Contribute : Support The Koha Project
Contributing to Koha is easy. You don't even need to be a programmer. Anyone who is interested can get involved in the Koha development process.
- Do you have ideas for neat features to be included?
- Do you have some financial resources that you could contribute (even a few hundred dollars goes a long way)?
- Can you translate Koha into your native language?
Here are some ways you can get involved:
Join the team
If you are a perl programmer (or want to learn) and/or have some experience with libraries (or want to learn), we'd love to have you join the programming effort.
In any event, if you'd like to participate in improving Koha, please join the koha-devel mailing list. You can sign up at our Koha Mailing Lists Page.
Install it
Sometimes you need to state the obvious. Installing Koha, or convincing your local library to install it is the most awesome contribution you could make.
If you can't install it yourself, you can try out the Koha demos. There are a couple of full demos available, check out the showcase.
Go ahead and use these demos to the full, add borrowers, check out books to them, add items, do your worst! and then let us know what you'd like improved.
Sponsor a project
First off, understand that although Koha is free, many of our developers make a living supporting Koha. The more money we can make with Koha, the less we need to find other jobs to make ends meet. So if you've got any monetary resources that you can devote to Koha, please consider it. Even a small sum can go a long way.
If you would like to see the plan for Koha 2.4, check out the Release Manager's 3.0 Roadmap.
How to get the ball rolling? You could write a private message to one of the developers, naming the project you would like to 'sponsor' and the amount of funds you can devote to it. You could develop an RFP (Request for Proposal) if your idea is large (NCIP for example), and then notify the koha-devel list.
Check the support page for a list of folks who can support Koha: http://koha.org/installation/support.html.
Help with documentation
We need more, and better documentation for library decision makers, programmers and developers and librarians. We would also like to have available tutorials and materials suitable to put in a library for first time OPAC (or even computer) users. If you've figured out how to do something with Koha, or have just "learnt" it yourself, please consider writing a short piece about it
New documents may be submitted for inclusion on http://www.kohadocs.org by joining and e-mailing them to the Koha Developers List.
Test things and report bugs
Please do this! We want Koha to be the most stable, easiest-to-use system out there. Report a bug.
Suggest improvements
Even if you can't program or sponsor a new feature, we'd love to hear about it.
Translate things
If you're willing to devote time translating Koha into your language please do! We're going to need help translating the
website as well as the Koha interfaces and documentation into as many languages as possible. Join the koha-devel list and introduce yourself as a translator.
Teach us about library-centric standards
Some of the programmers working on Koha have very little Library Science background. If you can help us understand something (or why something is important) we're more likely to do a good job of getting it into Koha.
Invite us to speak
If you're organising a conference or forum we would welcome the opportunity to speak about Koha, open source, or what it's like working with people all over the world. While we're not necessarily going to be able to accept every offer, Koha contributers are spread widely, and some travel widely too. If you can contribute to the air fares then that's great as well. We're also happy to speak on the radio, although we might be a bit shy for TV.
Spread the word
Write a piece about Koha and submit it to a magazine or website to help get the word out.Come on in, the water's fine.