Countdown update: 5 days

Koha is in 5 days! Are you as excited as we are?

Today we profile Joy Nelson (President, Koha Division) of ByWater Solutions and Caroline Cyr La Rose (Product Manager) of inLibro. We also highlight Fred King’s demonstration of how to set up an ILS for less than $100 USD (Medical Librarian, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, and thank one of our very generous sponsors, Linux Australia.

Presenter profile: Joy Nelson, ByWater Solutions

Joy Nelson is the President of ByWater Solutions Koha Division where she supports a staff that works to provide the absolute best possible ILS and exceptional service to libraries. After spending many years in libraries and various software development firms, she knows what makes for great code development and database management –and it’s open source. It’s about connecting with librarians and leveraging their skills and knowledge to make Koha better with each release.

Joy received her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and her Masters in Information Science from the University of North Texas. She has been active in the Koha community since 2011 and most recently was the Release Maintainer for 19.11 version and sincerely hopes she did not introduce any ‘unintended features’.

When Joy is not at work or in the library, you can find her painting water colours, traveling, and/or enjoying a dirty martini – gin, never vodka.

In her presentation, Creative problem solving, Joy will share how creative problem solving is more than simply brainstorming ideas - it is a critical skill that everyone needs in any field. She will review the four part methodology of creative problem solving, and then explore how this process can be applied to virtual teams, software communities, and diverse groups.

Presenter profile: Caroline Cyr La Rose, inLibro

Caroline Cyr La Rose, Product Manager at inLibro, has an interesting and varied background! Caroline notes that as a young girl she didn’t play house, or teacher, but librarian. After trying nursing, science, and linguistics, and after completing various orientation tests, Caroline graduated with a master’s degree in library science from École de Bibliothéconomie et des Sciences de l’Information (EBSI) at Université de Montréal in 2009. She worked as a children’s librarian in a public library for several years and joined the inLibro team and the Koha community in 2017. At inLibro, a Koha support company, Caroline is responsible for data migrations, training, and support. In the Koha community, she is part of the documentation team and the French-Canadian translation team. In her free time, you will find Caroline cuddling with her cats, knitting, reading, and drinking tea. If you have a specific interest in cataloguing, you definitely won’t want to miss Caroline’s talk about cataloguing plugins!

Talk highlight: Got a hundred dollars? Get an ILS! by Fred King, MedStar Washington Hospital Center

If you’re a small library with an extremely limited budget, Fred’s presentation is perfect for you! In this talk he’ll show you how to build a fully-functional ILS using Koha, a Raspberry Pi 4, MarcEdit, and a chicken (chicken optional) for a total cost of under $100 USD. Fred (and Avenging Chicken) will demonstrate how he installed Koha on the Raspberry Pi 4, then used MarcEdit to harvest MARC records using Z39.50.

Fred received his MSLS from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and for the past 15 years has been a medical librarian at MedStar Washington Hospital. Introduced to Koha around 2012, and in 2013 he migrated his library to Koha 3.12. Fred also developed the MedStar Authors Catalog using a slightly modified version of Koha and Medline records converted into MARC format. He served as one of the founding board members of koha-US, first as Member-at-Large, and then Member-at-Large/Unsupported. Fred’s experience in migrating a small library convinced him that Koha could be a cost-effective way for other libraries to automate their own libraries with limited funds and support, or, has he puts it, ”If I can do it, you can do it.“ He is known on six continents, not for his Koha or medical library skills, but rather for his poetry and for being the travelling companion to a stuffed chicken, both of which can be found at http://avengingchicken.online

Linux Australia is proud to be a Kohcon20 sponsor. Linux Australia is the peak body of Open Source communities in Australia. Linux Australia represents approximately 5000 Australian users and developers of Free Software and Open Technologies, and facilitates internationally-renowned events including linux.conf.au – Australasia’s grassroots Free and Open Source Software Conference.

Go back to About