Forwarded solution Agnes et Bernardo, Because I so greatly appreciated your help getting this off the ground, I decided to write up the steps I took to import the currently borrowed book information from my old filemaker database into issues. First step: The only useful information I had from my Filemaker database was the borrower's First Name and the Barcode number for the book he has checked out. (BTW, if you are working with Linux, you can install the 30 day trial of Filemaker 10 no problem with wine to export all your data into CSV files.) Once I exported the data, I opened up the file in a OOCalc, fixed the formating of names, looked for different versions of the same person etc. I saved it as a tab file, and opened it in a simple text editor. Then I made sure to find/replace and remove any enclosing " or ' around string data, and saved it with tab delimiters. Second step: open mysql (mysql -uroot koha -p) Create a tempory table that will contain data agglomerated from your old database and tables: issues, items, and borrowers: mysql> create table borrowtemp ( barcode int(11), firstname text, borrowernumber, itemnumber); Import your tab delimited values file into the table: mysql> load data local infile 'borrower.tab' into table borrowtemp; Now, update borrowers with any borrower names that have checked out books but haven't been added to "Patrons": mysql> insert into borrowers (firstname, categorycode, branchcode) select distinct borrowtemp.firstname, 'FRERE' as categorycode, 'RIM' as branchcode from borrowers inner join borrowtemp on borrowers.firstname != borrowtemp.firstname order by borrowtemp.firstname; (note, 'FRERE' is a category of Patrons that must already exist, and 'RIM' is the library code for a library which must already be created) Now that the Patrons (borrowers) is populated and have all been assigned a borrowernumber, you can update your borrowtemp with that information: mysql> update borrowtemp, borrowers set borrowtemp.borrowernumber = borrowers.borrowernumber where borrowtemp.firstname = borrowers.firstname; Now, before we can get the barcodes of the books checked out to borrowernumber, we have to grab the itemnumber corresponding to the barcode in items: mysql> update borrowtemp, items set borrowtemp.itemnumber = items.itemnumber where borrowtemp.barcode = items.barcode; Finally, the issues table can be populated with the borrowed books: mysql> insert into issues (borrowernumber, itemnumber, date_due, branchcode) select borrowtemp.borrowernumber, borrowtemp.itemnumber, date_add(CURDATE(), interval 8 month) as date_due, 'RIM' as branchcode from borrowtemp; (As you can see, I set the date_due to eight months from the current date, which you can change as you see fit - our old system did not have due dates! And of course, once again 'RIM' is the Library code.) Thanks again for your help! I hope this can help someone who finds themselves in a similar migration situation! -BFT On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 5:21 AM, Agnes Rivers-Moore <arm@hanover.ca <mailto:arm@hanover.ca>> wrote: Hi I'm afraid I can't help with MySQL. This all depends so much on what data you have in your old system, and how it is stored. There is a summary at http://www.kohadocs.org/migrating_to_koha.html, for a much older version of Koha but the principles and main tables are still relevant. Many more useful notes at http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php A diagram of the tables with the field names on http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:dbschema:3.01 and see others on the wiki. However, it will be up to you how to decide which piece of data from your old system should be mapped to which field of the new one. When you have all your borrowers and books in Koha, you will need to identify borrower by barcode, extract the borrowernumber, identify the book, extract the itemnumber, and insert those to the issues table with some kind of due date. HTH Agnes Br. Francis Therese Krautter wrote: Thank you for the reply... The only information I need is to attach a patron's name, or the inverse to a barcode to show that they currently have the book. You are talking about the different tables - the idea seems ok conceptually, but I have no idea how to go about doing it - as I am brand new to koha and have very limited experience with mysql. I am just starting to get comfortable with the marc system, though I still seem to be importing values for something (other than state) which cause books to become "missing" or lost, when they are not. Maybe you could point me to the references I need in order to make some progress with the tables thing. Your aide is greatly appreciated! -BFT On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 12:43 AM, Agnes Rivers-Moore <arm@hanover.ca <mailto:arm@hanover.ca> <mailto:arm@hanover.ca <mailto:arm@hanover.ca>>> wrote: This is a fairly complicated process, it depends how much of the circulation data you hope to transfer. You can add some of it to the 952 field in a MARC record - this can accommodate fields such as $l (letter l) number of times borrowed, and $q due date of item if currently checked out. If you can tell where this information resides in your old system, you can write a script to insert it to the MARC records and them the bulk MARC import process will include that in the item details. However this does not tell you who has each item. That would need to be imported to the issues table, as Chris says, and link to the borrowers table for the details of the person who has the item. Issues link to the borrower table through 'borrowernumber' and to the items table through 'itemnumber', and needs data such as branchcode, issuingbranch, date_due, issuedate, and timestamp. There is also oldissues, which holds the history of all completed checkouts. HTH Agnes Br. Francis Therese Krautter wrote:
Hello,
I am still working on importing data into koha. We have a rather large database and I am trying to move it over, most of it has moved so far, but one major importation I can't figure out how do is all the currently borrowed books. I can't find a marc field or a koha variable that looks like it contains this information. There are over 1000 books currently checked out, I really don't want to have to do it by hand!
-BFT ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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-- Agnes Rivers-Moore Assistant Librarian Hanover Public Library -- Agnes Rivers-Moore Assistant Librarian Hanover Public Library