Wednesday, June 20, 2007 1:55 CDT Hi, Kevin, That's great that you got a good answer back from LAC and that you found a much better solution to your problem than what I had proposed. Kudos to you! Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large volunteer cataloguer Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, Canada ============================================================ From: Kevin O'Rourke <lists@caboose.org.uk> Date: 2007/06/19 Tue AM 09:15:19 CDT To: "Steven F. Baljkas" <baljkas@mts.net> CC: Koha Mailing List <koha@lists.katipo.co.nz> Subject: Re: [Koha] Dealing with bad MARC records

P.S. Sorry that LAC's records are fouling things up for you. I've encountered those 5|| fields, too. I think they were meant to be normative 500's and something 'exotic' happened in someone's cataloguing editor. If you don't mind taking the time when you have your solution worked out, you can report those kinds of boo-boo's to LAC (using the AMICUS no. for reference) and they will try to correct them. That way, everything improves for everyone.

I got a really nice reply from LAC where they explained that their records come from a wide variety of systems, some beyond their control. To quote: "The fill character is allowable in MARC coding and was widely used in the early years of MARC, but most libraries try not to use it, and your system, quite rightly, is rejecting it. ... The record in question was created in 1981. The field in question should be a 500 general note field." I've modified my program, it now: - loads records with non-numeric MARC fields - maps some fields to others (for example, 5|| to 500) - strips out any remaining non-numeric fields on saving This should keep everything nice and simple for our librarians. Kevin -- Kevin O'Rourke ICT Coordinator, National Teachers' Institute, Kaduna, Nigeria 062 316972 _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha ============================================================