A Holiday Present

We had our usual weekly Koha Task Force meeting today. And while we still have some outstanding issues, this week we were able to check some items off the list.

1. New Patrons are now being limited to only five items for check-out. (At first, it was unlimited charges.)
2. Patrons are now limited to only five movie DVD's. (At first it was unlimited)
3. Receipts for check-outs are now available. (For the first couple of days, we were unable to get any.) We still need to tweak them but much better.
4. We now have items/holdings attached to bibrecords for on-order material. This was a big problem for us. Now patrons/staff are able to place holds for these titles.
5. Authorities are working!! This is a big one. Cathi assured me that new authorities were being added to the catalog when we first migrated to Koha however that hasn't been the case for the past two weeks. The catalogers have been tearing our their hair in frustration and the reference staff has wondered why new books haven't come out of Technical Services. Today, we finally have resolved this problem.
6. It looks like discarding is working as it should though not as we want it to. If we delete the last item/holding attached to a bib record the bib is not deleted as well. We must delete that bib record manually. We don't understand why it takes awhile for this to show up in the catalog. Does it have to do with the zebra indexing?

So, this week's accomplishments were an outstanding holiday present to Cathi and me. Now we have three days off from work... no thinking about Koha!

Jackie

Koha - 2nd week

Look! It's now official... we made the news services Arcadia Public Library Goes Live With Koha.

We still have some issues to iron out, but we are making progress. As with the last post, many of the problems we face are not knowing that what we put in the initial profile for the "test" system may not act as we really want it to in the "live" system. For instance, we "thought" we had set up "Circulation and Fine Rules" correctly only to realize that the system wasn't limiting DVD charges to 5 per patron for seven days. After trying a few combinations, we now have that working correctly. We are a single library so thought using the "default" settings that we'd created was correct, but we actually needed to create settings and select the configuration our specific library.

We have a problem with adding new bibliographic records from the Marc Import. It looks like Koha doesn't automatically attach a holding or item to the new records so our patrons (and staff) haven't been able to place holds on newly purchased material until they are cataloged. We have come up with a work around for this, at least until this issue is considered by development for an enhancement, by using MarcEdit to add the necessary 952 fields (a, b, c, y) to the Marc Import file before it is staged so that the temporary item record is created when the new bib record is imported into the catalog.

Authority records are not showing up in the catalog. Cathi has been downloading files from Technical Services but these records are showing as available authorities when the catalogers need them. We have a ticket in for this with our consultant team, ByWater Solutions.

The most troubling problem is that titles that were migrated aren't always searchable in the catalog and then in most cases reappear after the item is checked in even though it isn't actually checked out. This is puzzling to us. We know that a small percentage of our titles didn't migrate correctly from our old system, SirsiDynix Symphony, for one reason or another. For example the item barcodes that ended with a $ didn't migrate over correctly--the trailing $ was omitted. We are able to add the $ to the barcodes and this corrects the problem. This is an issue that we are fixing as the items turn up on a one-by-one basis.

I give kudos to the staff. Luckily the Christmas school vacation days are a slower time for the Library; it allows us to work out some of the kinks with the system. And while the staff continue to pass on problems/issues to Cathi and myself, they are still positive about the system.

Jackie

The First Week

Well, now it's Friday. We have been on Koha since Monday morning. The consensus is that our migration has gone very well. Our patrons seem to be taking the change in stride. Most of their issues have been not being able to login because of a password/PIN issue (PINs that start with a zero didn't migrate over correctly.) Once we reset their PIN they have found their way around the site with very little staff intervention. Several patrons have commented that they like the new format and features.

Staff are feeling their way along, many are wishing they'd spent more time "playing" with it when they had the chance, but have adapted quickly and their comfort zone expands daily.

We have found that there are 3 levels of issues - Discovery, Nuisance, and Problems.

1. Discovery issues are nothing more than the staff finding their rhythm and when there is more than one way to do something deciding which way is most natural for each person.
2. Nuisance issues are things like the "0" as the preceding digit in a password and the trailing "$" in an item barcode which didn't migrate to Koha in an orderly fashion. Both of which we've learned what we need to do to resolve the issue on a one-by-one basis. This too is becoming a familiar routine.
3. The Problem issues are those things we will rely upon ByWater Solutions to fix or educate us on, and there aren't many of those. But we've even found ways to cope with most of them in the short term. There are other problem issues that we created for ourselves. Staff error at work! These had to do with the marc imports and not setting the instructions for the loads correctly. For a while the catalogers thought they were losing their minds. Bibs and items were disappearing right and left! They would catalog material and the next day the titles were gone. We could appreciate their concern. We believe this is all under control now.*

The bottom line is there are few complaints and that makes any change easier to adjust to.

We thank ByWater Solutions for their excellent job and for the pleasantly surprising level of support we have received so far. And I want to thank Cathi Wiggins, our Information Systems Specialist for all the long hours she has given and her commitment to the Arcadia Public Library.

*(Most of this message was composed by Cathi in an email. She came up with the three levels of problems.)

Jackie

Go Live!!!!

Arcadia Public Library's new OPAC is up and running! The Library Board of Trustee's chose the name "Arcadia Searchlight" for our catalog.

Are you curious? Check-out our new catalog at

http://catalog.ci.arcadia.ca.us/ or by linking through our website.

Thanks to all the hard work of Cathi Wiggins (the Library's IT support specialist), the ByWater Solutions team, and the City of Arcadia's Information System's Staff, we are able to move ahead.

Go Live Day (minus one)

Tomorrow we go live with Koha. On Saturday evening, after we closed at 6:00 pm, Cathi migrated the last of our circulation transactions from Symphony and placed them in a file(s) so that ByWater Solutions could install them into our new catalog on late Saturday and all day on Sunday. We appreciate that our consultants are willing to work on the weekend, allowing us to stay open to the public.

The staff has been practicing the new system, publicity is out, and we feel ready for the new system. Not everything is perfect yet. The OPAC needs some tweaking, the authorities are not perfect, the receipt printers are spewing too much paper, and the Syndetics book covers are not consistent however none of these problems will hold us back from our new system.

Wish us luck!

Jackie

Talking Points

On Monday, December 13, 2010, we go live with our new Koha catalog. Cathi, our IT Specialist, is putting in all sorts of extra hours trying to resolve problems with our vendor, ByWater Solutions. It is nothing to receive an email from her at 2:30 am! I think she is eating, drinking, sleeping and dreaming Koha!

I have been on vacation for the past few weeks and was surprised with all that has been accomplished in my absence. With the help of the Koha Task Force, our new OPAC has been designed, a new name for our catalog has been chosen, and a new logo developed.

Staff has worked on a list of talking points so that we can present a positive position to our patrons:

Why We Like The New Library Catalog!
• It’s simple! The new catalog offers simplified searching. Misspelled or mistyped words won’t end your search!

• You can suggest new titles for the Library to purchase right from the Catalog.

• You can add items to a personal, private list. This could be used for keeping track of books you’ve read or want to read.

• You can place your own comments or reviews for items in the Catalog.

• You can add tags (personally meaningful terms) to items in the Catalog.

• You can set up an RSS feed and be notified when new items are available by authors or about subjects you select.

• You can place requests on different items at one time without having to retype your Library card number!

• You can receive notices by e-mail and decide for yourself when you want to receive them!

• Book reviews are available right from the Catalog.

• You can browse the shelf virtually by looking for other books in the same area.

• It features book lists including new books for adult, teen and children, DVDs and Best Sellers.


Jackie

T Minus Three Weeks

Six months ago when we began this journey the "go live" day seemed so far off...and now here we are less than a month away and there still seems so much to do and so much to learn. Recently I have been focusing on customization on two different levels--the OPAC and the Circulation notices, slips, and receipts--and how 3rd party products and services interface with Koha--OCLC, Baker & Taylor, 3M, Envisionware, and Unique Management Services.

The OPAC customizing involved putting our name and logo in a banner on the top, adding navigation tabs below the banner linking to our Library Home Page, eResources, Hours & Location, and Contact Us pages as well as Help. I've also been experimenting

with different content in the main area of the OPAC page and the left navigation sidebar. The Koha Task Force has browsed and studied other Koha sites, refining and defining what we'd like our OPAC to look like. I think I've come pretty close to the committee's initial ideas in my first pass, but certainly the customizing is not complete and may always be somewhat of a work in process as new lists and new titles and new services become available and deserve "face time" on the OPAC home page. When we go live there will be a different banner, one that will have the new name of the Catalog, but the new name is still being kept a secret and the new banner is not yet completed.

The customizing of the notices, slips and receipts was mostly just a lot of cut and paste from our current notices, as well as a lot of cutting out excess information from the delivered slip files that we don't need in our finished product. I haven't been able to print these yet to make sure I haven't left anything out or cut too much, but that will follow in the next day or two.

I am still struggling with understanding how MARC imports and Authority imports files from OCLC and B&T work. I have spent time with Tech Services staging MARC files and managing MARC records, but the new items are not showing up in the catalog. We are obviously still missing a critical step. As for the Authority imports, we haven't yet tried to import new data files, but the authorities from our current system haven't even been linked with the bib records in Koha yet so we've got an incomplete picture of how they work on every level. Hopefully this will be an issue that I will be able to get a better handle on early next week.

This week I'm focusing on those services that involve three other 3rd party vendors--3M for our self check stations, Envisionware for our PCReservation and LPT:One, and Unique Management Services for our Account Collections. Today's conference call with UMS was enlightening--while they apparently are considered completely compatible with Koha, the only customers they have are on the Harley version of Koha. We will once again be blazing new trails with our version of Koha by creating reports and support fields to deliver valid data to UMS. Both 3M and Envisionware products use the SIP service to validate patron information against the database. The SIP service will be started on the Linux server this week so that I can test these other two services to make sure we're ready for prime time before we go live.

We will be closing the Symphony Catalog on November 24th for the final time. There will be no more cataloging or tech activities in Symphony after the Thanksgiving holiday. I will be running the Bibs/Item and Authority scripts once again on Wednesday night to capture all the current data in Symphony. I will then upload those files to ByWater Solutions so that over the weekend the data may be imported into the clean, empty databases of our "real" catalog. Our test catalog will no longer be available. Going forward, after the holiday weekend, all new items will be entered directly into the "real" catalog, with these new items being held in Tech Services until December 13th when we finally unveil our new Koha Catalog.

The count down has begun...

Cathi

Keeping Busy, Keeping Up

Just a quick update on some of the things I've been doing to keep busy since my last post:

I ran another set of scripts against the Symphony databases to retrieve all the holds, charges, bills, and authorities data. Some of the files that were created were pretty large so it took awhile to upload them to the ByWater Solutions server. Brendan has spent the last week or so preparing a good portion of this data for import onto our server.

I have also been doing some additional configuration in our Koha system to setup a custom framework for Catalogers so that only the MARC fields they use will be in the first tab on the "Add a MARC record" screen; to add calendar entries, item types, authorized values, circulation fines and rules, and patron attribute types; and experimenting with Notices and Reports.

Most recently I have been in conversations with City IT, Brendan at ByWater, as well as Jackie and David Dolim on what our options are for a browser on the staff stations to use with the Koha Staff Client. There are compatibility "bugs" with Internet Explorer and Koha in regards to receipt printing in the Circulation module, managing baskets in the Acquisitions module, saving new subscriptions in the Serials module, viewing the Help files in general, and possibly more that we've yet to discover--thus making IE an unusable browser with the Staff Client. I was exploring using Chrome, but there appears to be a receipt printing issue with that browser as well. Looks like we'll be using Firefox as our browser on the staff stations. Because IE is the "City sanctioned browser", and it is tied in with our web filtering, web statistics, automatic software updates, etc., we will be installing Firefox only on staff stations and restricting it to only access the URL for our Koha Staff Client. At this point it looks like both the staff and public stations will continue to use Internet Explorer as the browser to access the OPAC.

There is a lot of work to setting up a new ILS....more than I think we remembered from our last migration from Taos to Unicorn, but it is at the same time very exciting to be part of the "shaping" process and to watch it evolve.

Cathi

Stressing "Positive" Points

The Koha Task Force was asked to come up with some positive "selling" points for our new Koha library catalog (or OPAC). We know that there may be some people that are quite content with our current catalog and may be disappointed with a change; but having a script to follow will assist the staff in highlighting the new features to the public:

• It's simplicity! The new catalog offers simple, clear searching. The "fuzzy searching" capability allows misspelled words not to hamper the search.



• Koha allows the Library to implement new features to better serve the public and staff.



• Suggestions for Library purchase are available right from the catalog.



• Expanded searches are possible, with simple and clear instructions.



• Amazon reviews are available.



• You can add items to a personal, private list. This could be used for keeping track of books you've read, or want to read...whatever!



• You can place comments, or reviews for items in the catalog.



• Adding tags (personally meaningful terms) can be added to material in the catalog.



• You can set up an RSS feed to be notified when new items arrive at the Library that relate to your interest(s) or favorite authors.



• You can place all of your holds at one time... fast, fast, fast!



• You can receive notices by email ... and you can decide when you want to receive them.

We hope to use these points for publicity and for our in-house explanation of the system.

Jackie

Questions and Answers

For the past few weeks we have been practicing with Koha, as time allows. We now have a copy of our patron database available for testing. Our Circulation Dept. really wanted this information installed. They felt that practicing on a real database made all the difference... rather than just a few patron records that we added during training.

During the training we realized that we would need another web browser to take advantage of all the neat Koha features available for staff. It makes sense that most of the development was made for open source browsers... Koha is open source. The City of Arcadia uses Internet Explorer exclusively and were none too pleased when we wanted to add either Chrome or Firefox to staff stations. This issue has not been truly resolved but I'm sure we will come up with a compromise. Cathi's thought is that the new browser is an extension of our library application software and that she, as the Library IT person, would be responsible for it. And the City's IT staff would handle the software used citywide.

Another problem that has come up is with our enriched content. We currently have a subscription with Syndetics Solutions for book covers, reviews, and the bestseller lists on our SirsiDynix ILS. Syndetics Solutions were more than willing to transfer the subscription over to Koha. However the titles with book covers are not always the same in both system. I've been going back and forth from system to system to see what titles don't have matching covers. I've contacted both Syndetics Solutions and ByWater Solutions so hopefully one of the "Solutions" will resolve the issue.

Jackie

Catalog Naming Contest

During our recent Koha Task Force meeting, Children's Librarian Heather Cousin came up with the idea of having our patrons name our OPAC. This idea was quickly approved by other members of the Task Force. We hope that this will bring excitement and attention to our new catalog.


Entry forms will be available at any of our public service desks and on the Arcadia Public Library's website. These entry forms can be turned in to the "Suggestions" box at the Front Desk or from the form online. Posters, press releases, and special mention of this contest will be publicized throughout the community.


Each contestant needs to have a valid Arcadia Public Library Card (with the number written on the form,) to be eligible. Patrons can enter as many times as they like. The deadline for submission is Tuesday, November 16, 2010. The winning entry will be chosen by the Arcadia Public Library Board of Trustees at their monthly meeting on Thursday, November 18. Besides the honor of naming our catalog, the winner will also receive a cool, special prize.


The winner will be announced on Monday, December 13, 2010, our Koha "go live" date!

Jackie

Staff Comments

For the most part, I received positive comments from the library staff on our training last week. They appreciated the additional functionality of the OPAC... including patron comments, tags, creating lists, and the ability to rss a search for new items as acquired by the Library. Many other staff functions will reduce time and effort.

• There were some comments that need addressing. Not everyone received OPAC training. I had left this up to each supervisor to decide what training was needed by each staff member. Now I'm finding out that they all could have really used this training.


• There is concern on how certain staffers will transition to Koha. The learning curve for some will be bigger than for others.


• Learning that how we currently do tasks in Symphony will be very different in Koha. And this is still a big question. Staff is eager to explore the system and want our own patron database available for practice...not just creating new patrons to play with.


• Searching the catalog has brought unexpected results for staff. At this point I don't know if it's that we are missing the authorites or if the system isn't set up for a more sophisticated searches. For instance, a librarian typed in: ti,phr=the end thinking that she would be searching by title phrase, but she got 250 results, and it is clear that the search was not what she had expected. Another librarian wanted a "browse" feature for searching, this would be helpful if you only know a couple of words of a title and then you can select from a list. Also, it would be helpful to sort the search results when logged on as staff.


• Reports. Staff is concerned about running the reports that they need. (Brendan from ByWater Solutions promised to set up some reports if we get stuck, so I'm not too concerned about this.) I think with practice, we will get the hang of it. Since we don't have our patron database yet, it is difficult to explore reports that will help us with statistics.


• My big complaint is that the "due date" is shown right in the detail record on the OPAC. I would "prefer" that the system just say it was "checked out" and leave it at that so patrons aren't confused when it still isn't available to check out on that date because of existing holds that aren't accounted for in the "due date". However, the Reference and Children's Librarians were fine with the date showing. So, I'm going to let this one go.

Jackie

3 Days of Training

We started our training on Monday, Oct 4. We spent the first day working on administrative issues. Cathi, Reference Librarian David Dolim, City IT staff member Alan Chow, and myself attended this training. Brendan Gallagher from ByWater Solutions was our patient trainer. We worked on patron and item types, patron attributes, authorized values, and setting permissions for staff. Initially those attending were set as "superlibrarians" meaning they can do everything with the system, we also discussed setting up the permissions for rest of the staff. We talked about how we would handle power and/or hardware failures, backing up data, and Linux commands. The morning went by quickly... I wished I had time to practice what I had learned but then in the afternoon, it was on to writing Reports. Several additional staff members attended that session. We learned about the wizard procedure for creating reports in six steps and then using the already created SQL Reports. [This was a little bit confusing at this time since our patron database has not been added yet.] Some of the reports we decided to run didn't give us the expected results.

On Tuesday, Oct. 5, we had training for the Technical Services staff. There were many questions... what we do now and how will that work with Koha. In fact having procedures accomplished in Symphony handled differently in Koha were stumbling blocks for all sections of the Library. Things will need to change and change is hard! The catalogers were dissappointed with the authorities in Koha. The system doesn't alert the staff if an authority is new, so to be safe they need to check each one. This will add to their cataloging time (more steps in the process.) We found out that improving the authorities is in development however it will take some time and money to work it all out. We talked about adding bibliographic records to the database but didn't actually try it. (A procedure will need to be set up.) We then checked out the Acquisitions module. We found out that this is not useful to us in its current iteration since we are not able to order directly from the system so we would need to enter the bibliographic information in both the catalog and the acquisition module. We will use it for patron purchase recommendations. (Maybe in the future releases we will be able to use this module. (Please note, that we don't use an Acquisitions module now so we aren't losing anything.) Our final module explored on Tuesday was Serials. This will take some time to set up but will be very useful. Currently we have an excel spreadsheet for check-in but soon we will have the ability to be alerted for items to claim.

We held Wednesday's training in our Tech Center. We were closed to the public so we could devote our time and attention to training. The morning session covered Circulation. We all added patrons to the database, checked out

to them, placed holds, and then discharged the items. The issue of partial payments not being a clear cut procedure was discussed. Our Circulation Supervisor Andre Gonzalez will be devising a standard procedure for our staff to follow. We then went to the Circulation Desk to make sure that our scanners and receipt printers would work with Koha. (A little tweaking is needed with the receipts so we don't waste paper; we think that we will need to use different printer drivers.) The afternoon was devoted to the OPAC and searching the catalog as a staff member. We liked many of the features of the OPAC... adding comments, tagging, RSS feeds, the possibility of adding a link to New DVDs, etc. that will change as we add new titles.

I was pleased that staff asked so many questions during the training. Now we need to practice so we feel comfortable with the system. We are scheduled to go live with Koha on Monday, Dec. 13.

Jackie

Time Passes Quickly

Well I know that I'm getting older since time is just whizzing by. Next week is our Koha training!! The previous blog talked about our arrangements. I had asked Brendan from ByWater Solutions how we should prepare for the training. He suggested:

• Have 15 marcfiles from OCLC that we could use to practice uploading to Koha.
• Bring a few serials from the shelves that can be used
• Have your staff create their own patrons
• Bring a copy of our printer paper if we do our own label printing
• Have a look at: the Koha Wiki to get familiar with finding the Reports section and the JQuery section
• Know how to find the Koha manual.

And so, at our latest Koha Task Force meeting we discussed the assignments so we would be ready to go. I'm hoping that staff will do a little exploring ahead of the training.

We do have several questions to ask during our training.

• Do we have the option of not migrating over the records of material "Lost and Paid"?
  
  
• We know that the status text can be changed, but we haven't decided the ideal terms. With SirsiDynix we were limited in what we could use... "available" "material has been checked out" "lost" "available soon". We are excited to explore this added functionality. Is there a status for just returned material? And if so, does it automatically revert to another status after 24 hours when the item is on the shelf again?
  
  
• At the present time, the copy order is random. And, are we able to delete the copy number for items in the OPAC?


• Will some of the items be automatically shadowed in the OPAC? For example: lost, repair, discards-- or is this something we need to decide to do?


• During the training, will staff learn search strategies using the staff side, not just the OPAC? And, will this training be held on Wednesday with our OPAC training?

I'm hoping that staff will come to the training next week with all their questions. This is our opportunity for clarification.

Jackie

Training Prep

On Thursday, September 16, the Library Board of Trustees gave the staff permission to close on Wednesday, October 6 for one day of the training on our new ILS. We will have training on Monday, October 4th to Wednesday, October 6th. Below is our schedule:

• Monday, Oct. 4 - Conference Room, 9 am - 4 pm. Koha Administration, Server Administration and Reports.
• Tuesday, Oct. 5 - Conference Room, 9 am - 4 pm. Cataloging, Acquisitions, and Serials.
• Wednesday, Oct. 6 - Tech Center, 9am - 4 pm. Circulation and OPAC

We chose the Conference Room for the smaller training sessions since we can get 8 laptops around the table, plus there is a projector and screen so that the instructor's examples will be seen by all.

The Tech Center has 27 workstations so that all of the staff can be trained at once for these more heavily used modules.

Now, we need to inform the public on our closure. Library Services Manager, Darlene Bradley, sent out a press release. Cathi placed a blurb on our website and posters and handouts are being designed.

In anticipation of this closure we set our current ILS system to bypass October 6th as a due date for any materials...and we have planned a pizza lunch for all staff on the day we are closed.

Jackie

Patron Privacy

One of the features available to our patrons with Koha is "My Reading History" to keep track of the items that they have previously checked out. See the Koha 3.2 OPAC Demo Video by Nicole Engard. On the surface this feature is very convenient for patrons that can't remember if they have read all of the Lee Child's or Jeffrey Deaver novels... or whatever. (My husband is always saying that he should keep a list of read books because I often bring home a title that he's already read but he doesn't realize it until he's well into it.)

However, staff has concerns about holding on to patrons' borrowing history since we are committed to protecting their privacy. We are bound by the Public Records Act, California Govt Code Section 6267 Our Director, Carolyn Garner-Reagan, queried library law expert Mary Minow about our concern. "The law forbids libraries to disclose circulation and registration info, unless they have patron consent. This type of feature sounds like circulation info. So long it's not disclosed to anyone without patron consent or court order, it's probably ok." In her opinion this feature should not be turned on by default. It should be offered to those who are informed about who has access and that the Library should receive patrons' explicit consent to keep and disclose the lists. Mary also said in her email "this does not constitute legal advice."

Would it be too easy for law enforcement to access these records if we went this route? We wouldn't want to take that chance... especially if a patron didn't realize that we were holding on to this information. We understand that a patron must login to their own account to have access to their borrowing history but would law enforcement have easier access to this information?

We talked to Brendan, from ByWater Solutions, concerning this feature and whether many libraries are using it. He understood our concern and said it was a policy decision -- some libraries allowed the feature and others didn't.

An option is to take advantage of the personal "lists" that patrons can create once they login to their account. These lists could be about anything... from material on a certain subject, author, or even books they have read. These lists are set up by the patron -- not the Library holding on to their borrowing history. This might be an option. However, would they be subject to California's confidentiality laws?

Our current system, SirsiDynix's Symphony, allows for favorite authors or subjects to be kept on the patron's account so that a patron is notified when a new title by that author is ordered. We opted to turn this feature off since it took up too much room on our server.

The jury is still out on how we will proceed. We have some time to ponder the issues before turning the feature on or off. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Jackie

Viewing Our Catalog

Last week ByWater Solutions staff installed Koha to our server. After that the item records were imported on to the server! We were excited about the process and discussed this project update at our Koha Task Force meeting on Thursday, September 16. All members are now checking for any problems / questions that arise from doing random searches.

Initially we tried a search for a title that was unique to our collection. We wondered why that when we did the search the subtitle didn't show on the bibliographic record. "Arcadia: where ranch and city meet." Cathi, upon further investigation finding that only the title was displaying and not the subtitle on all the records, contacted Brendan. He explained that this was the default settings and could be changed by adding a subtitles rule to the "Keyword to MARC" mapping. Cathi added the subtitle rule under Koha Administration: the keyword to MARC mapping section (a rule needs to be created that matches the subtitle to 245 subfield b). We were a bit apprehensive to make changes right away, but with Brendan's encouragement, (Brendan said "Feel free to do anything you want to do. I'm not going to hold you back- and if it doesn't make sense-ask me-of if you get stuck we're here. This should give you a good chance to play and break :-)" ) Cathi went into the software and was able to remedy our subtitle problem. She was pleased to make her first edit.

Towards the end of the week, Cathi ran a job on the Symphony server to create flat files of the patron database. On Friday, September 17 she then FTP'd these files to the ByWater Solutions server so that Brendan could work on converting it to a format that can be uploaded into our Koha ILS. We'll be interested to see how that turns out too.

In the meantime we continue to work on deleting missing items, changing patron codes, and making other "tweaks" to our current Symphony database. Before we go "live" on Monday, December 13, our data will be migrated again to Koha to reflect these changes that we are making to the original records.

Jackie

Gathering Data for the New Server

Last week I ran the MARC export reports to create the first set of "item record" files to be sent to ByWater Solutions (BWS). We have a total of 160,745 records, so I configured the report to include 50,000 records in each of 3 files and the remaining 10,745 records in the fourth. I clicked the check boxes to include the "999 holdings tags", the "local and junk tags" and to export the Symphony catalog key to MARC tag oo1". The files were very large, 190 mb in total, but they are the bibliographic records for every item in our catalog.

This week, using PSFTP (PuTTY's secure FTP utility) on my workstation and the remote connection instructions from Brendan, I was able to "put" (that is the Linux command to copy files from my local location to a remote location) all the files into a folder on a BWS server. BWS will convert the data into a format that is usable in Koha and then will import that new data format onto our server.

In the mean time, BWS has connected remotely to our new server and installed the remaining components for Debian server and the Koha software. It is an empty shell at the moment, without any profiles, properties, patron data or item records, but it is exciting to watch each step of this project unfold.

Cathi

The New Debian Server

In our conference call on August 19th Brendan gave me some pointers about the installation that I would be doing of the Debian 'Lenny' Linux software onto the new server. He said it would be fairly straight forward...and parts of it were and other parts of it weren't.

Before I left on vacation I configured the server with a static IP, a single partition, and no printers or email--just the base system. I needed only the first DVD of the 5-DVD set that is the full 'Lenny' package. This was luckily a "bootable" DVD since there was absolutely nothing installed on our new Dell server up to this point. Once the Debian software screen came up I clicked on "Installation" and the procedure was pretty automatic, a standard "installation" routine...answering the questions, selecting options, and entering the requested information. It is a good idea to have this information handy prior to the installation:

• the IP that is to be used,
• the name of the domain,
• a username/password for an alternate login to the default "ROOT" login.

The first "glitch" in the installation was when I received an error message that there were "missing non-free firmware files". I Googled this message and discovered that this version of Debian no longer delivers all the network card drivers bundled into it. I then Googled the file name I needed--bnx2-09-4.0.5.fw--and found a site that offered it "free" and downloaded it to my thumb drive. This allowed me to complete the installation by selecting "load file from external device", which is an option that obviously needed to be included in the installation since it no longer provides everything to do a successful build.

The second "glitch" I came across was after the installation completed successfully when the default monitor resolutions was too high for the desktop display. After the system would load, the monitor would go blank and the message "Can't display in this video mode" would appear. I had to connect the server to our portable projector to see the GUI desktop. After a little research I found that I could break out of the GUI desktop by pressing ALT-CTRL-F1. This started a new shell in the command screen with the command prompt. I reset the display to VT100 terminal emulator and I could see everything on my monitor once again.

Also, I had problems seeing the new server on the network and seeing the rest of the network from the new server. I wasn't able to successfully PING another IP or to PING the IP of this server from my other servers. I discovered that the network cable had been put into the secondary NIC port rather than the primary port. Once I switched the cable to the other port then everything connected and PING-ed and worked very well.

When I returned from vacation I needed to finish my part of the installation and to do that I needed to be at the command prompt to perform the last set of tasks. The first two tasks: "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" instruct the server to access a "mirror" of the software on the Internet and to pull down the latest update and upgrade of the loaded components. The final task was to load "openssh" which would allow BWS to make a secure remote connection to our server. After a little experimenting to discover the exact name of the application I needed, I ran "apt-get install openssh-server" and the software installed successfully.

I installed PuTTY on my Windows workstation so that I also could connect "remotely" to the new server to test it. It is free software, available on the Internet, very easy to install and fairly easy to use. It opens a terminal emulation box very similar to a Windows command box, which is almost the same as being on the server itself.

On September 7 I sent Brendan (ByWater Solutions) the login information for our network and he was able to access our Host server (where the Symphony software resides) and to PING the Debian server. With the installation completed and "openssh" installed he is also able to connect to the Debian server remotely.

So....our server is up and running and ready for ByWater Solutions to log into to complete the configuration of Debian and the installation of Koha.

Cathi

Moving Slowly

As mentioned earlier, our Koha Task Force is meeting weekly on Thursday afternoons from 1:30 to 2:30. It has taken us three meetings to get through a review of all our current (SirsiDynix Symphony) policies. Each Task Force member was given a stack of policies to review before the meetings.

I personally thought that we could go through all of these policies in an hour... no, this wasn't the case. As we worked through each list there was always a question on why did we have this?, is anyone still using that? And, can we delete it? It was surprising to me that I couldn't answer all the questions asked since I was there from the beginning of our SirsiDynix experience. I guess as time goes by staff uses what they need and nothing more.

As we reviewed the policies, we thought... "I wonder if Koha will do this?" (an example: we wanted to have the ILS automatically charge a fee to a patron's record when a hold was available for check out. We never could get this to work the way "we" wanted with SirsiDynix) so we have started making a list of questions to ask Brendan during our next conference call.

Once we went through each policy list, either Cathi or myself ran reports to see if we had items or patrons in the policy name that we decided to delete. These reports were made available to the members. Items and Users were moved or deleted. Staff is also searching for material that has been marked "Missing" in the database. There's no use moving over material that we no longer have on our shelves. Hopefully we will soon have a sleek database ready to migrate to Koha.
Jackie

Following a Timeline

Last week, Lori Ayre placed a timeline document on Open Source - Open Libraries which we quickly read and then distributed the link to the Task Force. It gave an example of what tasks were involved with migrating to Koha... and what needs to be done when. The timeline goes from 13 weeks out to the "Go Live Day." This document is very helpful and will make it easier to track our progress...or lack of it.

On Thursday, August 19, we had a conference call with Brendan from ByWater Solutions. Those involved were: Carolyn Garner-Reagan (our director), Lori Ayre (Open Source - Open Libraries), Cathi and Jackie. Items discussed included:

• Comparison between Koha and Evergreen - This is another document on Lori's site. We were especially interested in OCLC and Envisionware since we use both of these products. Brendan explained that using the OCLC Connexion client with Koha is very similar to the process we are using with Symphony and we will learn how to do Marc Importing during our training. Compatibility between Koha and Envisionware was confirmed as well, since it is SIP2 compliant. So we should be okay with our 3rd party vendors.


• Since our Task Force is going through policies, we asked about item status. Currently, when a title is in Technical Services for cataloging or on order, the system says it's available, such as "Available in On-Order" which isn't really available. This really confuses our patrons. We wanted to make sure that we can change the wording, if not the status in Koha. Brendan provided some screenshot examples and we are able to do this.


• We were concerned about closing on the "Day Before" going live. We already plan on being closed one of the training days and we felt that another closed day might be unaccceptable to our community. Brendan asked if we were open on Sundays (NO, we aren't) so, BWS will upload the final transactions into our new system on that day. Wow! Excellent customer service!


• We discussed the "Go Live" day. We initially thought the winter holiday period would be good. This won't work for ByWater Solutions. Brendan suggested December 6 or 13 or in mid-January would work better. After consulting with staff, we decided on Monday, December 13 to go live with Koha!


• At three weeks out from the Go Live Date--on Monday, November 22, the Symphony system will be frozen. A final export of the bibliographic database as it exists at that time will be migrated to the new Koha system. Technical Services will have some options...they can double catalog items in both systems so new records appear in both, or not do any new cataloging at all in either system, or catalog into the new system only and hold on to the materials until we go live. (I'm not sure yet what Tech Services will opt to do.) I'm for "just cataloging in the new system".


• We need to try to move all fines and fees to the new system. It had been suggested that we institute a "Fines Amnesty." We don't believe this can be approved during this financial climate.


• Cathi and Brendan discussed the Linux install. I'll let her write about her experience. Cathi will make sure that ByWater Solutions has access to the servers on the week of Sept. 7th.

Jackie

Buy-In

It is very important to have the staff excited about our new ILS and not to dread it. With that in mind, I emailed everyone about the process and that we want their cooperation. I asked that all staff be available for training day(s) and to practice what they learn afterwards. I hope that staff will work with the system for one hour a week - at least.

Then, I set up the Arcadia Koha Task Force. I asked the library supervisors to attend these weekly meetings. I felt that the supervisors could relay this information back to their teams. We began meeting on August 5 from 1:30 to 2:30. I have promised to keep these meetings short -- no longer than one hour. So far we have discussed:

• Project Update


• Training... should we close one of the three days? We decided that we would ask the Library Board for permission to close on the Circulation/OPAC training day, October 6. We plan on using the conference room for the Admin and Tech Services days, and the public Tech Center (with multiple workstations for Circ /OPAC day.


• A brief demo - Cathi gave a little overview of what was covered at our Koha System Admin Workshop.


• Assignments - Weeding, searching, and discards (we don't want to migrate items to a new system if they don't circulate); Review categories, locations, patron and item types, etc (we want to clean up and remove what we don't use); Questions to ask (staff questions that we need to ask ByWater Solutions.)

Jackie

Two Visits

After we notified SirsiDynix that we planned on migrating to a new system, we had a visit on July 6 from David Noll, our SirsiDynix Field Sales Consultant. Dave wanted to know why we intended on leaving Symphony. We discussed our current issues ... and the main problem was the cost of the product and how frustrated we are that the prices continue to climb. Dave informed us that 30% of the libraries that left SirsiDynix for open source software ended up with SirsiDynix again. He wanted us to know that they would welcome us back again if our project didn't work out. He said that they would try to help us if we had any concerns.

On July 26, Cathi and I attended an InfoPeople workshop on Koha for System Administrators. This workshop was held at our Library so it was very convenient. Too bad there were so few participants but it gave us time with the instructor, Brendan Gallagher, from ByWater Solutions. We were given a "hands on" view of Koha.

After the workshop we talked about training here for our Library. It looks like Brendan will be handling our training and that we will be using version 3.2 if Koha. We talked about dates for the training, and "potentially" settled on October 4,5,6. On Monday,October 4, we will discuss System Administration, Reporting and some Linux administration. Tuesday, October 5, will be focused on Technical Services--Cataloging, Acquisitions and Serials. On Wednesday, October 6, the sessions will cover Circulation & the OPAC.

Some of our Library staff are concerned about having the training so early... no time really to practice since they need to keep up with the steady stream of material arriving. However, Brendan advised that staff persons need to practice, use the new system and become familiar with it before going live so the transition will be more successful. After the training, weekly or bi-weekly calls from ByWater Solutions would be made to answer questions that arise. And, if there aren't questions then it was assumed that no one is using the test system...in that case then assignments will be passed out.

Jackie and Cathi

Moving Ahead

We were pleased that our new Koha project was passed by the City Council. This gave us the funds needed for a new server, the consultant's maintenance charge, and training on the new system.

Once July came we were all ready to start... we had the funds, the energy, and enthusiasm. We had discussed the needed server requirements with ByWater Solutions and then we asked our City IT staff to purchase one for us.

The requirements were:

• A Linux server: Debian is what most people use.
• Apache
• MySQL
• Perl
• Root on the server
• A reasonable level of comfort with the command line
• Database administration skills

This photo shows all five of our servers. Our new server is the third black box on the left on the lowest shelf. Cathi's workstation is on the other side of the room.

We received our new server this week from Dell. This included:

• PowerEdge T310 Chassis w/ up to 4 Hot-Plug Hard Drives & LCD Diagnostics
• 4GB Memory (2x2GB) 1333MHz Dual Ranked RDIMM, Memory for 1CPU Platform
• X3470 Xeon Processor, 2.93 GHz8M Cache, Turbo,HT PowerEdge T310
• HD Multi-Select
• No Operating System
• On-Board Dual Gigabit Network Adapter
• iDRAC6 Enterprise
• 16X DVD-ROM, SATA, Internal
• 146 GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5 Hotplug Hard Drive
• RAID 5 - Add-in PERC6i/H700 , 3-4 Hot Plug Hard Drives
• Power Supply- Redundant, 400W

Of course, various cables, monitor, and keyboard were included. Now we need the software. We will be working with ByWater Solutions staff on this.

Jackie

Why Koha, Why Now?

We have been interested in open source integrated library systems (ILS) for a couple of years now. Cathi and I attended the Open Source workshop held at Fullerton Public Library on August 13, 2009. Lori Ayre and Cheryl Gould presented the topic covering an overview of Open Source software... what was available and who is using it. One handout was particularly interesting. "Compare Your ILS Costs to an Open Source Library System (OSLS)." We were blown away with what would be "Free" with an OSLS. This included the initial purchase, additional modules, upgrades, test environment license, SIP licenses, and more. We left excited and decided to pursue our study of both the Koha and Evergreen ILS.

We signed up for Open Source - Open Libraries, and continued to watch the literature. We attended several webinars that Lori Ayre presented. It was at a couple of these webinars that I first heard of ByWater Solutions, our new consultant for the project. Nicole Engard from ByWater Solutions gave a video demo of the OPAC & Circulation, then a demo on Cataloging. The functionality seemed complete.

After learning about each system, we thought that Koha would be a better fit for a library our size. It's primarily for smaller libraries. It went live in 2000, so it's not a "new" product". There are over 1000 libraries running on Koha internationally. The only nerve wracking thing is that there aren't any other public libraries in Southern California using Koha. We aren't used to being trail blazers.

We were definitely concerned about the time it would take for us to be up and running. While Cathi is a seasoned IT professional, she only works at our Library 20 hours a week. We had been warned during workshops that while Open Source software and operating systems might be "free"; first-year costs of migration, conversion, configuration, adaptation, and installation, as well as support in the first year and beyond were not "free" and that we would need to cover these costs.

Cathi and I planned on migrating in the Fall of 2011 but then when our ILS costs continued to rise, we thought "why wait?" We started making plans to migrate in 2010-11. We contacted Nate Curulla at ByWater Solutions and set up a conference call with him and Ian Wells, to allow Cathi, Jackie, and a support tech from City of Arcadia IT staff to ask questions and air our concerns. We were amazed on what would be covered by the maintenance/support contract and at a fraction of the cost. ByWater Solutions would be doing the upgrades, which Cathi has been handling up to this point. We received a quote for migration/installation, training, and maintenance. At that time we merely needed cost estimates so we could add this new project to the City's Budget Proposal for approval by the City Council.

Nate mentioned that there "might" be a grant available with Open Source-Open Libraries to cover some of the costs. I quickly contacted our Library Director, Carolyn Garner-Reagan, at PLA in Oregon. She checked around and made some connections. It turned out that Lori Ayres was looking for a public library in Southern California that was ready to go with an Open Source ILS software....and that was us!

Jackie

We're On Our Way

Good News! We just signed our contract with ByWater Solutions for the migration, installation, training, and maintenance of our new Integrated Library System--Koha. But... Wait! Wait! Perhaps I need to tell you a bit about our Library first.

Arcadia Public Library is a small city library in the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County. At this time, we have 161,145 bibliographic records, 200,216 item records, and our annual circulation for 2009-10 was 729,000. We have 61, 025 borrowers, and a staff of 27 full-time and 16 part-time employees.

We have had three different ILS systems in the past 20+ years. We started with Inlex, migrated to DRA's Taos in 2000, and then migrated in 2002 to SirsiDynix's Unicorn. Our current version of Unicorn is Symphony 3.3.0. Our needs for an ILS are minimal. We are a one building library, so no branches. We have only the basic modules...cataloging, circulation, reports, OPAC, and collections. We had considered adding more modules (acquisitions and serials) but never could afford them and, in fact, we felt since we were so small we could do without them.

The past two years have been financially tough for public libraries; Arcadia Public Library is no exception. We had been asked by the City to either hold the line in costs or to reduce as much as feasible. We ended up freezing a couple of positions. Costs for our ILS maintenance, hardware, and content enhancement continued to climb, even though we pleaded poverty to SD. In 2008-09 that we started investigating open source software.

Our intention in writing this blog is to document our project, from the decision to go with Koha and every step along the way to our goal of "going live"...and perhaps beyond.

There will be at least two contributors to this blog, Jackie Faust-Moreno, Library Services Manager, and Cathi Wiggins, Information Systems Specialist. There maybe additional bloggers as we go along. Each blogger will give their name at the end of the blog so you know their perspective. Enjoy the story of our journey...

Jackie and Cathi