Background
Te Puna Search(external link) is a hub of information, combining catalogues from New Zealand libraries into a single platform. Te Puna enables users to search through a union catalogue in one place rather than accessing each library individually. This is similar to the service, Trove(external link) for Australian libraries. However, the Te Puna catalogue doesn't regularly harvest data from New Zealand libraries (like Trove can.) Therefore, libraries regularly upload a copy of their Koha library catalogue to Te Puna to ensure their collection is up to date. The upload process required regular maintenance and technical support from Koha vendors when any changes were required.
Opportunity
Horowhenua District Council contacted Rōpū kohinga at Catalyst as they realised their records on Te Puna were out of date. Rōpū kohinga investigated who was impacted, what the cause was, and devised a plan to improve and future-proof the upload process.
Since the Koha library system is open source, developments can be upstreamed so other Koha libraries can benefit too. Therefore, there was an opportunity to develop a flexible solution for each library to save the libraries time and money in the long run. Rōpū kohinga reviewed the customisations for each library most affected by the upload process for Te Puna: Toi Ohomai, Horowhenua Libraries, Waitaki District Council, South Taranaki District Council, and Plant and Food Research Limited. While reviewing the customisations, Rōpū kohinga found each library uploading its catalogue data to Te Puna had different requirements around what records they wanted to send to Te Puna. For example, Toi Ohomai needed to exclude some resources specific to their organisation that were irrelevant to a wider audience on the Te Puna catalogue. Conversely, another partner library was happy to send everything.
Rōpū kohinga had worked with the five partner libraries by supporting and hosting their Koha instances for a number of years so they could approach the libraries directly about the potential enhancement. The libraries agreed to share development with Catalyst and the five libraries split the sponsorship and credit between them.
Solution
Koha librarians are familiar with the Koha Reports module as a way to run reports to gain insights into how Koha is being used. Because of this familiarity, Rōpū kohinga planned to enhance the Koha Reports module to generate the list of catalogue records to be uploaded. The benefit of improving the Koha Reports module is that it empowers librarians to create exclusions from their catalogue uploads to Te Puna. Previously, if they wanted to exclude records, they had to ask Catalyst to make that change on the Koha server.
Rōpū kohinga wrote upstream enhancements to encapsulate the new flexibility for the Koha Reports Module. They backported the upstream enhancements to the client codebase and fixed any conflicts. From here, they stripped out old customisations from their codebase.
They wrote three new SQL reports to retrieve catalogue data to upload and three new cronjobs (automated scripts) to generate and upload the MARC file to OCLC. They then scheduled a full export of the entire library catalogue and confirmed if it worked. From here, they performed an incremental monthly export of catalogue changes (additions and deletions to the catalogue over the last month). Then, they scheduled the monthly upload work. Rōpū kohinga receives an email notification of the upload status for every upload This functionality will help safeguard against any future failed uploads going undetected.
Rōpū kohinga wrote and shared two new enhancements with the Koha community. The first enhancement has been upstreamed to the next version, Koha 24.11. So it is no longer a customisation requiring maintenance, and 18,000+ other Koha libraries can use this functionality for their own upload requirements, too. The two enhancements enable library users to add:
- the ability to run the export_reports script from a Koha report(external link)
- a new script for Koha to upload a file to a remote server.(external link)
Since the updates, multiple libraries have exported their catalogue records to Te Puna and updated the out-of-date catalogue data they had visible on Te Puna. Plus, they have successfully uploaded monthly incremental catalogue changes (added and deleted catalogue records in the last month) to keep the Te Puna data up-to-date.
Caring for your collections
Rōpū kohinga cares for collections with technology. They use open source software to support the technological ecosystems of libraries, archives, and collections. Rōpū kohinga is a Koha vendor and contributor experienced with open source technologies like VuFind, DSpace, and Islandora. Contact Rōpū kohinga if you need Koha support or support with your collection.