Steven, I don't think dummy records would work. But maybe I'm not understanding the original question. I think what we are talking about here is the ability to display certain tags and subfields when cataloging a book, a different set when cataloging a video, yet another set when cataloging an audiobook, etc. -- right? And you mentioned the General Material Designation (GMD) as a way to define these broad categories. (And BTW, please ignore my previous wandering thoughts about item types -- that's a different issue altogether, something that's defined locally. What we're talking about here are global "item types," which I'm going to call "categories" in this e-mail to avoid confusion.) I don't find a handy list of authorized GMD's (is there one?), but the MARC21 discussion on tag 008 (http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/ecbd008s.html) mentions seven categories of materials: Books, Computer files, Maps, Music, Continuing resources, Visual materials and Mixed materials. Now, what gets displayed on Koha's cataloging page is controlled by the "tab" column in marc_subfield_structure. If a tag|subfield is _not_ to be displayed, then the value stored in "tab" should be -1. (Positive number values of tab, starting with 0, control which browser 'tab' the tag|subfield will appear in.) So if I want to be sure to display the 245|h tag|subfield when cataloging "Visual materials," but I don't want to see it when cataloging "Books," then I would want the value of "tab.marc_subfield_structure" to be -1 when cataloging books, but some positive number (maybe 1) when cataloging visual materials. If you create dummy records, all you really could have is a suggestion of which fields to fill in, and which can be ignored. For example, your dummy record for books could say "ignore this" in the 245|h tag|subfield, while your dummy record for visual materials could say "be sure to put something here" instead. (And hope the cataloger remembers to take these notes out before saving the record!) But either way, 245|h is going to be displayed, because you're going to have a positive number in the "tab" column for 245|h (because you're going to need it for sure for some of your records). That's why I say the only way I can think of (right now) to display different templates for different material categories would be to have different marc_subfield_structure tables for each category. So for instance, if your choose to catalog a videotape, Koha would consult the "visual_marc_subfield_structure" table to determine which tag|subfields to display. And then, of course, there's the whole issue of different versions of MARC...ugh! (gone to get some aspirin) Stephen Steven F. Baljkas said:
Saturday, April 17, 2004 15:15 CDT
Hi, Stephen, Ernest, et al.
Re: the 'not yet' answer to Ernesto's question
Is there a way to create diferent tag structures so I have predefined templates for books, magazines, pictures, videos, cds, etc???
I am going to display my programming ignorance again and ask a follow-up question re: Stephen's specification that
It seems like this would require a separate marc_subfield_structure table for each item type. Then the user could specify which item type they want to catalog and Koha would consult the appropriate table to determine which tags and subfields would be displayed. (This would mean that the task of setting up the MARC subfield structure would be even more complex than it is now! So if Koha were to implement this change, it would be nice if people would share their templates with others, once they have them defined.)
Would it be possible to include with the Koha distribution dummy 'records' (templates) of each of the common GMD types?
If these could be made difficult to delete or alter accidentally, they would serve as the kind of templates Ernesto probably means. (This is what the ILS's Athena and MicroCat do essentially; probably others also.)
I would be willing to take the time (inter-contracts now) to work on detailing the MARC21 tag structure specifics if that would help. I hope to be up and running with Koha's latest stable version later this month and could harvest and export the tag structures (as was explained in the answer to a question I posed for Doc) after setting them up in my Koha.
Anyway, Stephen, would it be possible to have dummy 'records' as a simple solution?
Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, Canada
-- Stephen Hedges Skemotah Solutions, USA www.skemotah.com -- shedges@skemotah.com