Hi from a total Koha beginner
Hello everybody, I have just subscribed the list, so let me say a little about me. My name is Gianfranco; I live in Torino, Italy. I am an IT Professional - a developer for a big software and IT consultants company, since 1996. In the spare time I work as a volounteer at the Museo Ferroviario Piemontese (Piedmont Railways Museum), and of course I manage all the IT infrastructure of the museum. At MFP we are all volounteers, there are no employees. I came across Koha and this mailing list while i was searching for a replacement for our library software, which runs on a very old PC, that is about to stop working; since we cannot reinstall our legacy software anymore (the setup disks are lost, and the manufacturer has gone), we need a new program. So I found Koha, and I am evaluating it to understand if it can fit our needs - before developing a new application from scratch myself, which I would prefer to avoid (no time and no will... ) if possible. Installing Koha was a piece of cake - in a couple of hours or so i had a test instance up and running with no trouble. I tried to enter a test book from my home library, and everything was fine. But now I am trying to figure out how to import data from our legacy software, and how to teach our library guy to use this new program, bearing in mind that neither him, nor me, are librarians. Actually I am as confused as possible, so I am going to ask your help and guidance in deploying the production environment. Moreover, I am a bit in a hurry, because I don't know how much our old PC will still be working. I searched the Internet and this list for the past ten days, but I found no answer for my questions (for sure, most of them are due to I haven't no skill about libraries and librarians). In a next message I will post some of my major questions; I hope someone will help me. Many thanks in advance and best regards, Gianfranco Nicola Museo Ferroviario Piemontese --- Questa e-mail è stata controllata per individuare virus con Avast antivirus. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Gianfranco Nicola schreef op ma 15-06-2015 om 20:44 [+0200]:
But now I am trying to figure out how to import data from our legacy software, and how to teach our library guy to use this new program,
The first step is to get what data you can out of the old system. Only once you can see what you can migrate into Koha, is it possible to really start doing it. If you're really lucky you'll be able to export as MARC (UNIMARC or MARC21 typically. I'm not sure what Italy generally uses.) More likely you'll get something that looks somewhat like a CSV and you'll have to turn that into MARC.
bearing in mind that neither him, nor me, are librarians.
You'll know a whole lot more by the end of the process :) -- Robin Sheat Catalyst IT Ltd. ✆ +64 4 803 2204 GPG: 5FA7 4B49 1E4D CAA4 4C38 8505 77F5 B724 F871 3BDF
Hi Robin, Thank you for your answer. In fact, i am just going to extract as much data as possible from the legacy database (which is SQL Server) as a CSV file, then I will try convert it as a MARC file. In Italy, National Libraries use UNIMARC, so I configured my Koha instance that way. My major difficulty at the moment is to understand how some informations that are stored into the old program's database can be transferred to Koha For example: the old program associates each book with one or more topics (like "steam engines"; "steam locomotive boiler parts"; "signalling"; "traffic control", and so on); where are to be stored these topics in koha? I can't find any place, at the moment. But right now I am wondering if these informations _should_ ever be transferred, because - if I understand right - these topics relates to "classify" a book, whereas registering it in the catalog is just that: "cataloguing" it. And , if I am right, Koha catalogues pre-classified books, and doesn't allow to classify a a book from scratch. Is that right? If not, how to do that? Another question is, in the old database books and authors are linked by a many-to-many relation; so, when extracting records, this gives multiple rows in the CSV, each with a different author; the same with publishers. How can I handle this? Thanks in advance, Gianfranco Da: "Koha" koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz A: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Cc: Data: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 10:50:45 +1200 Oggetto: Re: [Koha] Hi from a total Koha beginner
Gianfranco Nicola schreef op ma 15-06-2015 om 20:44 [+0200]:
But now I am trying to figure out how to import data from our legacy software, and how to teach our library guy to use this new program,
The first step is to get what data you can out of the old system. Only once you can see what you can migrate into Koha, is it possible to really start doing it. If you're really lucky you'll be able to export as MARC (UNIMARC or MARC21 typically. I'm not sure what Italy generally uses.) More likely you'll get something that looks somewhat like a CSV and you'll have to turn that into MARC.
bearing in mind that neither him, nor me, are librarians.
You'll know a whole lot more by the end of the process :)
-- Robin Sheat Catalyst IT Ltd. ✆ +64 4 803 2204 GPG: 5FA7 4B49 1E4D CAA4 4C38 8505 77F5 B724 F871 3BDF
Hi Gianfranco, please find my answers in-line. On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 5:57 PM, Gianfranco Nicola/MFP <gianfranco.nicola@museoferroviariopiemontese.com> wrote:
Hi Robin,
Thank you for your answer. In fact, i am just going to extract as much data as possible from the legacy database (which is SQL Server) as a CSV file, then I will try convert it as a MARC file. In Italy, National Libraries use UNIMARC, so I configured my Koha instance that way.
I'll try to answer some of your queries. First off, I've never worked with UNIMARC, rather with MARC21. So I'm going to refer to MARC21. Having said that, UNIMARC is a flavour of MARC so, there are enough similarities in the concepts.
For example: the old program associates each book with one or more topics (like "steam engines"; "steam locomotive boiler parts"; "signalling"; "traffic control", and so on); where are to be stored these topics in koha?
In MARC21, these would go into "subject heading"s i.e. under tag no 650 - http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd650.html
But right now I am wondering if these informations _should_ ever be transferred, because - if I understand right - these topics relates to "classify" a book, whereas registering it in the catalog is just that: "cataloguing" it. And , if I am right, Koha catalogues pre-classified books, and doesn't allow to classify a a book from scratch. Is that right? If not, how to do that?
No, Koha does allows a book to be cataloged from scratch. You would need to define the authority files ahead or else go on defining them as you go along. Either is possible.
Another question is, in the old database books and authors are linked by a many-to-many relation; so, when extracting records, this gives multiple rows in the CSV, each with a different author; the same with publishers. How can I handle this?
The way I would do it would be stage these into mysql tables. Write a perl script that accesses these tables, and extracts the JOINed data and finally save it a a MARC record using some of the same MARC modules that Koha uses. Then run a final check on the created MARC files using an utility like MarcEdit. And finally when satisfied with the same, do a bulk import into Koha. hope that helps -indranil -- Indranil Das Gupta L2C2 Technologies INDIA Phone : +91-98300-20971 / +91-9874580971 / +91-33-2443-0187 Blog : http://indradg.randomink.org/blog IRC : indradg on irc://irc.freenode.net Twitter : indradg -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other format is acceptable. Support Open Standards. For a free editor supporting ODF, please visit LibreOffice - http://www.documentfoundation.org
participants (4)
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Gianfranco Nicola -
Gianfranco Nicola/MFP -
Indranil Das Gupta -
Robin Sheat