The document provides guidance on migrating an integrated library system (ILS) to Koha in 3 sentences or less:
It outlines basic principles for a smooth ILS migration with minimum disruption, discusses assembling the necessary tools and mapping data between systems, and provides tips for extracting, manipulating, importing, testing, and going live on the new Koha system.
Metric Abuse: Frequently Misused Metrics in OracleSteve Karam
This is a presentation I created for RMOUG 2014 which I was sadly unable to attend. However, I wanted to share it with the Oracle community so that you can learn a bit about metrics that are frequently cited, frequently demonized, and frequently misused. In this deck we will go through the steps to diagnose issues and what NOT to blame as you go through the process.
The topics and concepts discussed here were originally formed in a blog post on the OracleAlchemist.com site: http://www.oraclealchemist.com/news/these-arent-the-metrics-youre-looking-for/
Creating a Data Science Team from an Architect's perspective. This is about team building on how to support a data science team with the right staff, including data engineers and devops.
Metric Abuse: Frequently Misused Metrics in OracleSteve Karam
This is a presentation I created for RMOUG 2014 which I was sadly unable to attend. However, I wanted to share it with the Oracle community so that you can learn a bit about metrics that are frequently cited, frequently demonized, and frequently misused. In this deck we will go through the steps to diagnose issues and what NOT to blame as you go through the process.
The topics and concepts discussed here were originally formed in a blog post on the OracleAlchemist.com site: http://www.oraclealchemist.com/news/these-arent-the-metrics-youre-looking-for/
Creating a Data Science Team from an Architect's perspective. This is about team building on how to support a data science team with the right staff, including data engineers and devops.
Coaching teams in creative problem solvingFlowa Oy
Agile has helped teams to collaborate and organize work better. That’s great. Better teamwork and better understanding of the work definitely helps a team to do right things. Agile has also lead the way toward technical practices such as Continuous Integration and Delivery, Test Driven Development and SOLID-architecture principles. Great, these things definitely help the team to do things right.
Then again, most of the time in software projects goes into problem solving and similar creative acts. Agile has relatively little to give on these areas. Currently, agile is not about creativity nor is it about problem solving.
This coaching circle session will focus on the creative core of software development: solving creatively novel, original and broad problems more effectively all the time. I will introduce some principles and tools I’ve found useful when helping people to solve hard problems and to find creative solutions.
Making & Breaking Machine Learning Anomaly Detectors in Real Life by Clarence...CODE BLUE
Machine learning-based (ML) techniques for network intrusion detection have gained notable traction in the web security industry over the past decade. Some Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) successfully used these techniques to detect and deflect network intrusions before they could cause significant harm to network services. Simply put, IDS systems construct a signature model of how normal traffic looks, using data retrieved from web access logs as input. Then, an online processing system is put in place to maintain a model of how expected network traffic looks like, and/or how malicious traffic looks like. When traffic that is deviant from the expected model exceeds the defined threshold, the IDS flags it as malicious. The theory behind it was that the more data the system sees, the more accurate the model would become. This provides a flexible system for traffic analysis, seemingly perfect for the constantly evolving and growing web traffic patterns.
However, this fairytale did not last for long. It was soon found that the attackers had been avoiding detection by ‘poisoning’ the classifier models used by these PCA systems. The adversaries slowly train the detection model by sending large volumes of seemingly benign web traffic to make the classification model more tolerant to outliers and actual malicious attempts. They succeeded.
In this talk, we will do a live demo of this 'model-poisoning' attack and analyze methods that have been proposed to decrease the susceptibility of ML-based network anomaly detection systems from being manipulated by attackers. Instead of diving into the ML theory behind this, we will emphasize on examples of these systems working in the real world, the attacks that render them impotent, and how it affects developers looking to protect themselves from network intrusion. Most importantly, we will look towards the future of ML-based network intrusion detection.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legacy Code - Ox:Agile 2018Mike Harris
I never wrote it; everybody else did! How many times have you waded through an ageing, decaying, tangled forrest of code and wished it would just die? How many times have you heard someone say that what really needs to happen is a complete rewrite? I have heard this many times, and, have uttered that fatal sentence myself. But shouldn’t we love our legacy code? Doesn’t it represent our investment and the hard work of ourselves and our predecessors? Throwing it away is dangerous, because, before we do, we’ll need to work out exactly what it does, and we’ll need to tweeze out that critical business logic nestled in a deeply entangled knot of IF statements. It could take us years to do, and we’ll have to maintain two systems whilst we do it, inevitably adding new features to them both. Yes we get to reimplement using the latest, coolest programming language, instead of an old behemoth, but how long will our new cool language be around, and who will maintain that code, when it itself inevitably turns to legacy? We can throw our arms in the air, complaining and grumbling about how we didn’t write the code, how we would never have written it the way it is, how those that wrote it were lesser programmers, possibly lesser humans themselves, but the code still remains, staring us in the face and hanging around for longer that we could possibly imagine. We can sort it out, we can improve it, we can make it testable, and we can learn to love our legacy code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRP45l5UugE
Dapper Tool - A Bundle to Make your ECL NeaterHPCC Systems
Have you ever written a long project for a simple column rename and thought, this should be easier? What about nicely named output statements? Yeah they bother me too. Oh, and DEDUP(SORT(DISTINCT()))? There is a better way! Learn how Dapper can help!
an introduction and overview to major types of non-relational no sql databases (key value, graph, columnar and document) while touching on Brewer's conjecture and CAP and ACID vs. BASE. With a quick look at HBase, Cassandra and Raik
Alt. GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using ...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Maruthi Prithivirajan, Head of ASEAN & IN Solution Architecture, Neo4j
Get an inside look at the latest Neo4j innovations that enable relationship-driven intelligence at scale. Learn more about the newest cloud integrations and product enhancements that make Neo4j an essential choice for developers building apps with interconnected data and generative AI.
More Related Content
Similar to Zen and the Art of ILS Migration--KUDOSCon 2011
Coaching teams in creative problem solvingFlowa Oy
Agile has helped teams to collaborate and organize work better. That’s great. Better teamwork and better understanding of the work definitely helps a team to do right things. Agile has also lead the way toward technical practices such as Continuous Integration and Delivery, Test Driven Development and SOLID-architecture principles. Great, these things definitely help the team to do things right.
Then again, most of the time in software projects goes into problem solving and similar creative acts. Agile has relatively little to give on these areas. Currently, agile is not about creativity nor is it about problem solving.
This coaching circle session will focus on the creative core of software development: solving creatively novel, original and broad problems more effectively all the time. I will introduce some principles and tools I’ve found useful when helping people to solve hard problems and to find creative solutions.
Making & Breaking Machine Learning Anomaly Detectors in Real Life by Clarence...CODE BLUE
Machine learning-based (ML) techniques for network intrusion detection have gained notable traction in the web security industry over the past decade. Some Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) successfully used these techniques to detect and deflect network intrusions before they could cause significant harm to network services. Simply put, IDS systems construct a signature model of how normal traffic looks, using data retrieved from web access logs as input. Then, an online processing system is put in place to maintain a model of how expected network traffic looks like, and/or how malicious traffic looks like. When traffic that is deviant from the expected model exceeds the defined threshold, the IDS flags it as malicious. The theory behind it was that the more data the system sees, the more accurate the model would become. This provides a flexible system for traffic analysis, seemingly perfect for the constantly evolving and growing web traffic patterns.
However, this fairytale did not last for long. It was soon found that the attackers had been avoiding detection by ‘poisoning’ the classifier models used by these PCA systems. The adversaries slowly train the detection model by sending large volumes of seemingly benign web traffic to make the classification model more tolerant to outliers and actual malicious attempts. They succeeded.
In this talk, we will do a live demo of this 'model-poisoning' attack and analyze methods that have been proposed to decrease the susceptibility of ML-based network anomaly detection systems from being manipulated by attackers. Instead of diving into the ML theory behind this, we will emphasize on examples of these systems working in the real world, the attacks that render them impotent, and how it affects developers looking to protect themselves from network intrusion. Most importantly, we will look towards the future of ML-based network intrusion detection.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legacy Code - Ox:Agile 2018Mike Harris
I never wrote it; everybody else did! How many times have you waded through an ageing, decaying, tangled forrest of code and wished it would just die? How many times have you heard someone say that what really needs to happen is a complete rewrite? I have heard this many times, and, have uttered that fatal sentence myself. But shouldn’t we love our legacy code? Doesn’t it represent our investment and the hard work of ourselves and our predecessors? Throwing it away is dangerous, because, before we do, we’ll need to work out exactly what it does, and we’ll need to tweeze out that critical business logic nestled in a deeply entangled knot of IF statements. It could take us years to do, and we’ll have to maintain two systems whilst we do it, inevitably adding new features to them both. Yes we get to reimplement using the latest, coolest programming language, instead of an old behemoth, but how long will our new cool language be around, and who will maintain that code, when it itself inevitably turns to legacy? We can throw our arms in the air, complaining and grumbling about how we didn’t write the code, how we would never have written it the way it is, how those that wrote it were lesser programmers, possibly lesser humans themselves, but the code still remains, staring us in the face and hanging around for longer that we could possibly imagine. We can sort it out, we can improve it, we can make it testable, and we can learn to love our legacy code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRP45l5UugE
Dapper Tool - A Bundle to Make your ECL NeaterHPCC Systems
Have you ever written a long project for a simple column rename and thought, this should be easier? What about nicely named output statements? Yeah they bother me too. Oh, and DEDUP(SORT(DISTINCT()))? There is a better way! Learn how Dapper can help!
an introduction and overview to major types of non-relational no sql databases (key value, graph, columnar and document) while touching on Brewer's conjecture and CAP and ACID vs. BASE. With a quick look at HBase, Cassandra and Raik
Alt. GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using ...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Maruthi Prithivirajan, Head of ASEAN & IN Solution Architecture, Neo4j
Get an inside look at the latest Neo4j innovations that enable relationship-driven intelligence at scale. Learn more about the newest cloud integrations and product enhancements that make Neo4j an essential choice for developers building apps with interconnected data and generative AI.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
GraphSummit Singapore | The Future of Agility: Supercharging Digital Transfor...Neo4j
Leonard Jayamohan, Partner & Generative AI Lead, Deloitte
This keynote will reveal how Deloitte leverages Neo4j’s graph power for groundbreaking digital twin solutions, achieving a staggering 100x performance boost. Discover the essential role knowledge graphs play in successful generative AI implementations. Plus, get an exclusive look at an innovative Neo4j + Generative AI solution Deloitte is developing in-house.
Unlocking Productivity: Leveraging the Potential of Copilot in Microsoft 365, a presentation by Christoforos Vlachos, Senior Solutions Manager – Modern Workplace, Uni Systems
Unlock the Future of Search with MongoDB Atlas_ Vector Search Unleashed.pdfMalak Abu Hammad
Discover how MongoDB Atlas and vector search technology can revolutionize your application's search capabilities. This comprehensive presentation covers:
* What is Vector Search?
* Importance and benefits of vector search
* Practical use cases across various industries
* Step-by-step implementation guide
* Live demos with code snippets
* Enhancing LLM capabilities with vector search
* Best practices and optimization strategies
Perfect for developers, AI enthusiasts, and tech leaders. Learn how to leverage MongoDB Atlas to deliver highly relevant, context-aware search results, transforming your data retrieval process. Stay ahead in tech innovation and maximize the potential of your applications.
#MongoDB #VectorSearch #AI #SemanticSearch #TechInnovation #DataScience #LLM #MachineLearning #SearchTechnology
Goodbye Windows 11: Make Way for Nitrux Linux 3.5.0!SOFTTECHHUB
As the digital landscape continually evolves, operating systems play a critical role in shaping user experiences and productivity. The launch of Nitrux Linux 3.5.0 marks a significant milestone, offering a robust alternative to traditional systems such as Windows 11. This article delves into the essence of Nitrux Linux 3.5.0, exploring its unique features, advantages, and how it stands as a compelling choice for both casual users and tech enthusiasts.
Climate Impact of Software Testing at Nordic Testing DaysKari Kakkonen
My slides at Nordic Testing Days 6.6.2024
Climate impact / sustainability of software testing discussed on the talk. ICT and testing must carry their part of global responsibility to help with the climat warming. We can minimize the carbon footprint but we can also have a carbon handprint, a positive impact on the climate. Quality characteristics can be added with sustainability, and then measured continuously. Test environments can be used less, and in smaller scale and on demand. Test techniques can be used in optimizing or minimizing number of tests. Test automation can be used to speed up testing.
Building RAG with self-deployed Milvus vector database and Snowpark Container...Zilliz
This talk will give hands-on advice on building RAG applications with an open-source Milvus database deployed as a docker container. We will also introduce the integration of Milvus with Snowpark Container Services.
Dr. Sean Tan, Head of Data Science, Changi Airport Group
Discover how Changi Airport Group (CAG) leverages graph technologies and generative AI to revolutionize their search capabilities. This session delves into the unique search needs of CAG’s diverse passengers and customers, showcasing how graph data structures enhance the accuracy and relevance of AI-generated search results, mitigating the risk of “hallucinations” and improving the overall customer journey.
How to Get CNIC Information System with Paksim Ga.pptxdanishmna97
Pakdata Cf is a groundbreaking system designed to streamline and facilitate access to CNIC information. This innovative platform leverages advanced technology to provide users with efficient and secure access to their CNIC details.
zkStudyClub - Reef: Fast Succinct Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Regex ProofsAlex Pruden
This paper presents Reef, a system for generating publicly verifiable succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs that a committed document matches or does not match a regular expression. We describe applications such as proving the strength of passwords, the provenance of email despite redactions, the validity of oblivious DNS queries, and the existence of mutations in DNA. Reef supports the Perl Compatible Regular Expression syntax, including wildcards, alternation, ranges, capture groups, Kleene star, negations, and lookarounds. Reef introduces a new type of automata, Skipping Alternating Finite Automata (SAFA), that skips irrelevant parts of a document when producing proofs without undermining soundness, and instantiates SAFA with a lookup argument. Our experimental evaluation confirms that Reef can generate proofs for documents with 32M characters; the proofs are small and cheap to verify (under a second).
Paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1886
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 5DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 5. In this session, we will cover CI/CD with devops.
Topics covered:
CI/CD with in UiPath
End-to-end overview of CI/CD pipeline with Azure devops
Speaker:
Lyndsey Byblow, Test Suite Sales Engineer @ UiPath, Inc.
By Design, not by Accident - Agile Venture Bolzano 2024
Zen and the Art of ILS Migration--KUDOSCon 2011
1. Zen and the Art of ILS Migration Or, How to Migrate your ILS Without Losing Any Sleep What to Expect When You're Expecting (an ILS Migration) Or, D Ruth Bavousett Lead Migration Specialist
2. Who Is This Chick, Anyway? Googling for me won't find much; look for J. David Bavousett, instead (but don't call me that, please!) BA/Computer Science, Abilene Christian University, 1993 5 years administering DRA Classic ILS 4 years outside the field (clinical labs & aerospace) Led migration project: DRA Classic -> Sirsi Unicorn, 2002 6 years administering SirsiDynix Unicorn (now Symphony) 3 years working on Koha 16 go-lives so far in 2011.
3. Basic Principles This doesn't have to take months and months. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, without calling them out on it. If you're going through a vendor, chances are pretty good that they've dealt with your legacy ILS before. If you're going it alone, odds are someone else has, too. Ask around! I have dealt with nine different ILSes since December, plus one home-brewed system. Goals: Maximum data, minimum time, zero patron-services disruption, and minimal staff disruption. “ Complexity is not always your enemy, but it is never, ever your friend.” --D Ruth Bavousett
4. Assemble a Toolkit MARCEdit: http://people.oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/index.php Libre Office—a Swiss Army Can Opener for data: http://www.libreoffice.org/ Some Perl is REALLY handy. Grab these modules: Text::CSV_XS Text::CSV::Simple MARC::Record MARC::Field http://www.cpan.org/ Caffeine, angry-sounding music, whatever suits you. Programming Perl , by Wall, Christiansen, & Orwant (2000) Perl Best Practices , by Damian Conway (2005) O'Reilly Media
6. Let's Cover the Hard Part First, Shall We? PEOPLE are the biggest challenge your ILS migration will face! Commonest complaint: “ I cannot handle CHANGE!” Eliminate the unknowns that they really fear, and the fear goes away.
7. Other Non-Technical Matters--Vendors RFP: Does anyone really like these things? Talk to other libraries. Use LibWebCats. http://www.librarytechnology.org/libwebcats/ Treat it like a job interview! Ask other community players about them.
8. This is the Part You're Really Here To See... How do you convert all that data? Take advice from Shel Silverstein: Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae, Who ate a monstrous whale? She thought she could, She said she would, So she started in right at the tail. And everyone said, “You're much too small,” But that didn't bother Melinda at all, She took little bites and she chewed very slow, Just like a good girl should... – from “Melinda Mae”, by Shel Silverstein (1930-1999)
9. Migrating the Data First decide what you want to move. “ Everything” is frequently an invalid answer. “ Gotta have it” vs. “nice to have.” Think about the relationships between the data.
10. Overall Strategy Now that you know most of what you need to know about the data, think about a migration strategy and timeline. Plan for two full extracts, done just exactly the same way. One for testing, and the final one on go-live weekend. Write down extracting method—reports, whatever—and the scripts you use to migrate and import the data. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. TO BE AVOIDED, IF AT ALL POSSIBLE: Cataloging “freeze” Patron “freeze” They aren't necessary, and they don't serve you or your patrons, at all. All they do is increase complexity.
11. Data Manipulations—Bibliographic/Item Records Do you really want to carry over system designator numbers from legacy systems? If your answer is yes, please think again. If the answer is still yes, plan to strip them out when you are done with migration. Most systems provide mechanisms for exporting MARC or MARCXML with item records included. Barcodes Are Your Friend. Use MARCEdit, or Perl scripts, to rearrange item fields. Let Koha ingest these naturally. Use bulkmarcimport.pl, or stage-and-import.
12. Item “Code” Mapping Consider the “coded” values that your current system uses: “item type”, “collection codes”, “holding codes”, “item categories”...whatever they are called. Four places for that sort of thing in Koha: Branch code, item type, shelving location, and collection code. Only the first two affect circulation! Create a CSV map in Libre Office: Holding Code Branch Itype Location Collection WANF WEAVER BOOK NONFIC ADULT WAF WEAVER BOOK FIC ADULT CANF CENTER BOOK NONFIC ADULT CVHS CENTER MOVIE MEDIA VHS CDVD CENTER MOVIE MEDIA DVD
13. Data Manipulations—Patron Records Some fields kept by some systems (i.e. “total amount owed”) do not migrate..ignore them. Try to create a CSV that looks like what Koha's Patron Import wants. It Just Works. While the data is in CSV, take a little time for cleanup: City/State/Zips, phones, address formatting Use Koha's Patron Import tool. Yes, it's slow, but it works, and it's quite accurate.
14. Data Manipulations—Everything Else Barcodes Are Your Friend—use them for linking, not system-generated numbers from legacy system. Issues/Checkouts: Barcode of the borrower and item, date it went out, date it is due. Options: Number of renewals, date of last renewal Holds: Barcode of the borrower, and barcode pointing at a biblio (for title level holds) or item (for item level), date it was placed, whether item is on the holds shelf, and current place in the queue (or sort by date later). Fines/Fees: Barcode of the borrower, amount originally charged, current amount due, and why we're billing—barcode of related item, if possible.
15. Some Thoughts on Imports and Edits Use Koha's native tools as much as possible. For instance, use C4::Items::ModItem instead of SQL: UPDATE items SET … Try to do imports in such a way that if one phase goes wrong, you can TRUNCATE exactly one table to back up one step. Do some basic checking at each step, so you don't end up back at the beginning after you've already loaded the final steps—that's really frustrating. Trust me on this. I know. In your Perl scripts, make sure you give yourself some kind of indicator that it's doing something. Watching the blinking cursor is stress-inducing (and also boring).
16. Some Thoughts on Imports and Edits Don't make manual edits. Fix the script, and reload, instead. If you ignore that bit of advice, then write down your manual edits, so you can repeat them for the go-live load. I have basic scripts that do everything normal for a given ILS: (Unicorn/biblio_masher.pl), then a Site/ folder, with specific “manual” edits that the site needs, that the default script won't do. Computer memory is way, way better than yours. Use it.
17. Don' Configuring the system Koha cleverly has the most-important configuration stuff in order on the Administration menu. Don't spend too much time fretting over configurations. Almost all of it can be changed later, if needed. Ask questions, particularly about obscure system preferences. For go-live, the most important bits are: Libraries Item Types Patron Categories Circulation and Fine Rules
18. Back to the People The more that folks have a chance to “just play with it,” the better they'll feel about how their job changes will work on go-live day. ...but not too long. Otherwise, they'll play with it for a week, then forget about it, then panic on go-live day. Two or three weeks—MAX—works. Your vendor—if any—will have some testing/training regimen for you to walk through. Try out sample transactions, just like the real deal. No vendor can tell you that they know perfectly well what happens in your library. If they do, they're lying—they don't work in a library, and they don't work in your library. Call them on it. Then go practice the things that really do happen in your library.
19. Don' Go-Live Weekend After the library closes, re-run your extracts, just the same way you did before. Wipe out biblios, items, borrowers, issues, etc, but leave configuration stuff! Use your scripts to load the data, just as before. Test, test, test, each step of the way, just as you did for the initial test load.
20. Don' Get Involved With Koha At first, you'll have a lot of questions—that's okay. Later, if you stick around, you can give back! Even good ideas, enhancement requests, or a question answered for some other library counts as “giving back.” http://koha-community.org
22. Photo Credits: Flickr users sclsjo,nengard,4nitsick, assorted Facebook users, plus odds and ends from elsewhere. What's the Best Thing About Koha? (not an exhaustive list—not even close)
23. Don' Thanks for being here. Namaste. Slides available at: http://www.librarygeekgirl.net/
Editor's Notes
Consider open-sourcing your tool scripts. ByWater Solutions will be putting my toolkit out on a public repository, probably this week. I don't write closed code.
TLC systems usually put item barcode in $g of the item record, which is usually 949. You need it in 952 $p. Also, TLC systems use a “holding code” which encompasses the concepts in Koha's branch, item type, location code, and collection code. Create a map. (More about this in a moment.) You might want to steal data from the bib to put in the item—prices or callnumbers especially. This is a good time to re-think past insanity.
This <Klix> is what makes Koha great! I've said it over and over again, that Koha people are the best people in the world, and you are. Day in and day out, from around the world, people show up who care about their libraries, who care about others' libraries, and work in large and small ways on this wonderful bit of code that we have. And the proprietary ILS vendors are starting to feel the pain, as libraries forsake them, and go it alone, or come to one of the many Koha vendors. They're fighting back...but faceless corporations, placed head-to-head with caring people like these and many more, will fail!