and every upgrade? In what way/s can learning Koha be fun and educational? Solution: Monday Minutes! Jessie and Kelly created a weekly tutorial video and blog post called Monday Minutes with Jessie and Kelly. This has been very successful with our partners. Our goal was to break down one thing in Koha, demonstrate it, talk about use cases, and do this in less than 10 minute videos for users to watch. In this presentation, we will tell you how we created educational, fun, short videos to train Koha users. Through teamwork – we can make it easier and more enjoyable. Isn’t work fun with another fellow colleague in the trenches with you? Turn to Jessie and Kelly for help – we present our making of tutorial videos about Koha and so much more.

Slides

If you’ve ever been frustrated or confused by encoding problems in Perl, this session is for you. We’ll start by building a shared understanding of what Unicode is and how Perl’s functions and modules deal with Unicode data. Then we’ll explore some common pain points and look at tools you can use to deal with them. Areas we’ll explore will include: encoding conversions; importing and exporting data; HTML, XML, and JSON; implications for web servers and databases.

Documentation workshop plan on wiki

A hands-on practical session to get you started contributing to Koha’s documentation:

• The easy way to edit: A hands-on step-by-step walk through of the process using just a browser.
• Working with a local repository: Setting up a local content development environment overnight.
• Working out what to work on: Identifying and selecting documentation tasks.
• It’s not just writing: Other ways to contribute to the documentation.

This workshop will provide professional experience sharing of data migration from software like WINISIS, Excel data, SirsiDynix to Koha ILS data migration testing, and a hands-on session to participants to understand the metadata editing challenges, strategies, and techniques. It is anticipated that through this workshop, participants will be able to cope with the metadata management and editing challenges during data migration, data updating for ILS/discovery tool, preparing MARC data for bulk import and the difference between mrk and mrc files.

Slides

A gentle introduction to linked data concepts (see also semantic web or knowledge graphs). What is linked data and why is it relevant? How does it work and who is using it? How can I query a knowledge graph. How is Wikidata relevant to libraries, and what applications should I know about? Participants will benefit from an internet connected device with web browser, with some exercises involving some light typing. No programming is required. The workshop is not Koha specific.

Part 1: What? Why? How? Who?

Slides

A gentle introduction to linked data concepts (see also semantic web or knowledge graphs). What is linked data and why is it relevant? How does it work and who is using it? How can I query a knowledge graph. How is Wikidata relevant to libraries, and what applications should I know about? Participants will benefit from an internet connected device with web browser, with some exercises involving some light typing. No programming is required. The workshop is not Koha specific.

Part 2: SPARQL, Wikidata, applications, linked data for libraries & archives

FE Technologies is a leading global supplier of library RFID products and we have over 1000 sites installed to date. A relative newcomer to the US market, our team based in Texas is rapidly growing as our customer base expands, and to date we have a large range of libraries as customers here, including McKinney Public Library, Payson City, Hennepin County, Virginia Beach, Altadena, Euless, Benbrook, Deschutes and many more.

American libraries are fast discovering that FE Technologies delivers a unique solution that is specifically designed in conjunction with libraries – to improve patron experience and encourage return visits to the library, increase circulation rates, and improve productivity with self service solutions and the most comprehensive suite of returns solutions available. Our business is entirely dedicated to library RFID products and services and we’re here for the long haul, with a dedicated local support team and an outstanding service reputation. Our product range includes the following:

• A range of Self Check solutions to suit every budget and library architecture
• Staff circulation tools that allow full integration with the ILS for multiple item check in and check out
• Returns chutes and a Smart Bin that automatically and instantly check in items
• The innovative Sort Assistant software that uses onscreen color-coded bars to conduct a detailed sort of returned items and automatically printed hold slips and transit slips
• Security Gates with a range of installations options to suit all types of entranceways
• The fastest inventory device on the market that can also update the ILS live
• Mobile applications including the ability for patrons and staff to check out items using a cellphone
• Automatic Sorters and all componentry

FE Technologies has recently doubled its US office size and team size with recent spate of new hires with specialist library and ILS experience, ready to help your journey to a library RFID solution that suits your unique requirements.