- Koha - lists.katipo.co.nz

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by Anita Pope 12 Jan '01

12 Jan '01

please remove me from your mailing list for KOHA Regards, Anita Pope Library Manager Australian Institute of Management - Qld & NT cnr Boundary and Rosa Streets Spring Hill 4000 PO Box 200 Spring Hill 4004 Phone (07) 3832 0151 or 16 13 48 Fax (07) 3832 0339 Email library(a)aimqld.com.au Web www.aimqld.com.au

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API for circulation interfaces
by Tonnesen Steve 11 Jan '01

11 Jan '01

Here is a proposed list of functions necessary to generate arbitrary circulation interfaces. Comments requested. Is this an appropriate forum for programming discussion? Program API for circulation interfaces: ==================== getpatroninformation ==================== Subroutine returns a hash reference with all patron information. Can be called with either borrowernumber or cardnumber. ($env, $patroninformation) = getpatroninformation($env,$borrowernumber,$cardnumber) ============= currentissues ============= Returns a hash reference (itemnumber => duedate) ($env, $currentissues) = currentissues($env, $borrowernumber); ================== getiteminformation ================== Subroutine returns a hash reference with all item information. Can be called with either itemnumber or barcode. ($env, $iteminformation) = getiteminformation($env,$itemnumber,$barcode) ============ findborrower ============ Subroutine returns an array reference containing a list of borrowernumbers that match $key. $key could be a cardnumber or a partial last name. ($env, $borrowernumber) = findborrower($env, $key) ========= issuebook ========= This subroutine may or may not generate additional questions that must be answered. ($env, $itemnumber, $rejected, $question, $questionnumber, $defaultanswer, $responses) = issuebook($env,$borrowernumber,$barcode) Subroutine must handle errors, some that block issuing, some that must be approved before issuing. If $rejected is not null, it will contain a message detailing the reason for rejection. Possible responses are listed below, prepended with 'Error:'. Alternatively, $rejected may just be '-1' in which case the issue should be rejected with no message displayed to the user. This might happen if the answer to a question resulted in a rejection. Error: Invalid barcode _____ Error: Invalid borrowernumber ____ Error: Item is restricted [$item->{'notforloan'}==1] Error: Item withdrawn [$item->{'withdrawn'}==1] Error: Restricted Item (and borrower not allowed to check out) [$item->{'restricted'}==1] Error: Reference item not for loan [$item->{'itemtype'} eq 'REF'] [Circulation::Renewals::renewstatus] Error: Issued to this patron, no renewals. If $question is not null, it will contain a YesNo question that should be asked. $defaultanswer will contain 'Y' or 'N'. $questionnumber will contain a unique integer for each question that might be asked. Interface code will generate a hash reference ($responses) with the responsees to each question asked and then recall issuebook() until the issue is accepted or rejected. Question: Already issued to this patron and reserved to ___, renew? default N Question: Already issued to this patron, renew? [$newdate=C4::Circulation::Renewals::renewbook()] Question: Already issued to patron ___, mark as returned? [returnrecord()] calculate any charges [calc_charges()] and [createcharge()] ========== returnbook ========== Subroutine for returning a book. $message may contain an arbitrary message to display to the user (maybe should be an array reference for multiple messages?). ($env, $itemnumber, $borrowernumber, $message, $overduefees) = returnbook($env,$barcode) Message: Reserved for collection at branch _______ Calculate any overdue fees (not in current Circulation code) [UpdateStats]

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Classification field
by Tonnesen Steve 04 Jan '01

04 Jan '01

Happy New Year! Has the classification field in the biblioitems table been replaced by the itemtype field? The entries in the two seem sort of similar in the demo data, except that the classification field isn't very uniform: Where classification is one of (Picturbook, Picture Book, Picture Books, PictureBiook, PictureBook, PictureBooks, Picture_book, Pitcurebook, PitureBook), the itemtype field is always JPC (Junior Picture Book). While on the subject. Are these itemtype classifications part of some library standard, or are they Horowhenua-specific groupings? I found that a lot of things were broken until I created some entries in the itemtype table. Steve Tonnesen (in balmy, melting, Northern British Columbia, Canada).

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Version 1.07 database update
by Tonnesen Steve 21 Dec '00

21 Dec '00

The database update script failed for me. The itemnumber field was already in the 1.06 table, so the itemtype field never got added. Also, I noticed that the new 1.07 koha.mysql data had a key on the datetime field. I had to modify the statistics datetime field so that it was NOT NULL and then add the key. Steve.

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1.07 is here
by Chris Cormack 20 Dec '00

20 Dec '00

Hi guys Ive finally tarred up and put 1.07 up availiable for download. Ive also this time, created a patch file and an update script to patch the perl scripts and update the database http://www.koha.org/download/update1.06-1.07.tar.gz The full installation is http://www.koha.org/download/koha-1.07.tar.gz Changelog is at http://www.koha.org/download/Changelog Im also in the process of setting up koha on sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/koha/ I will put the files up on soureforge for download also, unfortunately at the moment they are updating things, and releasing files isnt working properly. Ill put them up there as soon as the sourceforge ppl have finished their updates. I will be setting up cvs there, so if ppl would like to work on the project please contact me, and ill enable cvs access for you. Of course anonymous cvs updates will be available for all, but I want to set it up so developers can also commit their changes to the cvs tree. Much thanks to Glen Stewart, and Steve Tonnesen for their help. I have included Glen's data import script in the tarball as well. Hope you all have a good Christmas Chris -- Chris Cormack Programmer 025 500 789 Katipo Communications Ltd chris(a)katipo.co.nz www.katipo.co.nz

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More installation log:
by Tonnesen Steve 15 Dec '00

15 Dec '00

Some more issues (mostly resolved) that I have come up with in testing Koha: --- 1 --- In circ program: Error message when returning from ISSUES or RETURNS scripts messed up the main menu. Added a 'system("tput clear");' to clear the screen before redrawing the main menu to fix this. --- 2 --- Reading record only shows books currently signed out. --- 3 --- When viewing an item's record and clicking on the cardnumber beside "On loan to", it always goes to borrower number 2. Found problem. Was always going to previous borrower, instead of current. Changed 'borrower0' to 'borrower' in moredetail.pl, line 133. Also had to modify Search.pm so that $data->{'borrower'} was set to current borrower. --- 4 --- When viewing items in the moredetail.pl script, the header at the top is blank (just '()' where the title, author and dewey number should be) and biblio/biblioitem info is missing in the box at left. Found a fix for this. Changed "$data=bibitemdata($bi)" to "$data=bibdata($bi)" in moredetail.pl. Probably would have been better to find out what was wrong with bibitemdata subroutine? --- 5 ---  INCLUDE lines in htdocs files are not working for me. I'm assuming that I'm missing something in my apache configuration... Yes. Needed to enable Server Side Includes. Modifed apache config and added: Options +Includes AddHandler server-parsed .html to VirtualHost sections for intranet and opac virtual hosts. Note that apache web site discourages using .html for parsed files in favour of using .shtml. But if all your flat text files for Koha are parsed it doesn't make any difference. --- 6 --- I have also started to write a simpler interface for adding books to the database. Since I have schools that have no existing library automation in place, all existing books will have to be entered by hand (hoping MARC records will come in handy here if I can find a CD to borrow) and the acquisitions module is giving me problems, and is more tedious than I need. My script asks for an ISBN, if a biblioitem already exists, it just asks for the item info. If a biblioitem does not exist, it asks for the biblio info (title, author, copyright, etc.). If there already appears to be a biblio with this info it uses that and then asks the user to enter the biblioitem info and item info. Once the existing holdings are entered, they can revert to using the standard acquisitions module, or just keep entering books using my simpler script. Steve.

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Re: MARC Records
by glen_stewart＠associate.com 15 Dec '00

15 Dec '00

Hi Folks, I recently sent Chris a script developed for our small company library, which ran GLAS (a very yucky Windows software) until yesterday. It takes what GLAS exports and acts as a SQL generator. GLAS thinks it's exporting MARC records, but I wasn't so sure. Regardless, it may be trivial to modify it for use with MARC data. Because I couldn't make sense of the MARC output GLAS provided, I used the subfield option instead of MARC tags to identify each record item (a-z line prefixes). You may be able to plug the MARC tags back into the code and put it to good use. When the script is done running, the admin types "mysql Koha < koha.sql" and all the records are brought into Koha. GLAS uses the concept of "book ID's" to identify each book as unique in the database. I used these same ID's in Koha, as biblionumber and barcode number. Our library uses these numbers on book labels as well as Dewey numbers. I should note that we still use physical cards to track overdue items. The librarians want to switch to Koha to do that, as soon as it supports automatic member number assignment. I'd love to get one of those free Radio Shack scanners and have Koha check out items using that. (-: Anyway, Chris has the script and will hopefully get it out with 1.07 or sooner. Enjoy, Glen

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KOHA : Please unsubscribe
by Laurence Zerafa 15 Dec '00

15 Dec '00

Presently not using service. Please unsubscribe till further notice. laurencezerafa(a)hotmail.com Laurence _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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please unsubscribe
by michael collins 15 Dec '00

15 Dec '00

mcollins(a)ihug.co.nz

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MARC Records
by Jonathan Moore 14 Dec '00

14 Dec '00

-------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------ >MARC records have an astonishing amount of detail, both >in terms of data ... >possibility of adding a field to bibliosubject to > >specify a subject > heading system used? The system we are using seems to use the redirection entries that someone mentioned. I think we must have a whole table of entries that say to place a particular marc entry tag into a particular area of the programs database. It also seems to have a similar table for exporting. It would be nice to program this flexibility into Koha. I think it would help down the road in supporting other input formats such as the differences between USMARC and UKMARC. I agree with the idea of storing the marc record en mass in the database. There is a lot of use for being able to export it out at a later time, plus I think a lot of librarians are going to want to be able to modify their collection data from a marc oriented interface. >I also have a request. Could people send me some >samples of their MARC >records so I can do some sanity checking? A lot of my >MARC records are >not from "formal" sources, but were hand entered by >the librarian here. I have posted a couple of marc record files to our ftp server. I am working on a data conversion to get our data out of the system we are currently using to something new, possibly Koha. The old system doesn't place everything in the correct place so keep that in mind. Some of the information is being put in the 900+ range instead of the "correct" location. For example the one file with bar code information has it in the 945 range and it should be a sub field of the 852 tag. One of the files is quite large 30 megs it contains marc records for just about every item in our high school collection. There should be some good examples of multiple records that should when processed have a single shared marc bib record. ftp://usd465.com/pub/marc-samples/ I'm also curious to know how librarians typically use commercial CDs of MARC records. Do they import all of the records into their library system at once, or just import records for books they hold? How are the MARC records typically stored on a CD? Is it just one big file full of MARC records? The way our librarians want to use MARC is done by an add on to the Follet system. It is a yearly cd subscription of common titles/all titles you are likely to have. There are two main uses 1. Run it through your existing holdings data and it will insert correct mark records for the items. 2. Use it when you get new titles. The marc cd is searchable. Search using whatever field you desire: title, author, isbn, etc. Once you find the title click on add copy and put in copy specific data. You are down. I think we order books pre bar coded, so I think they look up the Marc record, click create copy, scan the bar code and enter the price. Some thoughts on determining when to create a new marc bib record in the system. I think in most cases that if you have items with the same title and author then they are probably different copies of the same intellectual property and hence should be link together in the system in some we whether that is by a common marc record or some other method. What if we had 2 configurable threshholds? I list of one or more boolean conditions that must be true for automatic combining and one for queried combining. For example If author and title and publisher are all the same that the items are automatically combine in some manor or cross referenced. If the author and title are the same and nothing else then query the user if he/she wants to combine or cross reference. What are you using to do the Marc processing? I have been looking at the MARC.pm code with the same idea in mind, but I haven't done any coding yet. I have just been looking at the documentation to get an idea of what it can do. It seems pretty powerful and flexible. The website for MARC.pm is http://marcpm.sourceforge.net/ PS I am not sure how this works but I remember reading on the Library of Congress site on marc record format that there are four kinds of marc records 1. Bibliographic 2. Authority 3. Holdings 4. ??? These could be all wrong I am just going by memory. I didn't see any obvious way that these are flagged anywhere. For example Follet seems to treat any marc record without a bar code as a bib record and anything with a bar code can end up creating both a bib record and a holding record that is tied to it. Sorry to go on so long, but while we are talking about MARC record cds, how hard would it be and what legal issues are their on creating a shared marc record library for Koha? Either something that could be accessed live from remote, or perhaps a distributed network where groups of libraries inter publish marc records. Does this already exist somewhere from a non commercial source? Jonathan Moore District Technology Coordinator Winfield Public Schools 316.221.5100 Technology Office 316.221.0508 Office Fax --------------------------------------------------------------- Visit Winfield Public Schools' website at http://www.usd465.com

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