Tuesday, October 26, 2004 01:59 CDT Hi, Andrés, Skipping all the lengthy explanation of the potential problem with any plug-in for handling the 008 coding ...

From: Andrés Tarallo <tarallo@ort.edu.uy> Date: 2004/10/25 Mon PM 06:25:16 CDT To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: Re: [Koha] Marc Field 008? Plug-in would not work

As I've told our main concern is thinking in the futore, were we might be interested in exporting MARC records. Our current catalog isn't in MARC so we thought that an automatic aproach could be usefull, at least for most relevant fields.

Remembering that you do have the data and can convert it to MARC, and remembering that you were saying that there are few MARC record sources for Spanish-language materials such as in your collection, I am thinking that your librarians may have to hunker down and add the 008 fields manually. If they used the dummy 008 string I suggested as a stop-gap, they would be able to go through the records slowly and correct the 008s (either with item in hand, as preferred, or not, as would be the more likely choice). Otherwise, I'd suggest doing a test search to see if there are other sources of MARC Spanish-language records, ones that would have the 008s as required. But then I remember you asking about combining the two databases you have (the one on items, and the other on acquisitions data for the items) so you'd still have to do quite a bit of data entry ... unless someone has figured out a way that you can rip the needed fields out of one database, pull the related MARC records, open a MARC editor, and combine the fields.

Our two branches have more that 20.000 titles (and growing) right know we don't find suitable filling such database 008 fields.

With 20,000 titles to do -- and more coming in at all times -- I think it would be an excellent idea to save yourselves the frustration and just settle on the dummy 008 string for now, coding it for new records and working backwards towards correcting it in older records. Hope this helps a bit, Andrés. Cheers, Steven F. Baljkas library tech at large Koha neophyte Winnipeg, MB, Canada