| Developer(s) | Katipo Communications Ltd. |
|---|---|
| Initial release | January 2000 |
| Stable release | 3.6.2 / December 22, 2011 |
| Written in | Perl |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Integrated library system |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | koha-community.org[1] |
Koha is an open source Integrated Library System (ILS), used world-wide by public, school and special libraries. The name koha comes from a Māori term for a gift or donation (see koha (custom)).
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Koha is web-based ILS, with a SQL database (MySql preferred) backend with cataloguing data stored in MARC and accessible via Z39.50. The user interface is very configurable and adaptable and has been translated into many languages.[2] Koha has most of the features that would be expected in an ILS, including:
Koha was created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, and the first installation went live in January 2000.[3]
From 2000, companies started providing commercial support for koha, building to more than 20 today.[4]
In 2001, Paul Poulain (of Marseille, France) began adding many new features to Koha, most significantly support for multiple languages[5]. By 2010, Koha has been translated from its original English into French, Chinese, Arabic and several other languages. Support for the cataloguing and search standards MARC and Z39.50 was added in 2002 and later sponsored by the Athens County Public Libraries.[6] In France Paul Poulain co-founded BibLibre in 2007.[7]
In 2005, an Ohio-based company, Metavore, Inc., trading as LibLime, was established to support Koha and added many new features, including support for Zebra sponsored by the Crawford County Federated Library System. Zebra support increased the speed of searches as well as improving scalability to support tens of millions of bibliographic records. In 2010, LibLime was acquired by another vendor, PTFS.[8]
In 2009 a dispute arose between LibLime and other members of the Koha community. The dispute centred on LibLime's apparent reluctance to be inclusive with the content of the http://koha.org/ sites and the non-contribution of software patches back to the community. A number of participants declared that they believed that LibLime had forked the software and the community.[9][10][11][12][13][14] A separate web presence, source code repository and community was established at http://koha-community.org/ . The fork continued after March 2010, when LibLime was purchased by PTFS.
On 8 April 2011, Domingo Arroyo announced that the Spanish Ministry of Culture is spinning KOBLI, a customised version of Koha.[15]
In 2007 the state of Vermont began testing the use of Koha for all Vermont libraries. At first a separate implementation was created for each library. Then the Vermont Organization of Koha Automated Libraries (VOKAL) was organized to create one database to be used by libraries. This database was tested in 2010 and is being rolled out in 2011. As of May, twenty-six libraries have chosen to adopt Koha and thirteen have moved to the shared production environment hosted and supported by ByWater Solutions[16] . Previously Vermont used software from Follett.[17], Installing Help-[2]
The latest stable release of the Koha is 3.6.2.[18]
Koha is currently a very active project. According to ohloh, it has a [v]ery large, active development team and a [m]ature, well-established codebase.[19] The analysis of the size of the code base may be deceptive because koha stores user interface translations alongside actual source code and ohloh cannot always distinguish them.