Aha, getting clearer, thanks so much! Well, I expect that the biblio records will be getting updated frequently, and since I also plan to use virtual shelves (lists) and have members using tagging, item-level item-types seem the way to go rather than duplicate biblios, right? Plus (correct me if I'm wrong) this eliminates my having to choose for Advanced Search - only Collection Code will be available for that? Back to icons then, is there a good biblio-level field to indicate in the search results (ideally with an icon) that a given biblio has available (child items with) format A only, or formats A+B or A+C? Fortunately there aren't that many possible combinations. . . I don't mean Koha calculating this from the child item records, the biblio-level field's value could be hard-coded in the MARC before importing, and updated as new-format version items get added later on. On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 6:20 PM, Owen Leonard <oleonard@myacpl.org> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 4:35 AM, <hansbkk@gmail.com> wrote:
And a whole lotta talk about "biblio level" vs "biblioitem level" fields.
With regard to your question the talk is about biblio level vs item level. Right now it is true that biblio and biblioitem are more or less 1:1. They both refer to biblio-level information. The item type stored in the biblioitems table is a biblio-level item type.
On the other hand, the items table also has an item type column (itype) as well as a collection code column (ccode). The purpose of the item-level field is to make it possible to have different items under one biblio record which have, for instance, different circulation rules. I might have one copy of a dictionary which circulates and one which stays in reference.
I see there is a preference as to which table's itemtype to use, between biblioitems's itemype or items' itype - is that relevant and even if not why would I choose one over the other?
If you choose to have item-level_itypes OFF, it means you cannot do what I cited above, having multiple items attached to one record each with different circulation rules. In fact, this setup is pretty much what you describe below:
It seems to me that I must catalog these as separate biblios, which creates multiple identical copies of the biblio-level MARC data, and just different ("holdings level") data in the items table, including item type.
You could do this. This is what we did before Koha could do item level itemtypes. If we wanted one copy to circulate and one to stay in reference each had to have its own record.
So when a patron searches for "2009 Proms Gala" they will get four identical but separate results. How can I indicate the different item types right there without them having to go back and forth between the search results and the detail screen?
If you don't mind having duplicate records, then you turn item-level_itypes OFF and Koha will display the biblio-level itemtype icon on the search results screen.
A related question - is there a way to bulk update the "biblio" level information for all four of these separate records in a single operation?
There will be in 3.4, I believe.