Ahhhh

We launched! Our data is behaving in a much more civilized manner. We did have to manually enter data in order to have the information we needed, and, while annoying and tedious, was doable. We still have some disappearing MARC records that we can't account for and a few anomalies here and there, but otherwise, things seem to be going swimmingly. Since you never know what records are problematic until you encounter them, some fix-up has to take place on-the-fly and as-encountered. We're okay with this. Students are happy with the new system, as are faculty and staff. I'm compiling an integration timeline, start to finish.

We were 1 month and 10 days over our projected go-live date. 2 months of system testing, quirk undoing, hey-this-is-weird finding recommended before launch.

#$%^!

So, our data is still a mess. We've entered in new patron numbers by hand, but check-ins still are not functioning properly -- they still show as checked out on the biblio record. Also, our non-circulating reference material imported as regular, circulating types, item types are not matching, and some students are listed as alumni when there is no reason they should be. Needless to say, we're disappointed. Working on it feverishly, but disappointed nonetheless. Our go-live date has been pushed back yet again. I would recommend a 6-8 week testing period, no matter what anyone tells you.

Can't we all just get along?

Soooo, our institution's data set and our library's data set is not co-mingling well. Actually, it would co-mingle well if we didn't care if student numbers matched our students, but since we do, it's not easy. Suggestions are appreciated, though I doubt there's much we can do...the two sets share no common numbers or characters (other than firstname and lastname) that could be used for matching. This is the big hurdle at the moment. Koha training went well, our vendor put up with all of our crazy questions. We've halted all inputs/changes to our legacy ILS and are using a spreadsheet while the data set issue is resolved.

We're near the finish line. Rigorous testing will commence hopefully by the weekend, and if all the data matches, things look like they are functioning properly, then we will go live on the 23rd. Cross your fingers...

Oh, and yes, the following article on a company NOT entirely unlike or perhaps not at all different from CitrusBib, to which I earlier made reference, did make me chuckle:

LibLime to the Koha Community: Fork You!

Gettin' Schooled

Full day of Koha training. Automated goodies, end-user functionality, previews, tags, comments, lists...We're geeked.

Punt!

Back from DC and ready to re-Koha. Data is in, CSS is mostly ready to go. Google Book Preview is functioning (when possible), Amazon Reviews is functioning (when available), the bells and whistles are being adjusted. Training day is the 10th, and we are waiting for the final data import. SO geeked.

Jeez...

Having an interesting time cleaning up data, and attempting to unify patron information. Our institutional database does not talk to our legacy ILS and, as such, data is often different...we don't receive updates on last-name changes, withdrawals, drop-outs or email alterations. This is challenging as our vendor may have to merge two different sets of data. Also, student IDs were not in the institutional base until about 2 years ago, so patron numbers are *different* from student ID numbers. Wow, fun!

Also, we are in the branding process, trying to integrate our school's look and feel to our new, Koha catalog; sharing CSS with our vendor (thanks to a really helpful webmaster).

Wish us luck on the data doings.

Fun with formatting

New lesson:

Always make sure that your ILS exports to all kinds of formats, in particular CSV and Excel. Thankfully, I wasn't the person who picked our legacy, which stinks. Right now, trying to get the entire patron database into a decent format is a bit tricky.