Hi George * How should I go about developing a system for creating a call number? Is there a "best practices" way of doing this? (The vast majority of these videos are from fairly small publishers, or are even created in-house, so they won't have any official Dewey or LC numbers or anything. So, I'm going to have to create a system from scratch, and I'd like to figure out the best way to do it. I use Koha for a church library - well I have a theological college library, and the church library is treated as a branch. Just to confuse things they use different classification systems (Library of Congress for the college and Dewey Decimal for the church.) I also have a lot of in-house created DVDs. I have chosen not to use either classification system for the audiovisual items. As you say, it is near impossible (and certainly painfully slow) to do original cataloguing for in house items. I also do volunteer work for the local public library where my current job is changing the classification of their dvds in the catalogue. They have metre and metres of shelving full of movies all shelved at 791.4371 followed by the first three letters of the director's name. As no one knows (or gives a toss) who the director is, it was impossible to find anything. They are now shelving by genre (subject type). Each record will have the genre listed in the 650 or 655 fields so they will show in a catalogue sort. The genre also appears in the location. The item will now be shelved (in their genre groups, eg science fiction, comedy, western, etc) with identifying icons for the genre then a spine label saying dvd then first three letters of the title (ignoring the, de, and, a, etc) for example Once were warriors shelved at dvd ONC. In my own library, the DVDs are listed chronologically as you originally started yours as they are mostly in sets and even though the subject matter within may change, I want to keep the sets together. Most of them are conferences where each message relates to another. The borrower can browse the whole set or search in the catalogue. This has meant watching most of them myself to ascertain their subject headings (630, 650). I will leave those like that. The videos are currently numbered chronologically as you had but I will be changing those to the system used in the public library. I do not want to use Dewey as half my collection will be at 248.845 and therefore cause as much confusion as being un-catalgued. I have a separate children's collection and so the Vege tales would be there separate from heavy theological works anyway. Sumo of the opera would be dvd SUM, the several Larry Boy works would all be at dvd LAR but there probably wouldn't be enough of them to worry about that. If you do have several copies of each then (lucky you), you could number them, eg Larry Boy and the bad apple dvd LAR1, Larry Boy and the Rumor weed dvd LAR2, etc. I won't be numbering mine. * Where do I store this information in Koha? I see fields that look like possibilities in 942h,i,k,m , but there are a lot of 0xx fields that look like possibilities as well. I'm not sure which is the best field to use... (or maybe that information is part of the "Item", not the "Biblio"? In which case I should maybe put it into "o - Koha full card number" on the "Add Item" screen that follows the "Add MARC Record" page?) I have found in koha that 852a is the field that shows the borrower where to find the item on the shelf (and you can put anything you like in there - 050 and 082 are designated spots for LCC and DDC). 852 b) the collection name (e.g.videos or junior) and e)the branch name don't seem to show in the OPAC record. However, the information in 942 a) and c) must be filled in too as they do show in the OPAC (how ours is set up anyway) also, the item will not issue correctly if they are blank. Example of current video at www.tsbc.org.nz/library search by barcode R00185 then select MARC view. I have found the book "Learn descriptive cataloguing" by Mary Mortimer, DocMatrix 2004, 252 p., 30 cm., ISBN 1876283432 very helpful. Good luck with your decision making. _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Rae (Rachel) Jones Librarian The Shepherd’s Bible College 354 Te Aute Road, Havelock North 4172 P.O. Box 8229, Havelock North 4157 New Zealand Ph. +64 6 877-8013 Fax. +64 6 877-5821 Mob: +64 21 059 7464 Email: library@tsbc.org.nz TSBC Homepage: www.tsbc.org.nz Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.20.7/1286 - Release Date: 18-02-2008 18:49