Tuesday, September 7, 2004 00:15 CDT Hi, Andres, Glad to hear back from you.

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How many records are we talking about? And how many fields of information do you want/need preserved from the second database with the purchase info? i have to libraries with about 30.000 record each. The titles datasbes has an average of 21.000 records the purchase database has about 30000, meny titles are repeated and we just keep there five or six fields that are relevant for purchases.

Given the number of records you're dealing with, manual item by item re-entry certainly isn't an option. ** Could you provide an example or sample of the data? **

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In terms of MARC coding solutions, would the 852 field suffice alone? The $z subfield is repeating.

Maybe, I'm not a MARC expert, we need to keep track of the purchase information.

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There is also the 541 note which is repeating and could be incorporated to contain more copy-specific information with defined subfields. [snip]

Depending on the nature of information in those 5-6 fields you might be able to use a 037 tag or the 852 as suggested earlier. With only 5-6 fields, they should provide enough 'space' and it is probably not worth the effort trying to script more extensive notes which require linking entries.

This week I'm working in mapping CEPAL ==> MARC21, with some help from the librarians. We were somewhat stuck becouse in CEPAL layout we have a filed coded 002 were we have an inventory number: it seems to us that this maps to field 035 of MARC21.

Yes, the 035 would be suitable. I've seen it used in migrations to store old system numbers deemed worth keeping.

You'll hear from me soon.

Cool. Good luck with your CEPAL ==> MARC21 mapping. Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, Canada