An amazing experience with INMANTEC workshop on Koha and Dspace!

An amazing experience with INMANTEC workshop on Koha and Dspace!

Dear All

I am sharing here my Unique and one of the most challenging experience in workshop on Koha and Dspace organized by INMANTEC, Ghaziabad, India from 14-16 July, 2017.

Live dvd of Koha and Dspace was ready, contacted the organizer about computer hardware capability, oh it was only 1 GB RAM and no DVD reader/writer. Ok how many participants are there? Its approx 70 ! Mind stopped working because i had no experience to handle workshop on 1 GB RAM for two software and large learner.
As habit always keep many alternative plans so i had iso file of only koha, only dspace and iso of both software. Koha can be managed on 1 GB RAM but Dspace? There was Rain at Rourkela at the time of leaving station on 12th so called auto instead of taking help of my son. Got the train and reached Raipur at 0400 hours on 13th, took rest on floor of retiring room, left station at 0600 hours for Raipur Airport and caught flight at 1000 hours along with question how to conduct workshop? Reached Delhi at 1200 and catch shuttle bus to reach metro airo city station than reached vaishali by changing three metro trains. At vaishali took auto and reached INMANTEC, Ghaziabad at 1430 hours.

Went to lab without seeing my room for rest. How many participants? Now 80/90 but 90 system needs to be prepared. Ok bring pen drive (because no DVD drive) as much as possible, got approx 5/6 including mine, took help of 3/4 computer lab staff and installed only Koha (system was not capable to installed both software) on approx 90 PC with bootable pen drive and feed some food/dinner after 24 hours to my stomach (sorry dear stomach because work is important for me).

Early in the morning after inauguration saw the lab nicely managed my computer staffs and two projector was ready one in front and other in back due to sitting arrangement plan. Approx 100 learners now but all got the single computer with Koha installed on each PC. First day started modules and some basic information about koha without discussion about Koha installation. Completed koha basic system configurations, Acquisition, cataloguing, library creation, patron category creation, circulation policy etc. On first day learners returned home with 100% satisfaction. Second day focused on rest of the modules including tools etc. All followed the instruction as displayed in the screen so hardly felt need to personally assist. So Entire Koha modules covered as per the common practice of Indian libraries.
Still question was in mind at night how to educate practically on Dspace in next final day. Their were 4 computers with 4GB of RAM so i installed dspace on all 4 PC having 4GB of RAM and give admin access to all on dspace (intranet) but i was not sure about performance of computer and dspace when lot of people will log parallel with same credentials.
Third day came and divided 4 Dspace PC IP (to access dspace home page) almost equally among all learners. Thank god all able to log with same credentials and dspace worked fine. Taught everything practically as per Indian context like creation community, collection, adding users, and uploading of files etc.. Instructed to use name of participant while creating community and collections so that they can identify their own and upload the files on their own created collections because parallelly so many learners were doing the same task on same dspace machine, i also felt very happy to see dspace worked fine and each member could exercise well. Described almost all features of dspace  and some customization related files etc. The entire Dspace finished within 3 hours successfully without system fail.

Now unplanned installation task of both software was left so first told them to download koha live dvd iso file from itshelp.co.in and make bootable dvd/pendrive with Yumi tool than showed mine installation video. For dspace i shown learners to practice how to install dspace with command line, hence almost each command was executed without completing the installation (a kind of mock test/installation). The motive was to make them aware how actually we install dspace as well as koha directly from Internet and entire task done successfully.

The feedback form of participants clearly reflected that the workshop was exceptionally successful in terms of their objective. I personally believe workshops/training programs are basically meant for reference and provide general help on said topics hence the major thing is to develop the confidence among the participants by removing fear about the topic in such a way that they themselves can start and learn these skills with community support.

I thanks to entire INMANTEC family for providing such a platform for LIS professionals and congratulate Dr. Rajesh Kumar Jha, Librarian, INMANTEC who took the leadership in this direction. I thanks all participants who listen me patiently 3 days and able to grasp some idea on above software. I shall be highly obliged for respect and honor which i got at INMANTEC as well as a wonderful experience which i never got and now it can be used next time too for educating large number of participants.

inmantec

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One comment

  1. Raj Roushan

    I was one of the participant at this workshop. I learnt almost all the modules of koha and how to install it and also on D-Space.Now I am on the practice. A good experience of three days.
    Thanks to our koha guru vk mishra and whole the team of INMANTEC who organise the event.

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