Koha Library System

Koha is the world's first free Open Source Library System. Made in New Zealand by the Horowhenua Library Trust and Katipo Communications Ltd, the Koha system is a full catalogue, opac, circulation, member management and acquisitions package.

To our knowledge Koha is used by public libraries, private collectors, university faculties, not for profit organisations, churches, schools and corporates.

Key features

* Simple clear interface for librarians and members (patrons) to search right from the front page.
* Customisable search - you choose which fields you want on your search forms when you set it up
* Reading lists for members - now you can find the name of that great book you read last year. NOTE: Our librarians and customers love this, but if you have concerns about keeping this information it could be disabled. This is really useful for helping homebound users get fresh books
* Full acquisitions including budgets and pricing information (including supplier and currency conversion), being kept so that you can see what you've ordered and received - so handy at end of year and audit time.
* Simple acquisitions for the smaller library
* Able to catalogue websites as items, or have them as links to existing biblios.

Koha is the fruit of a lot of volunteer labour, 2 years of hard work by the staff of Katipo Communications, and funding by Horowhenua Library Trust and other libraries.

Koha was developed in 1999 and the first library went live in January of 2000. Koha's code has been in production since then and is continuing to move towards higher levels of functionality and standards compliance, including embracing the international records and cataloguing standards MARC and Z39.50. Our development community has also grown and now includes contributors on four continents and ports in several languages.

This is one of the beauties of Free Software -- all of the people involved have reasons to work on a Library System. By working together they've been able to create something far more useful than anything they could have done on their own, while enjoying the benefits of all the work done before.

Why is all this feel-good philosophy here? Isn't this a 'Welcome to Koha' letter, you ask? Well, this stuff is part of our welcome. We're proud of the work that we've done so far. We're also excited about the improvements and additions that are just over the horizon. We want you to to get comfortable with Koha, to make it your own. In fact, we want you to be so comfortable with it that you're ready to make changes in it, and we want you to feel at home enough to contribute them back to the community.

We're a friendly bunch, we've got a users' mailing list where you should feel free to ask questions. Subscribe to list. If you'd rather ask questions in real time, you can use irc and meet with us on the #Koha-Support channel at irc.katipo.co.nz, port 6667.

I hope I've convinced you to join the project, but even if I haven't I hope that you'll enjoy the time you spend with our software.

Happy cataloguing!
Pat Eyler
Kaitiaki, Koha

Added:  Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Reviewer:  Charles Maguire
Score:
Related Link:  Koha Website
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