Hi Kathy, Thank you so much for your well thought out reply. I will use this method to define the various collections within our branch libraries when it comes to defining home locations / shelving areas / deweys etc. I still have a problem though with temporary locations. These include Foxton Mending Room, Levin Mending Room, Levin Processing Room. Items may have a brief stint in these transitional 'temporary' or current locations, while being processed after acquisitions, or when needing mending. These temporary locations are not home locations (which are handled beautifully) in Kathy's example). How we work it now in Koha 2.9 is that we 'return' items using a scanner into the appropriate virtual branch (ie Foxton mending or Levin mending etc). This is quick and means we can find them no matter which mending room in which town they are at. Likewise, our acquisitions workstation is set up as Processing branch and all new stock show up with a current location as Processing. How will we best achieve this level of functionality in Koha 3.0? I can only think of creating a Patron for each of these temporary locations, and then issue items as they are taken into each mending room (for example) and return them when they are fixed. We really don't want these transactions counting as 'issues' though for statistical reporting. Any thoughts? Cheers Jo Ransom. Kathy Rippel wrote:
If you are talking about the staff use (as opposed to the tech stuff), there is another way of approaching your problem.
I count three (or four) main places in an item records where you can enter hierarchical information that will show up in other places in your catalog that both patrons and staff can see. I would use a combination of these fields to best fit your situation.
I'm a little unsure about the interactions in your scenario about using both Location (952a) and Sublocation (952b). It's possible they could represent your "library, departments and laboratories" and "several sublocations/collections" respectively.
However, if you use your 952a (Location) for your "whatever your institution or entity is", you can subdivide otherwise as follows.
library, departments and laboratories -- these could all be assigned a shelving location (952c)
* Library * Chemistry Dept. * Physics Lab
several sublocations/collections -- the next level could be a collection (952 subfield 8).
A further breakdown can be done using the call number (952o)
* Smith office 628.3 * Staff Lounge 628.3
Volume numbers and years go best in 952h for us.
Using these areas, you have quite a bit of flexibility, depending on your actual situation.
So, let's take a hypothetical book that is housed in the Chemistry Dept. of "Your Local University Library Collection."
Location: Your Local University Library Collection Shelving location: Chemistry Dept. Collection: Faculty offices Call number: Smith 628.3 Volume: v. 3
I'd cut out the Collection use like this, if you don't need that many levels.
Hope that gives you another perspective.
Kathy
At 02:39 PM 12/11/2008, Lino Tremblay wrote:
Hello everybody,
I'm trying to figure out how I'll set up my locations, and I'd like to know how you guys did. As our situation not atypicall, I'm sure some of you have faced the same problem
So: we have several collections here, located for the most part in three places: library, departments and laboratories. Each of these locations is divided in several sublocations/collections. My problem is that all locations/sublocations/collections in Koha are at the same level: in an item, I could choose "Library" as a location, and a specific department as a sublocation - or the opposite, or any combination I can imagine - and it would be accepted.
My question now: is there a way to create a hierarchy so that my Location menu contains only my three locations, and the Sublocation/collection shows only the collections available within this location? Or at least refuse an invalid combination?
Thanks!
Lino _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
Kathleen D. Rippel Pathfinder Central, Manager Central Kansas Library System 1409 Williams Great Bend, KS 67530
(620-792-4865) phone (800-362-2642) toll-free, KS (620-792-5495) fax
kdr@ckls.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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