India KIG.

A few things an India KIG can do.

It would be a very important step towards freedom if we can establish a strong KIG in India. Some specific areas in which a local group can help better than the international group are

1. [Confidence Building] Allowing people who are planning to deploy Koha to visit libraries already on Koha and walking them through the Koha-isation experience.

1. [Reducing duplicate work] If some of the big libraries already on Koha can host a Z39.50 Server (or atleast upload their MARC data on the web), the new libraries can save a lot of time during the data entry. (There is a feature in Koha to retrieve all the title, author etc information just using the ISBN. But the issue is that currently i'ven't found any Indian library hosting a Z39.50 Server and hence this search would fail for most of the books published from India)

1. [Popularization and Support] There are many small groups of library science graduates who take up computerization tasks of small libraries mostly using their own custom software. (Unfortunately most of them are based on MS Access database, which is most unstable thing that you can get). So if we can convince them on the benifits (for them and the libraries) of migrating to Koha and if possible provide them a basic introduction, then they can serve as much better ambassadors.

I'm more than willing to give all support that i can for the planned India KIG effort.

<biography> I'm Deepak R, Lecturer in Govt. Engg. College, Barton Hill, Trivandrum, Kerala. Library computerization plannings have started in my college. I'm pressurizing them to adopt Koha. Has got it installed and running. The difficult ask is to train the librarians to do the migration job. </biography>

Ideas on forming an Indian Koha Interest Group (Mail from Indranil Das Gupta):

Hello all,

The Koha Users List for India lists you all as being Koha Users in India. Certainly, we are just a handful of people here at the moment.

But our numbers are slowly but steadily increasing.

The last few month's I have been closely interacting with Koha's developers over IRC and private email, as well as the public mailing lists. And by present trends in developer contribution and the Roadmaps for Koha 2.4, things are looking to become a whole lot more exciting in the Koha world over the next 8 - 12 months.

My purpose in mailing you is to share with you all the idea of setting up an Indian Koha Interest Group. If all of you (being hopeful isn't against the law agree or even if some of you are interested, then perhaps we can proceed with the idea of KIG.

This way we can share notes and perhaps more importantly, create reference points and case studies specific to Indian requirements so that it helps others across India as they start evaluating/using Koha.

Introducing myself: I'm Indranil Das Gupta, a Linux and Opensource software user for the past several years. At work, I generally attempt to pass myself off as an Open Source technology consultant to the unsuspecting people around. *grins*

My collaborator is Ms. Najmun Nessa – Asst. Librarian, West Bengal University of Technology, Kolkata. She holds a Masters Degree in Library and Information Sciences from the Jadavpur University, Kolkata and is my friend, philosopher and guide in the mysterious world of catalogueing and MARC formats.

Together we are attempting to migrate the University's nascent Central Library to Koha from a traditional paper-based system.

Eagerly awaiting your responses.

Hello All

I am Joseph Coelho SJ, a promoter of Free/Libre Open Source Software. I was looking for a good Integrated Library System and was glad to have found Koha. I am at present involved in the computerisation of the De Nobili College Library in Pune, India. Hopefully it will be done in six months time. I have installed Koha 2.2.2b on Windows 98. I will be glad to keep in touch with others using Koha in India.

Hello, I am given the maintenance of koha here, at Chinmaya Institute of Technology, Kerala. We have Koha version 2.2 on Centos 4.1/X 64. We have got some problems with this new version of koha. Would you be considerate to help me solving the problems. Here i am listing two problems. 1> The items are displayed in biblioitems but when it is edited the whole row disappears.While editing the biblioitems the edited result is not shown.The result is being submitted and it is present but can't view it. 2> Item barcodes 1 to 99 is present in the database but can't take the record. When searched using barcode, the search result is obtained as no result found.100 onwards there is no problem.we tried using 001 to 099 but no use.

Hello India KIG members,

I have installed Koha 2.2.5. It will be in testing phase now. This is a first attempt to computerise all library records in my college. (About myself) I am Kileen J Mahajan , Lecturer in Electronics at Narmada College of Science and Commerce, BHARUCH, Gujarat. I will keep you all updated with the progress. Its rightly mentioned on top - we ust get together to promote Koha. I am for it.

regards

kileen