On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 5:05 PM, Galen Charlton <gmc@esilibrary.com> wrote:
Hi Elaine,
On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 4:31 PM, Elaine Bradtke <eb@efdss.org> wrote:
Here's an example of the imported 008: 130515s2006####stka###gr#####000#0#eng#d
Just to confirm, for the migrated records, "#" in the 008 represents a literal hash character, not a space?
We are using a literal '#' (hash). Your question prompted me to check the MARC21 standard, specifically http://www.loc.gov/marc/specifications/specrecstruc.html where we find the following notacion on the documenation: *blank (SP).* ASCII character 20(hex) (represented graphically in MARC 21 documentation as [image: ASCII character 20 (hex)] or #), which is used in * indicators* and data elements containing coded values (and occurs in data content). Generally, blank stands for "undefined," but in some instances it has been assigned a meaning. ASCII name is space. So our MARC is has # where it should have ' '. We'll fix this and re-evaluate this problem. This interpretation is not obvious from the specification. -Doug-
How important is the 008 field in the long term? I know it does influence a few display and search functions in Koha.
In my view, in general it's worth going to some effort to maintain the 008s, as the information encoded in them is either not to be found anywhere else in the record, or if it is, is in the form of free text that can cause indexing indigestion. For example, I'd rather grab the primary language from the 008/35-37 than have to parse language names.
Regards,
Galen -- Galen Charlton Manager of Implementation Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts email: gmc@esilibrary.com direct: +1 770-709-5581 cell: +1 404-984-4366 skype: gmcharlt web: http://www.esilibrary.com/ Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org & http://evergreen-ils.org