Re: Re: [Koha] Obtaining MARC21 records
Wednesday, December 8, 2004 20:15 CST Hi, Christopher, With a hearty "amen" to all that Brooke had to say, one does have to concede that there have been (successful?) attempts to use automated scripts to hunt for bibliographic records by ISBN (I don't think ISSN was included in any efforts, unless I missed something). Way back on August 12, 2003, John Voth wrote in with the following:
Howdy!
I've developed a couple of programs that I have used to aid me in populating the library database.
The first program takes a raw scan of a book's EAN (i.e. 9781575212784) and converts it into the ISBN (i.e. 1575212781).
The second program takes a list of ISBN's and attempts to retrieve the MARC record for each title from the LoC.
I have successfully used these two programs to obtain MARC records on approximately 4000 titles so far. I think it took about 40 minutes to poll the LoC and save all the responses to a file.
The only program I need to find/write/beg/borrow/steal is one that will take all these MARC records and import them into KOHA. Is there anything out there that does this already?
[ed. note: I believe the answer to that was the bulkmarcimport script] So, while I agree with everything Brooke said, I have to confess that I should have those programs from John somewhere on the HD and I could dig them up for you if you are truly unwilling to consider doing the cataloguing in what the professionals and paraprofessionals in library science know and advocate to be the best way, record by record. Just let me know. On another topic: I remember your name from a while back but I cannot remember what kind of school library you're working at (I am sorry if that seems obvious to others on the listserv, but in case people have forgotten, we've had theological seminary libraries referred to as "school" collections so I'd rather be clear). I would have some alternate suggestions for you if we are truly talking about a K-12 school library, ones that would provide more and better notes than LC tends to provide for Children's and Young Adult lit. As for the virtual shelves: I had the same question a while back. IIRC, the answer is that it is basically a way of setting up a bibliographic list, like for reserved books for a course or project. Anyway, I hope some of this helps. I'll dig up the programs from John if you want. In the meanwhile, I hope your efforts with Koha go well. Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, Canada
From: "Christopher M. Jones" <cjones@partialflow.com> Date: 2004/12/08 Wed PM 08:22:30 CST To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: Re: [Koha] Obtaining MARC21 records
Thanks for the great help. I'll check those out when I have a chance tomorrow at school.
BTW, has anybody written a script that would work through a list of ISBNs and download the MARC records for them?
I have another question, unrelated to the first. What are virtual shelves? I don't see the concept explained in any of the documentation.
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Its a small private Christian school (Jr. High + High) for at-risk African American boys from the New Orleans housing developments. We've got a room with shelves and boxes of donated books, and no money in the budget to hire anyone to be a librarian. I'm just an English teacher who knows something about computers and found Koha one day. ANYTHING you have that might help is welcome :-)
On another topic: I remember your name from a while back but I cannot remember what kind of school library you're working at (I am sorry if that seems obvious to others on the listserv, but in case people have forgotten, we've had theological seminary libraries referred to as "school" collections so I'd rather be clear). I would have some alternate suggestions for you if we are truly talking about a K-12 school library, ones that would provide more and better notes than LC tends to provide for Children's and Young Adult lit.
As for the virtual shelves: I had the same question a while back. IIRC, the answer is that it is basically a way of setting up a bibliographic list, like for reserved books for a course or project.
Anyway, I hope some of this helps. I'll dig up the programs from John if you want. In the meanwhile, I hope your efforts with Koha go well.
Christopher M. Jones wrote:
Its a small private Christian school (Jr. High + High) for at-risk African American boys from the New Orleans housing developments. We've got a room with shelves and boxes of donated books, and no money in the budget to hire anyone to be a librarian. I'm just an English teacher who knows something about computers and found Koha one day.
ANYTHING you have that might help is welcome :-)
How much Perl do you know? I could write a simple script to fetch from a server but you would need to have a machine with Perl (preferably Linux) and at least the following modules installed. Carp Net::Z3950 MARC::Record There is no point in me writing it if you are unable to use it so let me know and I will knock something up and I am sure someone can then improve on it. Harry
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2003 16:17:21 -0400 From: Joshua Ferraro <jferraro@alma.athenscounty.lib.oh.us> To: Erik Peterson <reefdude@email.com> Cc: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: Re: [Koha] Bulk loads of MARC records
Is there a best way to add books w/o having to type in all the data? I thinking getting creating a list of ISBNs, turning this into MARC records, and then uploading. sounds sensible
Is the a best way to generate MARC records from a list of ISBNs? I don't know about "best", but I've been working on a Perl script
Saturday, December 11, 2004 21:27 CST Hi, Harry, Just finished forwarding the info to Christopher, but I thought I should let you know that part of the solution has already been achieved. John Voth offered the listserv his tools back in 2003. You can check them out at URL http://www.voth.ca/bib.php I've copied his note to Joshua below as it gives an indication of the broader discussions that were underway. I don't know what progress has been made since. Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large, Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, Canada message to Koha listserv October 6, 2003================================================= Howdy Y'All, Joshua, take a look at my bibliotools here: http://www.voth.ca/bib.php. I've already created the LoC MARC fetch tool. I've successfully retrieved about 4000 MARC records in about 40 minutes. I've also got an EAN to ISBN conversion program there. John that > reads a list of isbns from a file, fetches the MARC records from LOC
and combines them into one large MARC file...eventually I would like to be able to add holdings info, etc., but for now that's all it does. Note that I haven't tested it with more than a few dozen isbns, but more should be ok. If you're interested let me know.
Joshua
Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha ============================================================================ ======= ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harry Jackson" <h.jackson@acu.ac.uk> To: <koha@lists.katipo.co.nz> Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 8:18 AM Subject: Re: [Koha] Obtaining MARC21 records
Christopher M. Jones wrote:
Its a small private Christian school (Jr. High + High) for at-risk African American boys from the New Orleans housing developments. We've got a room with shelves and boxes of donated books, and no money in the budget to hire anyone to be a librarian. I'm just an English teacher who knows something about computers and found Koha one day.
ANYTHING you have that might help is welcome :-)
How much Perl do you know? I could write a simple script to fetch from a server but you would need to have a machine with Perl (preferably Linux) and at least the following modules installed.
Carp Net::Z3950 MARC::Record
There is no point in me writing it if you are unable to use it so let me know and I will knock something up and I am sure someone can then improve on it.
Harry _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
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Steven F. Baljkas wrote:
Saturday, December 11, 2004 21:27 CST
Hi, Harry,
Just finished forwarding the info to Christopher, but I thought I should let you know that part of the solution has already been achieved.
John Voth offered the listserv his tools back in 2003.
You can check them out at URL http://www.voth.ca/bib.php
I've copied his note to Joshua below as it gives an indication of the broader discussions that were underway. I don't know what progress has been made since.
I took a pop at this at the weekend and I have a working script now. I had a look at the script you mentioned and it look fine but there are some differences between the one above and mine. 1. It only searches a single server. I have written the one here to accept as many servers as you give it and it searches them all until it finds a MARC record, it then searches for the next ISBN. The order that the server are searched can be changed. I added some stats to the script so that you have some idea of which of you servers are giving you the best results so that you can then change the script to search these first. 2. I also added the Business::ISBN module to it at the weekend so that if it is installed it will check the ISBN for validity oterwise it performs some rudimentary checks itself. It is not necessary to have the Business::ISBN module installed but if you do it performs the checks. 3. The script also writes everything out to a log file so that you can see what it is doing ie Good/Bad ISBN's etc. Harry
Monday, December 13, 2004 16:49 CST Hi, Harry, Just a quick thank you note for all of us. What you described sounds fantastic and I am sure it will be helpful to many out there (although I still hold the view that cataloguing needs to be done item by item, with assessment of the quality of the record retrieved). Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large (and militant cataloguer?) Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, Canada ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harry Jackson" <h.jackson@acu.ac.uk> Cc: <koha@lists.katipo.co.nz> Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 6:00 AM Subject: Re: [Koha] Obtaining MARC21 records
Steven F. Baljkas wrote:
Saturday, December 11, 2004 21:27 CST
Hi, Harry,
Just finished forwarding the info to Christopher, but I thought I should let you know that part of the solution has already been achieved.
John Voth offered the listserv his tools back in 2003.
You can check them out at URL http://www.voth.ca/bib.php
I've copied his note to Joshua below as it gives an indication of the broader discussions that were underway. I don't know what progress has been made since.
I took a pop at this at the weekend and I have a working script now.
I had a look at the script you mentioned and it look fine but there are some differences between the one above and mine.
1. It only searches a single server. I have written the one here to accept as many servers as you give it and it searches them all until it finds a MARC record, it then searches for the next ISBN. The order that the server are searched can be changed. I added some stats to the script so that you have some idea of which of you servers are giving you the best results so that you can then change the script to search these first.
2. I also added the Business::ISBN module to it at the weekend so that if it is installed it will check the ISBN for validity oterwise it performs some rudimentary checks itself. It is not necessary to have the Business::ISBN module installed but if you do it performs the checks.
3. The script also writes everything out to a log file so that you can see what it is doing ie Good/Bad ISBN's etc.
Harry _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
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participants (4)
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Christopher M. Jones -
Harry Jackson -
Steven F. Baljkas -
Steven F. Baljkas