Monday, February 16, 2004 19:35 CST Hi, Ben, # From what we've heard before, what you are proposing should work. Somebody # from the programming side should probably confirm that. I've never understood exactly what happens if, say, you had both a 110 and a 711 (or 111 and 710). In such a case are both pieces of information held in the same biblio.author field? Delimited somehow internally? Maybe one of the savvy folk could explain that for non-developpers. Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, Canada ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Hall" <ben.hall@ffa.int> To: <koha@lists.katipo.co.nz> Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2004 8:45 PM Subject: [Koha] Marc <-> Koha db mappings

Is it possible to map multiple MARC tags to the one koha database field? For example, I'd like to map tag 110 and tag 111 to biblio.author. Or put another way, how have others handled the mapping of corporate authors (110)?

I'm using 2.0.0pre5.

regards,

Ben

-- Ben Hall Information Officer Forum Fisheries Agency PO Box 629 Honiara, Solomon Islands ph: +677 21124 fx: +677 23995 em: ben.hall@ffa.int ww: http://www.ffa.int/

Ben Hall said:

Is it possible to map multiple MARC tags to the one koha database field? For example, I'd like to map tag 110 and tag 111 to biblio.author. Or put another way, how have others handled the mapping of corporate authors (110)?

Paul's reply indicates that there is no easy way to do this -- the web interface only allows a one-to-one mapping. That being said, however, I think that we will soon see the MARC version of Koha move to doing searches directly on the MARC data, instead of the data stored in the original Koha tables (like biblio). Corporate authors is just one example of how powerful the MARC method of storing bibliographic data can be. Searches for such "esoteric" information as corporate authors, performers, sub-subjects (and sub-sub-subjects) are easy in MARC and currently impractical using the data in the original Koha tables. I predict that we will find that the best way to do catalog searches is to search directly on the MARC data. The data that is stored in the original Koha tables could then be used for tracking transactions (issues, returns, reserves, charges) and for information about the status of specific copies. For transactions, all that is required is enough data to identify the item to the librarian and the borrower. For example, a borrower may want to search for items with the corporate author "Koha Foundation," and a search directly on the MARC tags is the best way to do that. But once the item is found, then the data in the original Koha tables is enough to identify it for transactions. ("I want to renew 'Proceeding of the Ninth Annual Conference on Koha'," in which case having the corporate author stored in the original Koha biblio table is not really necessary.) Under this scenario, getting all of the MARC data into the original Koha tables is not important -- it's just important to get _enough_ data into the Koha tables. -- Stephen Hedges Skemotah Solutions, USA www.skemotah.com -- shedges@skemotah.com