Thursday, September 25, 2003 18:25 CDT Hi, Chris, Regarding your comment in answer to Pierre's inquiry
biblio has things like title, author, copyright date etc. biblioitems has number of pages, itemtype, call number etc items has accession date, location (which branch etc)
So the potential is you should have 1 biblio, 1 or many biblioitems, and 1 or many items.
Lets take The Fellowship of the ring. We might have 2 copies of the DVD 3 of the book, and 1 large print version say.
So we would have 1 biblio. 3 biblioitems (1 for dvd, 1 for fiction, 1 for large print) and 6 items (2 attached to the dvd biblioitem, 3 attached to the fiction and 1 to the large print)
So that's how the internal storage works.
Of course we can make it appear to the librarian or the borrower as if we have 1 biblio, and 6 items ie abstract over the biblioitems.
But I think the form has been designed in a way so that it looks like we'd need 3 biblios for the above example .. which is not right.
That's where you have things wrong my friend. Beyond the MARC stuff, which I know is not your responsibility or interest, whatever library advice you are getting is WRONG. *** Three different items do require three different records. *** You have three different physical manifestations of a work, which, if we are still using AACR2R rules -- which are the standard for the anglophone library world ascribed to and endorsed by your National Library as well as those of the Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United State -- the RULES require three different records. The biblio level that you all wisely created acts like an authority record, pulling together different manifestations of a work, because, God only knows what the patron might actually want. But you have to remember that that's all it should do then. As a pure matter of what is correct, 3 different types of item (book, DVD, large print book) require 3 different records, which would have slightly different data and different MARC coding. If you want to keep the biblio level, then work should begin on making that into the core of the AUTHORITIES for the system (used forms, cross-references, see also's etc.). As a small aside, different ***editions*** of the same work should also have separate records. Only multiple copies of the same item should be bound in together by some kind of holdings data. And to forestall the FRBR people, please realise that most people are not rushing headlong to embracing that different perspective: most of us are quite content with AACR2R and will be for some time to come. Thanks for letting me vent again, Chris. Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, CANADA