On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 08:29:18AM -0600, Marie Wardall wrote:
So the Dolphin Scanners that we have right now that we use for inventory could be re-programmed to work with the KOHA system if we had someone do that for us. Our Network Manager I'm thinking could do this. In fact, you wouldn't strictly need to re-program them. Koha could certainly handle the full 10-digit barcode. It all depends on what you want it to look like when you manually type the barcode in. Feel free to catalog a book in the LibLime demo to prove to yourself that the barcodes will work. Or if you send me a couple of your MARC records I will import them into the demo so you can try them out.
Of course, you could also program Koha to remove those last three digits as well... (it's a one-line change in two places). Joshua
Marie J. Wardall IMC Coordinator Rothschild Elementary School 810 First Street Rothschild, WI 54474 mwardall@dce.k12.wi.us Phone: 715-359-3186 ext.5424 FAX: 715-355-3723 Fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards. Arthur Schopenhauer
"Stephen Hedges" <shedges@skemotah.com> 2/26/2006 3:06 PM >>> Marie Wardall said: [...] *Barcodes-Our current barcodes are 5 digits long with a leading T for a material barcode and a leading P for a patron barcode.
Joshua noted that Nelsonville Public Library still uses the Follett patron barcodes, so I can give you some extra information here.
Follett uses Interleaved 2-of-5 symbology in their barcodes, but the scanned codes are then manipulated by their system so the user only sees a "T" or a "P" and no more than five digits. If you scan these barcodes with a non-Follett scanner in a text editor, you will see that the barcodes are actually always 10 digits long: the visible digits (no "T" or "P") with leading zeros to pad the number to 7 digits, plus three more digits that tell the Follett software a little more about the barcode (such as if it is a "T"itle or a "P"atron barcode). For example, if the Follet library card had the number "P 1234" printed on it, an off-the-shelf scanner would read something like "0001234999."
Most vendors of barcode scanners know how to program their products for Follett systems, so they can sell to schools that use Follett. Those same vendors can help you program your scanners to simply remove the last three digits. Then the barcode example above would look like "0001234" when scanned into Koha. Staff quickly get used to making this conversion in their heads if they need to type in a number manually. Works fine. (But don't expect the Follett folks to help you with the scanner programming, of course!)
-- Stephen Hedges Skemotah Solutions, USA www.skemotah.com -- shedges@skemotah.com
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