<HTML>
<BODY>
Salvete!<br>
<br>
> Using MS Word <br>
>however, I could ask it to find the weird non-numeric field designator and change it to something <br>
>distinctively numeric.<br>
><br>
<br>
Hmmm. Word adds a whole bunch of junk when it does anything whatsoever. It's part of its proprietary doesn't play well with others routine. May I suggest a slightly more deprecated approach through Notepad?<br>
<br>
<br>
>The trouble with any manual process like that is that our librarians <br>
>will skip it. I'm already struggling to get them to follow the minimal <br>
>workflow I introduced, they have a tendency to take short cuts that end <br>
>up with bad or incomplete records in our catalogue. It's difficult to <br>
>persuade them that it's not quantity but quality of records that's <br>
>important.<br>
><br>
>In this case, when my program didn't work, they decided to just import <br>
>the records straight into Koha (without asking me). Koha couldn't read <br>
>the records, so they decided to enter them manually but couldn't be <br>
>bothered typing anything more than a few words from the title, <br>
>misspelled and with incorrect capitalisation.<br>
><br>
<br>
Ah! I see the problem. >;) You need the angry mob argument. As in, when you don't catalogue these properly, and thus can't find a darn thing later (or worse, frustrate one of your Patrons) they will come hunting for you. Indeed, the coworkers will start the slaughter if they can't issue something when the need arises. It would be very easily demonstrated if you pulled a very prolific author and showed them what happens. For instance, I pull<br>
<br>
Martin, Ann M. <br>
<br>
since I'm a public with one heck of a chunk of the Baby - Sitter's Club. They'll see that<br>
<br>
Matin, Ann<br>
Martin, Anne<br>
Martin, Ann M<br>
<br>
all are not acceptable since they produce different (wrong!) results. Basically, they have to realise that it's a larger pain in the rear later if they're lazy now, which can of course be a hard argument with folks that live in the moment.<br>
<br>
If they still don't get it, then you needs snitch on them to a higher authority with firing power. <br>
<br>
Out of morbid curiousity, do these bad fields originate from a certain catalogue? Perhaps its feasible to avoid the problem entirely by locating a catalogue to query that doesn't have crummy fields in the first place.<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
Brooke @ Hinsdale MA
</BODY></HTML>