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Remember how I was a library director the last time I blogged about Koha? Life was so much simpler then. Koha migration from the administrative side is full of "opportunities for creative problem solving," like figuring out how to keep track of decisions, discussions, questions, bugs, problems, perks, and quirks related to the catalog and the migration process.
We learned a few weeks ago
that we are only the second library system to go live on the 3.0 version of
KohaZOOM, the first being Geauga County Public Library (OH). Mickey
Sharon at NEKLS Tech Day 08 Coalwell, the
leader of our migration team, contacted them as soon as we heard that news, so
we could commiserate and share solutions. We have also recently learned about
the "open source business model" that encourages a give and take between the
client (us) and the service provider (LibLime). It takes a little getting used
to and often feels like we are all making it up as we go along...which we are!
The software, along with the migration process, is organic and fluid, rather
than structured and static. That's good, it's responsive. One of the joys of
being a perpetual beta test site.
We go live on August 21.
We had our formal training last week with Nicole Engard, the Open Source
Evangilist and
primary creator of the super-helpful Koha User's Guide on GoogleDocs.
We invited select individuals from our phase one and phase two libraries to
Nicole's training. They were selected based on their willingness and ability to
help us train folks now and in the near future when we bring on all of the
libraries patiently waiting in the wings. We have plans for group training in
three separate locations on August 20, when most of the libraries will be
closed, as they will be without an ILS. When I got here back in early June, a
lot of the hardest work was already done (like mapping policies). So, my
contributions have been to learn about patron permissions and how to set up
staff accounts, as well as working with Liz Rea, our network administrator and
Web guru, to customize the KohaZoom OPAC. It's been a complicated and complex
process, but we are learning as we go.
Sharon Moreland
Technology
Consultant
Northeast Kansas Library System
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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