Maybe I can shove my 2cents worth in here, since I was involved with the database design. There were sever reasons for the design. Firstly it was good database normalisation to no repeat information. Secondly it made reserves more flexible. If I reserve "Return of the King" I don't care if it's a Hard or Softback. So a reserve could give either because the would be the same biblio, but different biblioitems. On the other hand I might require a large-print version, and in this case the reserve would specify the particular biblioitem. There may be two of those paperbacks. These are each items, and when I take one out the item is what's recorded. It has an accession number. When I bring it back it records against the item code. I had doubts about this structure at first, and would have made it 2 levels based on my little library experience, but I was persuaded to do it this way, and I think it is a good type of structure to use. Olwen Williams olwen.williams@safeair.co.nz -----Original Message----- From: Chris Cormack [mailto:chris@katipo.co.nz] Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 11:06 AM To: Derek Dresser Cc: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: Re: [Koha] import question On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 03:37:51PM -0400, Derek Dresser said:

hello,

Hi Derek

I am working on setting up 2.0.0pre1. It installs fine and I am using the

bulkmarcimport.pl script to import ~8,000 biblios in USMARC format from our old Winnebago system. So far so good. They seem to import fine. I can query the database and see the data.

Excellent sounds good so far :)

Now I seem to have 8,000 biblios, but no items. It seems that a biblio is

a

description of a possible book, but I actually need some items in my catalog to be able to check them in and out. Is this correct. Can someone give a

brief explanation of the difference between a biblio, biblioitem, and item

in the database and give me an idea of how I can actually convert those 8,000 biblios to books?

OK, here goes :) The way the koha orignal database was built was to separate data about say a book (or a video, or a serial etc) into 3 parts. To demonstrate, ill use The Return of the King (cos the premiere for the movie of this will be in wellington where i live :-)) 1/ biblio = which contains information such as title, subtitle, author, copyrightdate, abstract. And links to the bibliosubject and additionalauthors tables to hold subject information. You can see that information here http://hlt.katipo.co.nz/cgi-bin/koha/detail.pl?type=intra&bib=12180 Login:hdl pass:testing In the biblio box on the left. 2/ biblioitems, this is the next level down, and biblio can 'own' one or many biblioitems. Biblioitems hold information such as itemtype, dewey classification, publication date. We can see this more easily here http://hlt.katipo.co.nz/cgi-bin/koha/moredetail.pl?type=&item=&bib=12180&bi= 13371 (where the group is what we call the biblioitem) or here http://hlt.katipo.co.nz/cgi-bin/koha/moredetail.pl?type=&item=&bib=12180&bi= 28772 So in this example, we have one biblio, which has 2 biblioitems. now onto part 3 3/ Items Items hold item specific information, like which branch the item is at, how many times its been issued, replacement cost etc. http://hlt.katipo.co.nz/cgi-bin/koha/moredetail.pl?type=&item=&bib=12180&bi= 28772 the thee boxes headed barcode are the items. So we have 1 biblio, with 2 biblioitems, 1 of which has 1 item, and one of which has 3 items.

Sorry, I'm a computer guy, not a library scientist.... but I'm learning ;-)

Me too :) Thats probably why it was done this way. It didnt make sense to us, to replicate information. IE we didnt want to have 2 biblios for the return of the king in this case, with the same author the same title, but the itemtype, and number of pages and classification being different. Or to have 4 items 3 of which contained a lot of the same stuff (all information about the F free fiction biblioitem) and one which contained the information about the talking book item. So this intermediate level, biblioitem was introduced. I hope this helps explain things a bit, if not, let me know and ill try and explain it better Chris -- Chris Cormack Programmer 027 4500 789 Katipo Communications Ltd chris@katipo.co.nz www.katipo.co.nz _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha ____________________________________________________________________ CAUTION - This message may contain privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee named above. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution or reproduction of this message is prohibited. If you have received this message in error please notify Safe Air Ltd immediately. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Safe Air. _____________________________________________________________________ For more information on the Safe Air Group, visit us online at http://www.safeair.co.nz/ _____________________________________________________________________