RELEASE NOTES FOR KOHA 18.11.00

27 Nov 2018

Koha is the first free and open source software library automation package (ILS). Development is sponsored by libraries of varying types and sizes, volunteers, and support companies from around the world. The website for the Koha project is:

Koha 18.11.00 can be downloaded from:

Installation instructions can be found at:

Koha 18.11.00 is a major release, that comes with many new features.

It includes 16 new features, 235 enhancements, 432 bugfixes.

New features

Acquisitions

Sponsored by BULAC - http://www.bulac.fr/

This enhancements adds the ability to add an order to a basket (duplicate) from existing order lines. It will help serials acquisitions or other workflows where the same publication is ordered frequently.

This enhancement to acquisitions allows libraries to record adjustments to invoices. These may be based on feedback from a vendor, for example, a credit for returned books or damaged books, or a debit for extra service charges etc.

Authentication

Sponsored by PTFS Europe
Shibboleth authentication has long been available for the OPAC, this patch adds support for the staff client.

Shibboleth authentication has the ability to send an arbitrary number of attributes to koha; These attributes can be used to dynamically create (bug 12026) and, now with this patchset, update user records in koha.

Cataloging

The Koha::RDF module presents a method for minting RDF subject URIs in the format of {{ OpacBaseURL }}/bib/{{ biblionumber }}.
This functionality isn't directly used yet in Koha, but is a precursor to RDF support.

Circulation

Sponsored by PTFS Europe and North West England Public Libraries
This is a batch process to automate the rotation of stock.
It includes a staff client page, under tools, to manage rotas (ordered lists of locations for items to rotate to with associated durations for the items stay) and assign them to items.
Once at least one rota is configured, and your staff user has the permission to add a rota to an item, then an additional tab will appear on each biblio record page allowing the management of which rota, if any, individual items are assigned.

Documentation

Great strides have been taken to improve Koha's online documentation. This enhancement removes the outdated local help system from the software, opting instead to contextually link to the well maintained online manual.

Fines and fees

Let your library go paperless. This enhancement enables the ability to send payment and write-off receipts by email.

OPAC

This feature integrates RecordedBooks functionality into the catalog, following the model of OverDrive.
Searches on the OPAC will return a link to results in the RecordedBooks catalog if they are found. From that results page a user that is signed in and has a valid email matching a RecordedBooks account will be able to checkout the books directly from the results, and download them via their account page on the OPAC. Users will also be able to place holds on unavailable items.

Patrons

A first pass at adding a handy feature to allow quickly navigating back to the last searched user in the staff client.

REST api

Introduces API endpoints for dealing with patron accounts, a highly requested feature for third-party integrations.

Introduces the API endpoint for dealing with patron account credits, a highly requested feature for third-party integrations.

Allows the extension of the Koha API via plugins. This can allow for custom vendor integrations and prototyping of new routes.

Reports

Adds a form under report's result that allows to configure and draw a
chart (pie, bar, line and combination).

Serials

Sponsored by BULAC - http://www.bulac.fr/

Allows the user to set a quantity for a serial order, useful in the case where payments are made per receipt to find individual issues. This development also allows for altering the total expected quantity for a serial in the case of a periodicity change.

Z39.50 / SRU / OpenSearch Servers

Some record sources only offer SRU connections (and not Z39.50) this update allows Koha to utilize these resources for authority records as we can for bibliographic records

Enhancements

About

Koha's team of developers is always growing ☺. This patch changes the display from a long list to a nicely formatted four column layout.

Two years ago we switched the version numbering system from 3.x to YY.MM format. At that time we added a tooltip and highlighted the version in red on the Koha Team tab of the about page. This patch removes that now that a sufficient period of time has passed.

Acquisitions

Allow finer grained auditing of acquisition orders.

This patch attempts to remove some confusion as the 'Replacement price/rrp' field was being used as retail price during ordering process, but for item replacement price when receiving.
This patch splits these fields so that each may be set independently. RRP will be used to determine costs while ordering, and replacement price will populate the items replacement price upon receiving.

Sponsored by BULAC - http://www.bulac.fr/

Architecture, internals, and plumbing

This patchset adds the ability to map several MARC fields to a single Koha field. The first existing mapped field will be saved into the database. This allows for flexibility in a system using RDA and AACR2 records where some store the publication data in the 260 fields and others in the 264.

Final removal of the GRS1 indexing mode code after the two year deprecation period.

Sponsored by Gothenburg University Library

To aid in catching possible SQL issue's early in development, this patch allows enabling the strictest of SQL modes for development (and makes it the default for continuous integration) environments.

This enhancement standardises the methods used by plugin authors to maintain their plugin data across plugin versions.

Sponsored by PTFS Europe

This enhancement allows plugin authors to make adaptations to the staff client using css and javascript.

Authentication

Sponsored by PTFS Europe
This enhancement adds support for using Shibboleth in a Plack environment. Caution should, however, be taken before enabling it as there are security implications to be aware of regarding header spoofing attacks that can be mitigated with additional care whilst configuring the native service provider and Apache: Please see https://wiki.shibboleth.net/confluence/display/SHIB2/NativeSPSpoofChecking for further details.

Cataloging

This adds default indicators to bibliographic frameworks. The table marc_tag_structure is adjusted. In order to make effective use of this enhancement, you may want to add values in your MARC frameworks administration.

Sponsored by CCSR (https://ccsr.qc.ca)

This allows to display MARC fields and subfields from the record in an extra column on the Z30.50 result list. The content of the column can be configured via the AdditionalFieldsInZ3950ResultSearch system preference.

Circulation

This enhancement offers the possibility to prevent renewals given certain item values. Using a yaml syntax the library can specify certain item field values that, when matched, will prevent renewals for affected items.
If using automatic renewal notices your notice should be updated to account for the new reason that renewals may be denied "item_denied_renewal"

These patches give a facelift to the circulation homepage. All functionality remains the same, however, things have been moved to make the interface little friendlier and more responsive on different screens.

Sponsored by: Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology in New Zealand and Catalyst IT.

Command-line Utilities

Sponsored by Gothenburg University Library

Course reserves

Fines and fees

Hold requests

Sponsored by Stockholm University Library

I18N/L10N

ILL

Added the new price_paid field to ILL requests

Installation and upgrade (web-based installer)

Label/patron card printing

Sponsored by Catalyst IT

Sponsored by Goethe-Institut

Lists

MARC Bibliographic data support

Notices

Sponsored by Gothenburg University Library

OPAC

Sponsored by Catalyst IT

Adds a routing list tab to the patron account in the OPAC that will be visible if RoutingSerials is turned on and the user is at least on one routing list.

Patrons

This report adds a new table patron_consent in order to save user consent for processing personal data (GDPR), but allows for future extension.
It adds two preferences: GDPR_Policy and PrivacyPolicyURL. The first pref allows you to enforce giving consent before using the OPAC as a specific user. In permissive mode, we only show a warning on the consent page. The second pref allows you to add a URL to a privacy policy page.
On the self registration page we also add asking for consent if the pref is enabled.

REST api

Reports

Searching

Searching - Elasticsearch

Sponsored by Gothenburg University Library

This patch significantly improves the performance of the ElasticSearch indexing process and also improves the maintainability of this area of the codebase.

Searching - Zebra

Serials

Sponsored by BULAC - http://www.bulac.fr/

Sponsored by BULAC - http://www.bulac.fr/

Staff Client

Sponsored by Catalyst IT

System Administration

Sponsored by Catalyst IT

Templates

This important improvement to Koha's security policy greatly decreases the likelihood of XSS vulnerabilities being introduced into the Koha codebase moving forward. We have introduced the requirement for all variables inside templates to be passed through a filter and added a test to check this requirement is being upheld.

Sponsored by BULAC - http://www.bulac.fr/

Test Suite

Tools

Web services

Extends Koha /svc/barcode HTTP API. Adds a notext=1 parameter to the entry point in order to prevent the display of barcode text under the barcode's image.

Z39.50 / SRU / OpenSearch Servers

Critical bugs fixed

(This list includes all bugfixes since the previous major version. Most of them have already been fixed in maintainance releases)

Acquisitions

Sponsored by Gothenburg University Library

Corrects the prices shown on the ordered/spent lists for each fund in acquisitions to show the price with taxes included. This will make the total shown on these pages match the total shown in the table on the acq start and fund pages.

The next page, previous page, and go buttons now work when navigating the search results when adding a record to a basket from an external source.

Architecture, internals, and plumbing

Authentication

It is good security practice to not provide details which could confirm or deny the existence of an account. Previously, the simple "This account has been locked!" confirmed its existence which would only encourage more attacks by hackers.
To prevent aiding malicious attacks, the message has been changed to something that does not expressly state the account has been locked. It only mentions that accounts will be locked after a number of failed attempts, instead of saying whether it is locked or not.
So while a successful attempt will seem to have an invalid username or password suggestion after the account is locked, users should be reminded that they can always reset their password or contact library staff for help.

Cataloging

Circulation

This adds a details view for every fine and payment in a patron account that will show detailed information about the payments made forward a fine and how a payment has been split up to pay towards several fines.

These patches ensure that unset values for items added to course reserves are unset when the course is disabled.

Command-line Utilities

Course reserves

Database

Fines and fees

Hold requests

I18N/L10N

ILL

Installation and upgrade (command-line installer)

Add support to koha-create to allow it to accept both compressed and uncompressed files for DEFAULTSQL

Installation and upgrade (web-based installer)

Label/patron card printing

MARC Bibliographic data support

Notices

OPAC

Patrons

SIP2

Searching

Searching - Elasticsearch

Sponsored by National Library of Finland

Self checkout

Serials

Staff Client

System Administration

Templates

Sponsored by Theke Solutions

Test Suite

Tools

Web services

translate.koha-community.org

Other bugs fixed

(This list includes all bugfixes since the previous major version. Most of them have already been fixed in maintainance releases)

About

Acquisitions

Architecture, internals, and plumbing

Sponsored by Gothenburg University Library

This change may affect existing reports. Credits will no longer be recorded as 'debits' but rather get their own 'Manual Credit' type.

Authentication

Cataloging

After this patch, frameworks will be handled correctly by the advanced cataloguing editor.

Circulation

Command-line Utilities

Course reserves

Database

Developer documentation

Fines and fees

Hold requests

I18N/L10N

Fix translatability issues due to sentence splitting in
koha-tmpl/opac-tmpl/bootstrap/en/modules/opac-user.tt

ILL

This patch makes the configuration section compulsory in the section of your Koha configuration file. The section allows you define per-branch Interlibrary loan options for each branch. In it's most basic form, the branch section can be:
code_for_your_branch

Installation and upgrade (command-line installer)

Installation and upgrade (web-based installer)

Label/patron card printing

Lists

With this patch lists sorted on call number will now use the machine sortable form of the callnumber from items.cn_sort for better results.

MARC Authority data support

MARC Bibliographic data support

Sponsored by Escuela de Orientacion Lacaniana

Notices

OPAC

Prevents warnings about type attribute being generated for <script> elements when testing the OPAC pages using W3C Validator for HTML5.

Packaging

Patrons

Print summary for patron will now show only outstanding fines/payments. To print all fines/payments you can use the 'print' option for the table in the accounts page for the patron.

REST api

Reports

Searching

Searching - Elasticsearch

Searching - Zebra

Serials

Staff Client

System Administration

Templates

Test Suite

Tools

Web services

OCLC has now discontinued support for the xisbn service. One can continue to use the functionality that this service provided to Koha by switching on the ThingISBN preferences as an alternative.

New sysprefs

System requirements

Important notes:

Documentation

The Koha manual is maintained in Sphinx. The home page for Koha documentation is

As of the date of these release notes, only the English version of the Koha manual is available:

The Git repository for the Koha manual can be found at

Translations

Complete or near-complete translations of the OPAC and staff interface are available in this release for the following languages:

Partial translations are available for various other languages.

The Koha team welcomes additional translations; please see

For information about translating Koha, and join the koha-translate list to volunteer:

The most up-to-date translations can be found at:

Release Team

The release team for Koha 18.11.00 is

Credits

We thank the following libraries who are known to have sponsored new features in Koha 18.11.00:

We thank the following individuals who contributed patches to Koha 18.11.00.

We thank the following libraries, companies, and other institutions who contributed patches to Koha 18.11.00

We also especially thank the following individuals who tested patches for Koha.

We thank the following individuals who mentored new contributors to the Koha project.

We regret any omissions. If a contributor has been inadvertently missed, please send a patch against these release notes to koha-patches@lists.koha-community.org.

Revision control notes

The Koha project uses Git for version control. The current development version of Koha can be retrieved by checking out the master branch of:

The branch for this version of Koha and future bugfixes in this release line is 18.11.x.

Bugs and feature requests

Bug reports and feature requests can be filed at the Koha bug tracker at:

He rau ringa e oti ai. (Many hands finish the work)

Autogenerated release notes updated last on 27 Nov 2018 11:44:43.