Saturday, August 16, 2003 00:53 CDT Howdy, all, At some point in this conversation, Wolfgang (I think) was asking something about MARC and given the beginning part of the subject line, I am wondering if anybody checked out the various to/from MARC conversion tools available off the Library of Congress MARC Tools page at: URL <http://www.loc.gov/marc/marctools.html> Take a look at MARCMakr. You might need to do a two-step dump to regularise the data but it should be able to handle just about anything. I wasn't clear on what info was wanted on MARC. Normally, when dealing with a batch of records in one file (as often with collection exports in migration), the end-of-record delimiter appears in a text editor as two boxes, with the next record's leader and directory starting immediately afterward. Wolfgang, if I misunderstood and you were asking for what delimiters end any given MARC field, you have a huge problem in hand because the variability with even brief records is immense and the delimiting is regulated by position from the directory at the beginning of the MARC record (i.e. get out your calculator, it's gonna be a long night). ------------------------------------------------ On another tangent, if I understood Wolfgang, the bibliographic data from the different contributing libraries/library branches is of what one euphemistically hears called "varying quality." While in the perfect world -- and like the ad currently on in the North American market reminds us, 'Of course, we live nowhere near Perfect' -- everything would come with clear breaks and all the data would be sparkingly perfect, too, most retrospective conversions simply aim to get some version of the data to migrate across, at least in the first pass. I have friends whose whole contract positions were just cleaning up catalogues after system migrations. Wolfgang, you can use global editing tools, outside of Koha, like the MARCEdit one off that same LOC page, to make systematic corrections to your records before importing them into Koha. Or is that not working for some reason? Give it a try if you haven't. You may be able to correct and standardise enough of the records to make a smoother transition. Your library staff should realise, though, with any system migration, there *will* be "interactive" work to be done: i.e. touching up of the records in the new system. This is *normal*. From what I've been reading, people seem to be expecting Koha to eliminate this (even Koha people seem to be aiming pretty high in thinking this can be eliminated). Remember: your cataloguing staff are there for a reason ;-) I hope some of this helps. Just remember, guys: you are doing a great job and people out here DO appreciate it and the beautiful thing you have created in Koha. Pat yourselves on the back. Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB CANADA