Sunday, August 1, 2004 18:48 CDT Hi, all, I appended the following questions to a message back to Joshua on the 23rd and as I've had no takers since then, I am reposting in the hope that someone may be able to tackle some of these questions. Any modifications I've enclosed in [ ]. Thanks in advance for any and all efforts. And here goes ... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I have a few questions that have sort of crystallised out of my (so far poor) efforts to help out Christian Calle with his Koha questions. [snip] I played around online with the test version of Koha, not realising that any changes I made there would remain. I apologise if I've screwed anything up for anyone. At the time, I was intending to delineate the complete MARC21 field structure, but then I thought (erroneously?) that it wouldn't be available for anyone actually to use so what would be the point. Now, Christian [was] asking for a delineation of MARC tag structure (I think he was expecting that it was included withinn Koha to begin with, which I understood is not the case), so .... * Question 1: For his sake and for the sake of others, if I and/or interested others 'fix' what is available in the test version online, would it be possible for him/others to simply download it somehow? # From looking at this, it dawned on me that I wasn't seeing the Leader or the 001 defined (and had forgot to try to add them myself when mucking about), hence ... * Question 2: What is the relationship of the MARC record data within Koha? [Specifically, for the moment] what does Koha actually do with the information in the fixed-length fields if anything? (BTW the current connection in the 003 test drive is wrong according to what I was taught/have seen). I had thought that Koha cataloguing could be worked without reference to the underlying database. If not, (follow-up questions): how do we connect all the potential MARC fields to whatever [and however many] fields are in the core of the Koha database? [How does Koha deal with fields that can repeat in MARC, for 2 common examples, 500 notes and 650 subject headings?] Does Koha just turf info that doesn't fit into those, i.e. are records deconstructed and fields lost once imported? Devolving from this worry about MARC cataloguing and the integrity of records within the database (again: important for sharing and any future migrations), I realised I had never seen an answer to a rather straightforward OPAC matter, thus: * Question 3: What is the correspondence between the MARC structure and the actual records displayed in the Koha OPAC? I have to try to explain what I mean by analogy. The systems I am most familiar with (TKM MicroCat, Athena, Voyager) allow the library administrator/s to decide how to display information retrieved by OPAC searches. Librarians assumed a default non-MARC record display (which is almost certainly right [in that who other than a librarian would want that format]) and the systems allowed decisions to be made about which fields to display, which to suppress, and in what order elements from tags should appear, and (with 2 of the systems), the label that would appear for the user beside the information (e.g. Author(s):, Title:, etc.). For that matter ... * Question 4: How/Where does one set which MARC fields one wants searchable for a given search type? Is this adjustable? Just a few 'light' questions. ;-) Any and all answers appreciated (good ones, especially so ;-) ). Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, Canada --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.732 / Virus Database: 486 - Release Date: 29/07/2004