Hi # From a long time lurker on this site - always very interesting site. I am a librarian with very slight technical knowledge of databases. This library is a member of Kinetica (a large database of maybe 36 million MARC compatible holdings) that is run by the National Library of Australia. wwww.nla.gov.au/kinetica/connect.html to see information. IDs and passwords are needed to check the catalogue which costs around 80c to $1 approx per search. I'm pretty sure NLA would supply access to serious developpers. There is a Cataloguing Client for MARC compliant cataloguing which is being updated. Small libraries now have available a shortened on the web input form for "cataloguing". This provides an entry of basic standard which hopefully may be upgraded later if another library also acquires that title. Libraries often "add" their holdings to existing records. Large libraries frequently work on their local cataloguing systems and "upload" to the Kinetica database and matching algorithms are there to prevent duplicate entries. Please note that I am not personally familiar with these details at the NLA "end" as work in a SOLO library now. This shortened on the web form has the standard requirements including author, title, format (like book, video etc etc) publisher, place of publication, date, country of publication, ISBN etc (International Standard Book Number), ISSN (International Standard Serial Number). It really is a simple form to complete - the record is saved as a whole (not line by line as in the Client), a check of the entry appears on the screen which you click to add to the Kinetica database in MARC format (done by the system). You do not need to know the MARC tags to use this form to produce a basic MARC compatible cataloguing record. Please excuse me if any of this is inaccurate as I have only used it as an end-user and so am not aware of the exact details at the NLA "end" of the process. The point I am trying to make is that the end-user library can immediately "see" the MARC tags added to their simple cataloguing on the screen after it has been input into the Kinetica Database, and another, even smaller library could add its holdings to the MARC record 1 or 2 minutes later, or indeed upgrade the complexity of the cataloguing standard. I got the impression that Koha "simpler non-MARC interface" form would not allow the "simpler" libraries to see the record in MARC compatible format. I apologise if I have misunderstood! I feel that it is very important to have all records MARC compliant for international cooperation, even if this is rarely needed at the local leval. With NLA the records are stored in NLA servers etc, not at the local leval which obviously could not store 36 million records! I feel sure that the people at the National Library of Australia would be very happy to liaise with Koha people. The NZ National Catalogue "Te Puna" is available on the Kinetica site and originally I believe it was a joint project between the National Libraries of Australia and NZ. Just my 2 cents. Bonne chance! Jean Truebridge ADAVB Library (VDA) -----Original Message----- From: koha-admin@lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha-admin@lists.katipo.co.nz]On Behalf Of Tonnesen Steve Sent: Friday, 17 January 2003 08:47 To: Albert P. Calame Cc: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: Re: [Koha] some thoughts about cataloguing and acquisition (important) On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Albert P. Calame wrote:
To do that, the cataloguing module must allow for the editing of all parts of the record - not a trivial matter for a data structure with 1000 variable length fields, most of which may be repeatable, and a maximum record size of 99999 bytes. (I have an article I wrote for School Libraries in Canada called "Hitting the MARC" that discusses the use of MARC as the data structure for library automation that may help. Send me a message and I'll forward it back to you). It would be a serious mistake to produce a system that doesn't allow for full record creation and editing the MARC structure records. It is complex enough that I suspect it should be a module of its' own.
The next version of Koha will be fully capable of storing all of the data that a MARC record can hold. It will also be able to enforce the restrictions set in the chosen standard (MARC21 or UNIMARC for now) like which fields or tags are repeatable, etc. Our goal is to allow two or more "interfaces" for cataloguing. One of these will definitely be the full MARC interface, where librarians will add a 245a subfield for a title record, and a 100a subfield for an author, etc. I believe that Paul Poulain has already done some nice work on a MARC editor for Koha. There will also be a simpler non-MARC interface where the librarian will fill in a set number of fields (such as title, subtitle, author, publisher, etc.) without having to know anything about the MARC structure that the data is actually stored in. This interface will basically be the same as the existing cataloguing interface in the 1.2 version of Koha. This is much less flexible but allows Koha to be used in settings where a trained librarian is not available, or where the librarians feel that they don't need the flexibility (and the associated complexity) that MARC offers. Steve Tonnesen _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha