Topic: Post from Jo Ransom.
Topic type:
A long overdue blog post from Jo Ransom, Kete Project Manager.
INTRO
What a huge fortnight this has been for Kete!
Happening almost simultaneously, we presented Kete at the 2008 VALA conference in Melbourne on the 5th February and upgraded the Kete Horowhenua site to the Version 1.0 branch.
Now we all know the 3 things you should never do: never work with dogs or children, and never go live with a major upgrade the night before a major presentation .... and you would think I'd have remembered those wouldn't you ....
VALA
VALA was great, and we received a very warm welcome from our cousins across the Tasman. I was initially surprised at the large number of Kiwis there, but on reflection it is only 3.5 hours away - and probably cheaper than flying from Auckland to Christchurch! I shared the "Engaging our Communities" session with some truly inspiring women. The Queensland Stories project is fantastic and I plan to look more closely at how they have setup mobile technology labs and are helping people create digital stories. I spoke to my written paper and really appreciated the positive feedback I received. Thank you. The exciting work being done in libraries right now is so inspirational; I think I got as much out of the informal chats in breaks and over a glass of wine as I did in the formal sessions!
Kete Horowhenua Upgrade
The Kete Horowhenua upgrade was a big one, incorporating about 6 months worth of work by Steven and Walter at Katipo, most of which had been in place on this project site for some time. Naturally with such a large code upgrade we didn't get everything spot on and my hats off to the Kete Horowhenua users who so ably and willingly participated in the 'fixing' process by describing their problems, and to the developers who corresponded directly with our Kete users and responded so quickly (even though Walter was at VALA and working from the foyer floor). Sometimes it was a case of having to learn new tricks as a number of Kete users had become quite adept at making Kete jump through hoops, but other bugs were simply bugs.
The upgrade itself went smoothly, having been run once already on the Orlando Memory Kete, in Orange County, Florida. I absolutely love the new look. This is possible due to the new theme facility which allows an installation to be customized to reflect an individual organisations culture. This was just one part of the work completed recently on developing a guided process for downloading, installing, configuring and populating a new Kete installation.
Kete Version 1.0
In early January we hired Adrian Hayes, an independent software developer from Levin / Wellington, to completely test the installation process and documentation and we are confident that a reasonable competent amateur linux buff could get Kete up and running pretty smartly now. Full instructions and documentation are on the home page of the old.kete.net.nz site so if you are thinking of having a play please do - and let us know if you need a hand. Katipo are happy to help on a per hour basis if you get stuck, or can do complete setups, hosting and administrator training on an hourly orday basis.
Tutorials
PIppa has spent the last month writing advanced tutorials that go far beyond the help on the Kete site. Lots of examples and case studies and step by step instructions. A challenging but very worthwhile exercise to be working through.
Other Kete
We now have a couple of NZ government departments using Kete as a document management system. One particular trick which I love is the way when viewing documents now you can opt to view the contents of the document in the body of the topic - and thus search on them - rather than download and open the file. This is fantastic - thanks to whoever thought that up!
Work is starting on the Auckland Branch of the NZ Chinese Association / Auckland City Libraries Kete project, and Maakere and Ruakere and the rest of Te Reo o Taranaki team have at last got their funding sorted with DIA and we can expect to great things happening there soon.
The Aotearoa Peoples Network (APN) is a very exciting project which may be happening in a town near you in the next 6 months. The first roll out will see 34 public libraries throughout New Zealand get their own Kete to start populating. I'll try and pin someone down from APN to write a post telling more about their work and the role of Kete.
We have the old.kete.net.nz domain name so if you want to use it too drop us a linel: kete @ library.org.nz (remove spaces)
Kete Community Days
We are starting to plan our next Kete Community Day. It will be in Auckland in mid to late March - details to follow this week hopefully. We have also been approached about holding one in Australia. Please send me an email if you would be interested in attending; if there is enough interest we would love to come over.
