I've had a lot of experience with barcodes and accessions numbers. One thing I have discovered is that there is normally no reason to have more than one unique number for a physical item. When you start trying to maintain 2, 3, 4 or more unique numbers for an item, it becomes terribly confusing and a lot of work. When you begin a new system, you should seriously reconsider your old methods to discover if some of the old ways become obsolete. Computer technology (RDBMS, XML, and so on) make many old methods unnecessary, or even worse. Once you start to barcode--which is a unique number, I think there will be little reason to continue the accessions numbers. I have discovered that this can be very difficult for staff to accept, but maintaining multiple unique numbers is even more difficult in the long run. If the purpose of the accessions numbers is to maintain good lists of what is coming in and how they are processed, an RDBMS that can provide information that is just as good or better than that from accessions numbers. Barcoding should not be seen only as more work. They can take the place of old processes as well. And if you are definitely going to barcode, then it should begin as soon as possible, since everything you do today will need a barcode sooner or later. It's easy to put a barcode on an item while you process it, but believe me: afterwards, it becomes *very difficult!*. Regards, Jim James Weinheimer j.weinheimer@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome via Pietro Roselli, 4 00153 Rome, Italy voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 327 fax-011 39 06 58330992

-----Original Message----- From: koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha- bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Kevin O'Rourke Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 11:10 AM To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: [Koha] Having more than one 'barcode' for an item

Is it possible to have more than one barcode for an item?

Our library currently does not have barcode scanners, but will in the future. I don't want to make the staff have to enter long barcode numbers now, so I'm thinking of just using our (unique per item) accession numbers instead.

However, when we do eventually change over to barcoding it would be nice to be able to either enter the accession number OR scan the barcode.

Similarly for members it would be convenient to have short numbers for manual entry as well as barcodes.

Is this possible with Koha 2.2.8? I see the 952p MARC field is shown as non-repeatable, so I'm assuming it's not.

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