Certificate in Koha Cloud

Start here — ten minutes, then you are working

• What a library system actually stores: records, copies, members, loans, and the rules that connect them
• Why the record and the copy are separate — one description of a book, many physical copies, each with its own barcode, shelf and status
• The staff dashboard: the sidebar, global search, the module menus, and Find a Page when the menu defeats you
• Your assistant is already connected on this course — open AI → Chat and ask "What can you help me with in this library?"
• A library of your own brings its own model instead, under AI → Connections — that is taught here, not needed here
• The audit log records every action you take, and your coursework is graded from it. There is no "mark as done" button on this certificate: you finish a task by genuinely doing the work

1. Check a book out the way librarians always have

• Circulation → Checkout: the member's card number, then the copy's barcode
• Read what the screen tells you: the due date, the rule that set it, holds waiting, anything blocking the loan
• Check the copy back in, and renew one — the three acts the whole desk is built on
• Do this one first. Everything after it is the same work, asked for in a different way

2. Now do it again — by talking

• AI → Chat, tap the microphone, and say: "Check out barcode 30001 to Ayesha Khan"
• Speak English or Urdu — your words become text and the assistant does the rest
• The same toolbar has a scanner: point your camera at the copy instead of typing its barcode
• Nothing is saved by the assistant. It shows you the copy, the member and the due date, and waits for you to press Confirm
• Every circulation rule still runs underneath. A loan the rules refuse cannot be forced through the assistant

3. Catalog a book without typing it

• Catalog → Add Book → ✨ Fill with AI, and paste an ISBN
• Title, subtitle, author, publisher, year, edition, language and subject headings arrive filled in
• The form is the review surface: correct anything you disagree with, add a copy with its barcode, save

4. A member, a supplier and a shelf — one sentence each

• "Register a new member: Bilal Ahmed, student, bilal@example.com"
• "Add a supplier called Readings Lahore, currency PKR, 15% discount"
• "Move copy 30001 to the Reference shelf"
• Three different modules, no forms, and a preview of every field before anything is written

5. Ask your library for its numbers

• "How many books and copies do we have?" — counted from your catalog, never guessed by the model
• "Show me borrowing over the last 30 days"
• "Which members are borrowing the most?" and "Who has loans out right now?"
• Answers come back as real tables with a Download CSV button, and the numbers are computed by the system — the assistant cannot invent one
• Open View in full on one of those tables. That keeps it as a saved report, and it is the act this week grades

What the assistant will never do

• It never writes to your library on its own: it proposes, you confirm, and only then is anything saved
• Every confirmed change is recorded under your name, marked as AI-assisted, and can be undone from the change history
• It answers from your library's data, not from the internet, and it cannot invent a number
• It can only do what your own permissions allow — the assistant never exceeds the person using it

MARC21 and the record editor

• The leader and control fields, and the fields you actually touch daily: 020, 040, 100/700, 245, 250, 260/264, 300, 490/830, 500-notes, 650
• Creating a book record in the editor: mandatory subfields, repeatable fields, indicators, and saving a record that validates
• Adding copies to a record: barcode, item type, home and current branch, shelving location, collection, status, price, accession number
• Fast cataloging at the circulation desk, and when it is the right shortcut

Frameworks — and framework mapping

• What a MARC framework is, what the default framework does, and when to create your own (theses, journals, AV, manuscripts)
• Editing a framework: which tags and subfields appear, their tab placement, mandatory / repeatable / hidden flags, and the authorized value list attached to a subfield
• Koha → MARC mapping: which MARC subfield feeds which database column, and what breaks in search and reports when the mapping is wrong
• Copying a framework to start a new one, and exporting/importing a framework definition

Authorized values

• The controlled lists behind item types, shelving locations, collections, lost and damaged statuses, withdrawal reasons
• Why free text ruins reporting — and how to fix a list that has already been polluted

Classification and call numbers

• Dewey Decimal (DDC) in practice: choosing a class number from the subject, and the tables that refine it
• The author mark (cutter): how it is derived from the main entry, and the local conventions that vary by library
• Building the full call number: prefix, class number, author mark, year, copy and volume — and how the spine label is printed from it

Hands-on this week

• Catalog three books by hand, each with at least one copy
• Create a framework for a thesis and catalog one record against it
• Edit that framework by hand — change a tag or subfield: its tab, its mandatory and repeatable flags, and the authorized value list attached to it
• Create an authorized value list and use it on a copy
• Create an item type by hand — Administration → Item types: code, description, loan period and whether it circulates

Where AI helps this week

• Catalog from an ISBN or a description — give it 978-… or "the 3rd edition of Introduction to Algorithms" and it drafts the whole record for you to confirm
• Metadata population — it looks the ISBN up and fills title, subtitle, author, publisher, year, edition, pages, language and subject headings
• DDC / Dewey generation — it proposes a class number and shows you the evidence: the numbers your own catalog already uses for books with the same subjects
• Author mark generation — it derives the cutter from the main entry using your library's convention
• Call number generation — class number, author mark and copy details assembled into one call number, ready to confirm and print
• Subject headings — it adds 650 headings to a record that has none
• Field fixes — "change the publisher on this record and fix the year" without hunting through the MARC editor
• Build a framework by asking — "create a framework for theses, based on Default" copies the structure across for you to adjust, instead of building tags and subfields one at a time
• New authorized value lists and item types — "add a Reference-only shelving location" or "create an item type called E-Reader, non-circulating" without opening the admin screens
• Every one of these arrives as a proposal with a before/after view. What you confirm is stamped on the record as AI-assisted and listed under AI → Changes & History, with your name against it

Copy cataloging over Z39.50 / SRU

• What copy cataloging is, and why a record from the Library of Congress beats one typed at 11pm
• Setting up a Z39.50 server: name, host, port, database, record syntax (MARC21 / UNIMARC), character encoding, timeout, and the optional username and password
• Classic binary Z39.50 vs SRU over HTTP — which one a target offers, and the per-server CQL field mapping an SRU target needs
• Testing a server, reading a failed search, and the three usual causes: wrong database name, wrong syntax, or a target that is simply down
• Searching several servers at once, comparing the results, and importing the best record into the editor
• What to check before trusting an imported record: encoding, subject vocabulary, classification scheme, and the fields that must be replaced with your own

Authorities

• What an authority record is, and why "Iqbal, Muhammad" must be one heading rather than five spellings
• Personal, corporate, subject and series authorities; see / see-also references
• Linking a bibliographic record to an authority, and what happens to the linked records when the heading changes

Batch import and export

• Importing MARC: staging an ISO 2709 or MARCXML file, choosing a framework, record matching rules, reviewing matches, committing the batch — and reverting one that went wrong
• Batch item editing: changing item type, shelving location, branch or status on many copies at once, and batch deletion
• Batch record modification with MARC modification templates — the safe way to fix the same mistake in 4,000 records. Build the template first (the actions it applies, in order), test it on a handful, then run it on the batch
• Item templates — the copy fields you retype on every accession (item type, branch, shelving location, collection, price). Save them once as a template and apply it while adding copies, instead of typing the same six fields a hundred times
• Exporting the catalog: MARC or CSV, choosing fields and a CSV profile, and what an export is actually used for (migration, sharing, an offline backup, a printed shelf list)
• Importing and exporting library data: the portable data file — what it carries between libraries, what it deliberately does not, and how a library moves in from another system

Hands-on this week

• Configure one Z39.50 target and one SRU target, then copy-catalog two records through each
• Create an authority record for a name you catalog often, and link a bibliographic record to it
• Import a MARC file, review the matches, commit it — then export what you imported
• Import a CSV of records too — the spreadsheet route most libraries actually arrive with, mapping columns to fields before committing
• Build a MARC modification template and run it over the records you imported
• Save an item template and use it to add the next batch of copies
• Batch-edit a set of copies (item type or location)
• Build a spine-label and barcode print list for the copies you added, and print the sheet

Where AI helps this week

• Find duplicates — fuzzy title/author matching finds the near-identical records the eye misses after an import, and merging them is one confirmed proposal
• Audit the catalog — a data-quality report over what you just imported: missing ISBNs, missing call numbers, no subjects, impossible publication years, copies with no barcode
• Fix a whole class of problems at once — the fixes arrive as a single reviewable proposal, not 400 separate edits
• Copy-level work in the chat — update an item, change its status, transfer it to another branch, print labels for a shelf
• Label setup by chat — "make the spine label two lines with the call number on top" adjusts the layout as a proposal you confirm, so you are not counting millimetres in a form
• Ask it what a MARC field means while you are staring at it — 264 vs 260, 490 vs 830 — without leaving the screen

Members

• Patron categories — student, faculty, staff, community: loan limits, loan periods, membership length, enrolment fees and expiry, all set per category
• Registering a member: the fields that matter, card number and barcode, home branch, guarantor, expiry date, and the attributes your library adds for itself
• Importing members from a list — CSV or Excel, mapping columns to fields, previewing before committing, and matching existing members instead of creating duplicates
• Batch member modification — extend the expiry of an entire category, move a group to another branch, or correct one field across hundreds of records
• Patron cards — layouts, batches, and printing a class set
• Patron clubs — what a club is, enrolling members, and what libraries use them for: reading groups, class cohorts, summer programmes, and the assignment tracking that grades this very course
• Club templates — the shape a club is cut from: the fields it carries, what an enrolling member is asked, and why a template means next term's cohort is one click rather than a rebuild
• Exporting your member list — the whole register or one category, to CSV, for a mail-merge, an audit, or handing the registrar the numbers they asked for
• Member self-registration from the OPAC, and profile-change requests waiting for staff approval

The circulation desk

• Check out, check in and renew — the three screens you will live in
• Batch checkout, on-site (in-house) checkouts, the self-checkout and self-check-in kiosks
• Reading a member's account: current loans, history, holds, charges, restrictions, and the messages that pop up at the desk
• Checkout notes, return claims, and what to do when a member insists they returned it

Circulation rules — the part everyone skips

• The rule matrix: patron category × item type × branch, and how the most specific rule wins
• Loan period, renewals allowed, renewal period, holds allowed, maximum loans, fine rate and grace period
• Calendar, holidays and working hours: why a due date lands where it does, what "due on a Sunday" should mean, and the hours that gate self-checkout and curbside pickup
• Overriding a rule at the desk — who is allowed to, and why every override is logged

Hands-on this week

• Create a patron category by hand before you register anyone into it — loan limit, loan period, membership length and expiry
• Register five members by hand, import ten more from a file, and batch-extend the expiry of one category
• Export your member list to CSV
• Build a club template, create a club from it, and enrol members into it
• Check out, renew and check in books for at least three members
• Set one circulation rule by hand — Administration → Circulation rules: pick a patron category and item type, and set the loan period and fine rate yourself. Doing it in the matrix once is what makes the AI version in week 5 legible

Where AI helps this week

• Add members from a pasted list — "register these twelve students, category STU, home branch Main" arrives as one proposal you approve
• Find a member and see everything at once — loans, holds, charges, expiry and restrictions in a single answer instead of four screens
• Expiring cards — who expires this month, ready to renew before they are turned away at the desk
• Inactive members — who has not borrowed in a year, for a weeding or re-engagement campaign
• Corrections — a changed phone number, address or category, confirmed by you
• Set up a patron category or a club by asking — "create a Faculty category with a 60-day loan limit" or "make a Book Club and add these five members" — reviewed before it saves
• Club templates by asking — "make a template for class cohorts that asks for a department and a year" builds the template for you to confirm, so the next twelve clubs are one sentence each
• Desk actions by chat — check out, check in and renew when your hands are full of books

Holds and the queue

• Placing a hold for a member and from the OPAC; the queue and how priority is decided
• Holds to pull, holds awaiting pickup, expiring an uncollected hold, and hold ratios that tell you to buy another copy
• Recalls — pulling a long loan back for someone who needs it more, and what the borrower is told
• Bookings and article requests
• Curbside pickup — the collection slots you offer, how many bags fit in one, and the working hours that gate them
• Transfers between branches: sending, receiving, and chasing a stalled transfer

Overdues, fines and accounts

• The overdues screen and overdues-with-fines; what actually makes an item overdue
• Fine accrual: the rate, the grace period, the cap, and the scheduled job that charges it every night
• Taking a payment, waiving a charge, refunds, manual charges and credits
• Cash registers — the till a payment is recorded against, why a library with a desk that handles money needs one per point of sale, and how the day is reconciled
• Return claims — the member who insists the book went back. Filing the claim, what it does to their account while it is open, and resolving it either way
• Lost items: marking one lost, the replacement charge, and what happens if it comes back
• Restrictions and debarments: suspending borrowing, the reason, and lifting it

Notices, slips and the email that carries them

• Notices & slips — the templates a library sends: overdue notice, hold ready for pickup, due-soon reminder, checkout receipt, transfer slip. Editing the wording, and the placeholders that fill in the member and the item
• Which notices go by email, which are printed, and the delivery log that shows what was actually sent
• SMTP / email server configuration — Administration → SMTP servers: host, port, encryption, username and password, the From address, and sending a test message
• Why the From address must be a domain you are authorised to send from, and what happens to every notice when no server is configured
• Overdue triggers — the delay steps (first notice at 7 days, second at 14, restriction at 30) and how to check they ran

Hands-on this week

• Place a hold, fill it, and expire one that was never collected
• Place a recall on a copy that is already out
• File a return claim against a loan, then resolve it
• Open a cash register, then run the overdues list, take a payment against it, and waive a charge
• Set up a curbside pickup slot and take one booking through it
• Edit the overdue notice wording — or add a notice template of your own — then send overdue notices from the Overdues screen

Your trainer sets up the mail server with the class watching — you will do the same walkthrough yourself when you run your own library.

Where AI helps this week

• The four desk questions, answered as tables — what is overdue, what is due soon, what is on hold, who owes money — exportable to CSV or PDF
• Sending overdue notices — it drafts exactly who would receive a notice and what each one says; you review the list and confirm before a single email leaves the building
• Hold housekeeping — place or cancel a hold without walking the queue
• Questions no report has — "which members owe more than 500 and have not borrowed since March?" answered in one go, with no SQL and no report builder
• Explaining a charge — ask why a fine is the amount it is, and it walks back through the rule that produced it
• Fine and loan-period rules by asking — "set the fine to Rs 20 a day for Students, capped at Rs 500" changes the rule matrix without opening Administration
• Marking a holiday or setting working hours by chat — "the library is closed next Friday" or "we open at 9 and close at 5 on Saturdays"

How the acquisitions module is shaped

• The chain: vendor → basket → order lines → basket group → receive → invoice, and where the money comes from at every step
• Vendors: contacts, discount, tax, delivery time, currency and the vendor interface credentials
• Budgets and funds: a budget period, funds and sub-funds, allocations, and the difference between encumbered (ordered) and spent (invoiced)

Creating an order

• Creating a basket — what a basket is, the basket fields your library adds, and what closing a basket means
• Creating an order line — four ways: from an existing catalog record, from a new empty record, from a patron's purchase suggestion, or from an uploaded file
• On the order line: quantity, list price, discount, tax, fund, and the copies that will be created when it arrives
• Basket groups and printing a purchase order to send to the vendor
• Uncertain prices, and late orders you need to claim

Receiving — and the copies that appear by themselves

• Marking an order line received creates the copies in your catalog automatically — against the record on the order line, with the item type, branch, shelving location and barcodes the order specified. You do not catalog them a second time
• Partial receipt: the received portion splits off as its own completed line and the rest stays open
• Attaching received lines to an invoice, adjustments, closing the invoice, and what that does to the fund
• Purchase suggestions from patrons: accepting one, and turning it into an order line

Acquisitions settings

• Order line fields, basket fields and invoice fields — the extra fields your library needs and the system does not ship
• Currencies and exchange rates, and which currency a vendor is billed in
• The acquisitions defaults that decide how received copies are created — get these right once and receiving becomes a single click

Serials

• Creating a subscription: vendor, bibliographic record, branch, start date and expiry
• Frequencies and numbering patterns — how the system predicts "Vol 12, No 4, April 2026" before it arrives
• The issue calendar, and adjusting a prediction that has drifted
• Receiving an issue, marking one late or missing, and claiming it from the vendor
• Whether a received issue becomes a catalog copy, routing lists, and serial alerts for interested patrons

Hands-on this week

• Create a vendor, a budget and a fund
• Create a basket with two order lines, receive one in full and one partially, and invoice them
• Review a patron purchase suggestion — accept or reject one, and turn an accepted one into an order line
• Create a subscription with a prediction pattern and receive its first two issues

Where AI helps this week

• What is still outstanding — orders not yet received, by vendor or by fund, as a table
• Ordering in bulk — "order 3 copies each of these five titles from Vendor X against Fund Y" as one proposal you approve
• Recording a delivery — it matches the delivery note to the right open order lines and proposes the receipt
• Late issues — which subscription issues never arrived and are overdue for a claim
• Receiving an issue by chat — while the physical journal is in your hand and the screen is across the room

What the OPAC is

• The public catalog at your library's own address, and what a visitor can do without logging in: search, browse, see availability
• What a logged-in member can do: place a hold, renew, reading lists, purchase suggestions, reviews, saved searches

Content and navigation

• Content blocks — the navbar, hero, about, recent-books and news blocks; editing the words, reordering the page, and the draft → publish flow that keeps an unfinished edit off the public site
• Navigation — the two-level header and footer menus, internal and external links, and what belongs in each
• News, FAQs and the optional pages — databases, policies, opening hours — and switching a page on or off. An FAQ answers the question your desk is asked forty times a term, once
• Library lists — the staff-curated reading lists a visitor browses: new arrivals, a course reading list, a display table that outlives the display. Creating a list, and adding and removing titles on it
• Quote of the Day — the homepage quote widget, and changing it whenever you like

Appearance and access

• Themes — choosing a layout variant and a colour palette, and where your logo and library identity are set
• OPAC permissions and branch visibility — which branches, collections and fields the public may see
• Citation styles, the OPAC QR code for posters and shelf-ends

Talking to patrons

• The patron chat and the ticket queue — a member asks a question from the OPAC and it lands in front of staff. Picking one up, answering it, and closing it
• Why a written answer beats a phone call: the next member with the same question finds it, and the thread is on the record

Hands-on this week

• Edit the content blocks and publish them
• Add a header and a footer navigation item
• Post a news item, and change the theme
• Write an FAQ entry for a question your library is actually asked
• Build a library list and add a few titles to it
• Answer one patron message from the chat queue

You are practising on a shared catalog this week, so the page may change as classmates save their own edits — that is normal and does not affect your marks. Your work is scored from your own activity log, so a change of yours that someone later replaced still counts as done. Save your own screenshots if you want a record of how yours looked.

Where AI helps this week

• Drafting the words — ask it for an About section, a news item or an FAQ answer, then paste and edit it yourself
• Drafting straight into the page — or ask it to make the change on the actual page: a news item, an FAQ answer, an About block, a navigation link, a theme switch. It prepares the edit with a before/after view for you to check
• Choosing what to feature — "the ten most borrowed titles in the last 90 days" for the front page
• Changing the homepage quote by asking — "set today's quote to something about reading" drafts and applies one you can edit before it goes live
• The same rule as everywhere else: the AI proposes, you confirm. Nothing reaches the public catalog until you approve it, and what you approve is stamped as AI-assisted with your name against it — there is no auto-publish and no override

Reports

• The reports module: saved reports, running one, parameters, exporting to CSV or Excel, and charts
• Building a report with the guided builder, and writing one as saved SQL when the builder runs out
• The reports every library is asked for: circulation by month, top borrowers, most-borrowed titles, collection by class number, overdues by branch, fines collected, accessions in a period, dead stock
• Any time frame you like — the same report for a week, a semester, a financial year or an accreditation period, without rewriting it
• Statistics for the annual report, and how to make a number defensible when someone asks where it came from

Administration

• Branches — creating one, its address, its own settings, and what is shared with the rest of the library
• Staff accounts and permissions — creating a librarian, granting modules and individual permissions, per-branch staff, and the principle of giving the smallest grant that works
• Library settings and system preferences
• Item types, patron categories, authorized values, cities, restriction types, transfer limits
• Promoting a member to staff — the volunteer or the part-time assistant who needs a login: what promotion actually creates, and the grant you give them on day one
• Calendar and holidays, and the scheduled tasks behind fines, notices, automatic renewals and expiry — enabling one, setting its schedule, and checking that it ran

Inventory — proving the shelf matches the catalog

• What a stocktake is for: the copies the catalog says you own and the shelf does not, and the ones nobody has borrowed since 2019
• Running an inventory scan — scanning a shelf range, and reading the report: found, missing, and copies shelved out of sequence
• Why a library does this by section on a rolling basis rather than closing for a week
• Self-service and SIP2, RFID, and identity providers, where your library uses them

Backups and automatic backup

• What a backup of a library actually contains, and what it does not
• Running a backup on demand and downloading it
• Automatic backups — the schedule, retention, and where the copies are kept
• Restoring: what restoring means for a live library, and why you rehearse it before you need it
• The one habit that saves a library: check that last night's backup exists, once a month, on purpose

AI as an analyst — and the governance around it

• Ask for a report in plain language, over any time frame: "issues by department for the last semester", "titles added between January and March that have never been borrowed", "fine income by month this year". You get a real table — with a chart where the shape suits one — that you can export to CSV or PDF, save as a report, and share by link
• No SQL to write and no report builder to fight; and what it produces is a report you can keep and re-run
• A quality audit before an inspection — the catalog problems an accreditation visit will find, listed before the visitor arrives
• AI → Changes & History — every AI-assisted change, grouped by record type and operation, with the person who confirmed it
• Usage & cost — spend by model, by person, by month
• Per-staff AI permissions — who may use the chat, who may let the AI touch the catalog, members or circulation, and who may approve a bulk change
• What the AI will never do: no raw SQL, no money, no deletions, no editing the OPAC, and no change of any kind without a human confirmation

Hands-on this week

• Build one report with the guided builder and one as saved SQL
• Ask the AI for a report over a time frame of your choosing, then save and export it
• Create a branch, and promote one of your practice members to a staff account with a deliberately narrow permission set
• Enable one scheduled task and set when it runs
• Run an inventory scan over a shelf range and read the report