There are three standards central to archival description: DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard), MARC, and Encoded Archival Description (EAD). Koha can handle 2 out of three, plus allow us to track in-house use of our materials and link to digitized copies of the originals where they exist. So, I like Koha. The real problem we have with Koha is the lack of analytic record support ( http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Analytic_Record_support ) because many of our collections have item-level descriptions which are handled as analytics. We also have a number of journals which have analytic records for specific articles in certain issues and we need to be able to tie the analytic record to the particular issue of the serial's record. Another problem is that Koha seems to only allow for the borrower to make only one hold request per title - a real problem with serials (and collections with linked item level analytical records) - because a person may really want to see the Spring and Fall issues of 1994 and the Summer issue of 1995 of a serial. Hopefully, I'm wrong about this being a problem and somebody can tell me how to do this? On a personal note, I would be very interested in sharing ideas with other archives or libraries with archival materials about how to best use Koha for archival collections. Thanks for asking, Nicole! Linda
Hi all,
Is anyone on list using Koha to catalog archive collections? Someone asked me for examples of libraries using Koha for this purpose and I was just wondering if any of you happened to be doing this and if so how have you found it to work?
Thanks a bunch, Nicole C. Engard
-- Linda Culberson lculber@mdah.state.ms.us Archives and Records Services Division Ms. Dept. of Archives& History P. O. Box 571 Jackson, MS 39205-0571 Telephone: 601/576-6873 Facsimile: 601/576-6824