George, The library standard is Codabar. The bar code is structured with the 1st digit being a 3 for books, a 2 for patrons. The next 4 numbers are the institution code. Once an agency tracked them, but now just pick any 4 numbers. The remaining are the item number. The last digit can be a check digit. Not sure if Koha can calculate checksums. Material Institution Item # Check digit 3 1111 00012345 9 BarCode-1 is the place to go to find out about bar codes. Standards, news, a bulletin board, shareware, and links are available. There are no products for sale, only unbiased information. http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/barcode1.html Sincerely, David Bigwood bigwood@lpi.usra.edu Lunar & Planetary Institute Cataloging news: http://www.catalogablog.blogger.com -----Original Message----- From: George Jenner [mailto:georgejenner@belgacom.net] Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 4:13 PM To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: [Koha] Barcode info needed Hello I've helped set up a library for our primary school over the past 8 months or so. Koha was a possible candidate for our computer system but I couldn't get it going in time. But it's probable that we will change systems next year, and I will propose Koha again. Why I'm writing is that we are about to reshelve all the books, and I want to use the opportunity to put barcodes on them. I think we've got a volunteer to print them all using kbarcode (found the reference here) but our ignorance of barcodes themselves is still profound. What I want to do is print barcodes that will be accepted by any library software, so I need a specification. I see things like EAN 12, UPC, 3 of 9 (not 7 of 9?). I don't want to know what they mean, I just want someone to say "use a 13 digit number, EAN 12 coding, don't use letters and everything will be all right". Is such a specification possible? Or do I have to know what they mean. ( If so I'll just buy the barcodes from Junior Librarian, which is the system the headmistress wants - but I want to spend the money on books) Our books are numbered from 1 to 6500 and I intend to use those numbers as barcode numbers. Many thanks for any advice George Jenner _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha