Use koha as a reference database
Dear koha-community! This is an amazing project! Thank you all for it! We somehow want to divert Koha slightly from its intended use – and we asked ourselves two questions: 1. Has anyone ever did the same? (My forum search suggests: no) 2. Is it a good idea? Does it make sense? Or are there better alternatives? First of all, we’re no library and we won’t loan books or any other stuff. Basically, we 'just' plan to build a comprehensive database of all relevant bibliographic data in a certain field and continually update it with new data. This database will mainly contain books, book chapters and journal articles and some grey literature. For the last two types, we also want to provide pdf files – if they are open accessible and we have author’s permisson (if needed). Why did we choose Koha? The idea behind our decision was to have a multi featured user interface, where one is enabled to do professional searches within a huge list of literature and where the software also provides additional features. Specifically, we were looking for an OPAC, like the ones we knew from university libraries. The next rationale for Koha was the integrated search function for MARC records, in order to get quality bibliographic data very easily. And last but not least, the possibility to save or export tha gathered data in a format, that is likely to be used in the future, so that the work will not turn out to be for nothing at some point. Do you think, what we are planning to do, is a good idea? Thanks in advance for answers! mobam -- View this message in context: http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/Use-koha-as-a-reference-database-tp5846798... Sent from the Koha-general mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
I've done something slightly similar. For years, our library has kept track of publications by local authors--mostly journal articles indexed in Medline, but also poster presentations, books, book chapters, etc. Right now the catalog is only available on our hospital intranet, but we're working on making it available to everyone--I hope by later this year. For further information, see http://www.philobiblios.net/koha. Some of the material is out of date--I realized I could do a few things a lot better than I originally did and had to move some fields around--but you'll get the gist of what I'm working on. Fred King Medical Librarian, MedStar Washington Hospital Center fred.king@medstar.net 202-877-6221 ORCID 0000-0001-5266-0279 Computers save time the way kudzu prevents soil erosion. --Trad -----Original Message----- From: Koha [mailto:koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of mobam Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2015 4:24 PM To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: [Koha] Use koha as a reference database Dear koha-community! This is an amazing project! Thank you all for it! We somehow want to divert Koha slightly from its intended use – and we asked ourselves two questions: 1. Has anyone ever did the same? (My forum search suggests: no) 2. Is it a good idea? Does it make sense? Or are there better alternatives? First of all, we’re no library and we won’t loan books or any other stuff. Basically, we 'just' plan to build a comprehensive database of all relevant bibliographic data in a certain field and continually update it with new data. This database will mainly contain books, book chapters and journal articles and some grey literature. For the last two types, we also want to provide pdf files – if they are open accessible and we have author’s permisson (if needed). Why did we choose Koha? The idea behind our decision was to have a multi featured user interface, where one is enabled to do professional searches within a huge list of literature and where the software also provides additional features. Specifically, we were looking for an OPAC, like the ones we knew from university libraries. The next rationale for Koha was the integrated search function for MARC records, in order to get quality bibliographic data very easily. And last but not least, the possibility to save or export tha gathered data in a format, that is likely to be used in the future, so that the work will not turn out to be for nothing at some point. Do you think, what we are planning to do, is a good idea? Thanks in advance for answers! mobam -- View this message in context: http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/Use-koha-as-a-reference-database-tp5846798... Sent from the Koha-general mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha MedStar Health is a not-for-profit, integrated healthcare delivery system, the largest in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., region. Nationally recognized for clinical quality in heart, orthopaedics, cancer and GI. IMPORTANT: This e-mail (including any attachments) may contain information that is private, confidential, or protected by attorney-client or other privilege. If you received this e-mail in error, please delete it from your system without copying it and notify sender by reply e-mail, so that our records can be corrected. Thank you. Help conserve valuable resources - only print this email if necessary.
We are using Koha for our GIS Bibliography, see: gis.library.esri.com. There are roughly 150,000 citations (with some full-text pdfs) in our database. The goal is to cover all significant literature and grey material related to geographic information science. We've encountered several issues and I am still working out the kinks. 1. First cataloging citations in MARC is difficult. We are not cataloging physical items and MARC limitations for such records is beyond frustrating. 2.The whole purpose of our bibliography is for users to export citations while performing research. The built-in OPAC export tool did not export anything correctly! The export tool used the MARC leader position 6 for item type instead of the Koha item type when exporting to RIS or BIBTEX. This meant that conference papers, journal articles and book chapters always exported as "Books." Not helpful for users trying to build citations! We've been working with ByWater on this issue since 2013. They created a plugin that allows us to tell Koha what MARC fields to map to certain RIS/BIBTEX tags. So now the export tool points to 942c for item type instead of the leader. 3. Another issue we encountered involved the data migration from our old homegrown database to Koha. We did not have our records in MARC format and when they were converted we lost some valuable data. The biggest issue here involved journal volume, issue and page numbers being combined into a single 773 Host field. That meant exported citations did not have these valuable bits separated into their own fields. We have since copied this info to 363abc so that they are independent of each other. Also our data vendor put editors into author fields...another big no-no for citations. When I first started working on this project I contacted Fred King and found his website very helpful. I believe Koha was the correct choice for our library and I think the user interface and search options will make our bibliography users very happy. Colleen Conner Corporate Librarian, Esri -- View this message in context: http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/Use-koha-as-a-reference-database-tp5846798... Sent from the Koha-general mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
We have been doing this for almost a year with a slightly different method. We have citation data in a Koha database as an add on to our main catalog (Innovative's Sierra). Encore is our discovery platform. It uses Koha's OAI interface to harvest records in the Koha database. Encore includes the Koha data along the results from other sources. Our Koha also includes sample records from sister libraries to test usability as a union catalog. We are meeting this week to determine if we want to expand this aspect. One difficulty is loading large datasets. Koha wants to make all records new instead of overlaying any existing records. We have to revert and try reloading one or more times before it recognizes the matched records and overlays them. I have noted this problem twice before on this listserv but there was no response. Its a deal killer. Steve Sowder Systems Librarian sowder@andrews.edu Andrews University On 7/9/2015 4:24 PM, mobam wrote:
Dear koha-community!
This is an amazing project! Thank you all for it!
We somehow want to divert Koha slightly from its intended use – and we asked ourselves two questions:
1. Has anyone ever did the same? (My forum search suggests: no) 2. Is it a good idea? Does it make sense? Or are there better alternatives?
First of all, we’re no library and we won’t loan books or any other stuff. Basically, we 'just' plan to build a comprehensive database of all relevant bibliographic data in a certain field and continually update it with new data. This database will mainly contain books, book chapters and journal articles and some grey literature. For the last two types, we also want to provide pdf files – if they are open accessible and we have author’s permisson (if needed).
Why did we choose Koha? The idea behind our decision was to have a multi featured user interface, where one is enabled to do professional searches within a huge list of literature and where the software also provides additional features. Specifically, we were looking for an OPAC, like the ones we knew from university libraries. The next rationale for Koha was the integrated search function for MARC records, in order to get quality bibliographic data very easily. And last but not least, the possibility to save or export tha gathered data in a format, that is likely to be used in the future, so that the work will not turn out to be for nothing at some point.
Do you think, what we are planning to do, is a good idea?
Thanks in advance for answers! mobam
-- View this message in context: http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/Use-koha-as-a-reference-database-tp5846798... Sent from the Koha-general mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
participants (4)
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CConner -
King, Fred -
mobam -
Steve Sowder