Hi all I have cancelled my existing ILS to switch to Koha in our school library. Unfortunately I had to give a year's notice to terminate the contract, but on the plus side it gives me more time to set up Koha properly before making the switch. So far, our IT team have set up Koha on the server, and I have been able to load existing students to the system. My main difficulty is going to be importing our existing catalogue. I can export the basic data from our current ILS in an Excel spreadsheet, but not marc format. I know I can convert from Excel to marc21 using MarcEdit, but I am not yet familiar enough with the marc system to understand how to do this. I would be very grateful for any advice. Also, is there any way of importing barcodes of existing holdings at the same time, or does this have to be done manually after the catalogue records have been imported? Many thanks.
Deb, Depending how big your collection is.....it might be easier in the long run (believe it or not) to just start from scratch. (bit of a learning curve, but once you "get it" ...it's all downhill) In the long run, this gives you an accurate inventory, up to date MARC records, and requires you to lay hands on every book so you can weed out the bent/broken/damaged. If you have the time, doing a small collection (ie: < 4,000 or so) is completely doable. (work on small pieces at a time -- ie; one shelf a day...) Otherwise, matching fields in the excel spreadsheet to the required Koha fields is covered fairly well : http://manual.koha-community.org/3.2/en/marceditexcel.html http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/data-migration-from-excel-to-koha-td306210... Good luck ! -S On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 8:02 AM, Deb Vincent <library@tggsacademy.org> wrote:
Hi all I have cancelled my existing ILS to switch to Koha in our school library. Unfortunately I had to give a year's notice to terminate the contract, but on the plus side it gives me more time to set up Koha properly before making the switch. So far, our IT team have set up Koha on the server, and I have been able to load existing students to the system. My main difficulty is going to be importing our existing catalogue. I can export the basic data from our current ILS in an Excel spreadsheet, but not marc format. I know I can convert from Excel to marc21 using MarcEdit, but I am not yet familiar enough with the marc system to understand how to do this. I would be very grateful for any advice. Also, is there any way of importing barcodes of existing holdings at the same time, or does this have to be done manually after the catalogue records have been imported? Many thanks.
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Scott Owen <sowen@...> writes:
Deb,
Depending how big your collection is.....it might be easier in the long
(believe it or not) to just start from scratch. (bit of a learning curve, but once you "get it" ...it's all downhill)
In the long run, this gives you an accurate inventory, up to date MARC records, and requires you to lay hands on every book so you can weed out the bent/broken/damaged.
If you have the time, doing a small collection (ie: < 4,000 or so) is completely doable. (work on small pieces at a time -- ie; one shelf a day...)
Otherwise, matching fields in the excel spreadsheet to the required Koha fields is covered fairly well :
http://manual.koha-community.org/3.2/en/marceditexcel.html
http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/data-migration-from-excel-to-koha-
run td3062109.html
Good luck !
-S
Hi Scott Much as I like the idea of starting from scratch, I don't have a lot of time. Library staffing has been cut back to just me, for 3 hours a day. Not enough time to run the library as I would like to, let alone switch to a new ILS, but as my budget has also been cut, I don't have a lot of choice. However, my current ILS is a bit of a dinosaur, and I like the idea of Koha being maintained and developed by the community, so maybe I needed the push. I will have a look at the links you provided. Many thanks. Deb
On 18/04/16 22:02, Deb Vincent wrote:
[snip]
Also, is there any way of importing barcodes of existing holdings at the same time, or does this have to be done manually after the catalogue records have been imported? You can include the holdings data in your spreadsheet. Koha uses tag 952 for items. When converting to MARC, make sure you have just one 952 tag per item (you can have unlimited 952 tags per record).
The mapping for the item level fields is found on the Administration page at 'Koha to MARC mapping': select 'items' to view those fields. Bob Birchall Calyx
participants (3)
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Bob Birchall -
Deb Vincent -
Scott Owen