The Koha community announced the release of Koha version 3.08.00.000 on 23 April 2012. The Koha release team, headed by Paul Poulain of Biblibre, France has delivered another significant upgrade in accordance with the planned release schedule. CALYX salutes all involved!
Koha is the world’s first free and open source integrated library management system. Originally developed by Katipo Communications of New Zealand for Horowhenua Library Trust, Koha is now maintained and developed by a world wide community of librarians and software professionals. The Koha community is located at www.koha-community.org.
Koha 3.8.0 is a major feature release containing over 130 enhancements with over 1000 changesets from 71 developers.
Highlights of Koha 3.8 include Hourly Loans (important for academic libraries) and a new style sheet improving the appearance and usability of the staff client. Other significant improvements include:
- star ratings in OPAC;
- authority matching improvements;
- in Acquisitions, cancelled orders tracking and claims management improvements;
- ability to search for borrowers on email or phone number only;
- in Circulation, user configurable slips (now driven under the Notices editor), improvements to the offline circulation module and support for floating collections;
- more options in Advanced Search;
- several ‘under the hood’ changes to improve Koha’s performance for large collections.
The release notes for Koha 3.8.0 may be found here: http://koha-community.org/koha-3-8-0-released/
This release will be followed monthly by maintenance releases, with the next major feature release (Koha 3.10) due in October 2012.
CALYX will liaise with clients individually regarding their upgrade schedule to Koha 3.8.
