Koha (software)

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This article is about Koha, the Integrated Library System. For other meanings of Koha, see Koha (disambiguation).
Koha
Developer(s)Katipo Communications Ltd.
Initial releaseJanuary 2000
Stable release
3.2.3 / January 22, 2011
Preview release
Release Candidate / October 7, 2010
Repository
TypeIntegrated library system
LicenseGNU General Public License
Websitewww.koha-community.org[1]

Koha is the first open source integrated library system (ILS).

Created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, the first installation went live in January 2000. The name koha comes from a Māori term for a gift or donation (see koha (custom)).

Features

Koha has most of the features that would be expected in an ILS, including:

  • Simple, clear interface for librarians and members (patrons)
  • MARC based cataloging
  • Various Web 2.0 facilities like tagging and RSS feeds
  • Union Catalog Facility
  • Customizable search
  • Circulation and borrower management
  • Cataloging module with integrated Z39.50 client
  • Full acquisitions system including budgets and pricing information (including supplier and currency conversion)
  • Simple acquisitions system for the smaller library
  • Ability to cope with any number of branches, patrons, patron categories, item categories, items, currencies and other data
  • Serials system for magazines or newspapers
  • Reading lists for members

History

Created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, the first installation went live in January 2000.[2]

In 2001, Paul Poulain (of Marseille, France) began adding many new features to Koha, most significantly support for multiple languages. By 2010, Koha has been translated from its original English into French, Chinese, Arabic and several other languages. Support for the cataloguing and search standards MARC and Z39.50 was added in 2002 and later sponsored by the Nelsonville Public Library. Paul Poulain co-founded BibLibre in 2007[3].

In 2005, an Ohio-based company, Metavore, Inc trading as LibLime, was established to support Koha and added many new features, including support for Zebra sponsored by the Crawford County Federated Library System. Zebra support increased the speed of searches as well as improving scalability to support tens of millions of bibliographic records. In 2010, LibLime was acquired by another vendor, PTFS.[4]

In 2009, controversy arose when LibLime stopped participating in the community development process. LibLime had registered a US trademark and replaced the Koha.org website at short notice[5]. LibLime's "Enterprise Koha" hosted service (known as LEK) used code that significantly diverged from released Koha source code[6] . Dissatisfaction with LibLime's inaction over many months led to a vote by the Koha community to move the project website to http://koha-community.org[7].

Since 2000 many companies have supported Koha Library Software around the world. A list of support companies is available at http://koha-community.org/support/paid-support/.

Development

Koha is an active project. As of April 2010 Koha has:

  • 12640 commits
  • 4773 files
  • 558966 lines of code
  • 2636 Bugs fixed
  • 110 Different people committing
  • Hundreds of translators, translating thousands and thousands of lines[8]

Koha version 3.0.6 was released on May 17, 2010. No new features were introduced, but many bugs were fixed.

Koha 3.2.3 was released on January 22, 2011, and contains many new features, including:

  • A significantly revamped Acquisitions module, including support for hierarchical funds and budgets
  • Enhanced system preferences editor
  • More granular permissions
  • Bulk item editing
  • Revamped inventory/stock-taking
  • Usability enhancements to cataloging workflow
  • Improvements in Koha's ability to express circulation policies
  • Numerous enhancements to the bib display XML templates
  • Per-patron OPAC search history, with ability for patrons to manage the retention of their search history
  • Support for Syndetics, LibraryThing, and Babeltheque enhanced content
  • Enhanced patron card and item label creator
  • Integration with SOPAC, including support for various web services defined by the ILS-DI recommendation
  • Support for CAS single sign-on
  • Revamped UNIMARC framework for English
  • Packing for Debian Squeeze; installation of Koha can now be as simple as apt-get install koha

Obtaining Koha

Koha version 3.2.3 may be downloaded from the official Koha page along with the 3.2.3 release notes. Extensive documentation is available from the Koha manual as well as the Koha Wiki.

See Requirements below.

License

Koha is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2 or later.

Requirements

Server

The server-side of Koha is written in Perl and requires:

  • Perl
  • Apache Web Server (2.0 is preferred or higher version)
  • MySQL Server 4.1 or later (4.1 to properly handle encoding) (PostgreSQL support will be added in Koha 3.4[9])
  • Perl modules for some functions

Client

Web browser

The OPAC interface side of Koha is written in XHTML with CSS 2.0, uses PNG graphics and will display correctly in any operating system under any browser that follows CSS 2.0.

The librarians' interface has similar requirements, but it requires a Javascript-enabled browser to work correctly. Optional sounds have been added to the circulation portion of the staff client, which require an HTML5-enabled browser to function.

Koha and Windows

Although it's recommended that Koha be run on a Linux server[10], it will also work on Windows, provided that Apache, MySQL, Perl and the CPAN modules Koha uses are installed first.

See also

References

  1. ^ the new site per the votes of the active developers & users of Koha
  2. ^ http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6350.
  3. ^ About BibLibre
  4. ^ http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6714841.html
  5. ^ Announcing ... New koha.org Website based on Plone, Joshua Ferraro
  6. ^ http://lwn.net/Articles/386284/
  7. ^ [1] Log of IRC discussion and vote, February 2, 2010.
  8. ^ http://koha-community.org/koha-project-stats/
  9. ^ Koha-devel: koha with better support for postgresql
  10. ^ Download Koha

External links

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