Koha World Map

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In January 2010, Marshall Breeding (Director for Innovative Technology and Research of Vanderbilt University Library and Editor of Library Technology Guides) announced in the “Map of Koha libraries worldwide” Koha mailing list thread - http://old.nabble.com/Map-of-Koha-libraries-worldwide-td27030268.html - that he has created the following world map of libraries that use Koha:

Map of Libraries: Koha ILS sites http://www.librarytechnology.org/map.pl?ILS=Koha

LibLime also had (and has) another world map with a (less complete) list of Libraries that use Koha:

Who's using Koha? — LibLime http://www.liblime.com/products/koha/koha-map/whos-using-koha

There's also a page with a list (in table form) in this same wiki, of Libraries that use Koha:

Koha Users Around the World [Koha Developer Wiki] http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=kohausers&s

So, the information below is only kept here for historical purposes (until someone else decides it's better to just delete it).

Hi folks, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Joshua Ferraro, the lead developer for LibLime (http://liblime.com), an Athens, OH software company that supports open-source software in libraries. I'm also the release manager for Koha, an open-source library automation system. Please feel free to drop me an email anytime <jmf at liblime dot com> or hop on IRC and say hello (I troll irc.freenode.net #code4lib and irc.katipo.co.nz #koha all hours of the day and night, my nick is 'kados' ).

The Koha project exists to support and maintain the Koha open-source library automation system. Because the system is open-source, any library can download and use the system for free. The project doesn't currently have a registration system to collect information on libraries using the system, so we have no way of knowing how many users are using Koha or where they are.

(we actually did have a previous Koha World Map, but it required people to send an email to the project, and required someone to add them manually, and it didn't include a nice map API like Google's: http://old.koha.org/about/map/)

The goal of this “Koha World Map” is to create a registration system where libraries all over the world can identify themselves as users of the Koha system.

This registration system should allow the following:

• view a google map with locations of Koha users indicated
• display detailed information about each library
• search for a Koha library using criteria such as “library type”, “geography”, “size of collection”
• allow anyone to add their library along with information about their library
• the system should email the Koha list every time someone adds their information ( there should be an approval mechanism whereby an administrator can approve the post to avoid spam, etc.)
• provide a management interface for editing other user's posts and cleaning up spam, etc.

Here's an example of a well-implemented world-wide map that uses Google's API. It tracks earthquakes:

http://earthquakes.tafoni.net/

• 100% free software – we're open-source nuts and won't settle for anything less than 100% free.
• 100% Web-based – the whole system, including management interface, should be web-based
• LAMP – the system myst be capable of running on Linux, Apache, MySQL, and one of the fast-prototyping scripting languages (Perl is preferred, but PHP or Python is OK too).
• Heavy on Documentation. This may just be a class for you, but we'll have to maintain this code for years. Please write very good documentation.