Import from Z39.50 - conversion MARC21 to UNIMARC - problem solved
Hi, I'm very new to Koha, so please excuse me if the following is obvious. I wasn't for me, and in case is isn't for others too, I'd like to share the information. That way it'll be in the mailing list archives for others to find. I've setup a Koha 22.11 instance for my wife, who's a librarian. I'm not. We're in Italy, so the instance uses UNIMARC, which allows for smooth interaction with the SBN, the Italian National Library System. A lot of our records are imported from the SBN, but not all. Some will have to come from LOC, British Library and others. If I searched LOC or BL (both of which use MARC21) for a record, there would be some results, but the titles, authors and ISBNs wouldn't appear in the search result. The only column visible was the Z39.50 server name. There were not error messages, just no data displayed. A click on a row, then selecting "Preview MARC" on the menu would show the record, but not in UNIMARC format. In my ignorance I expected Koha to do the conversion, after all there's a choice of format in the Z39.50 server configuration, but apparently it doesn't. Getting my head around this took a while, but in the end I found out that an XSLT conversion is needed, even though the displayed MARC records don't look like XML at all. There's an old bug report here: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=6536 which discusses the problem. It is marked FIXED and CLOSED. In there I found a tentative MARC21 to UNIMARC XSLT file which didn't work. My Koha instance gave me a "500 Internal server error". Searching a bit more, I found this by the author or MarcEdit: https://github.com/reeset/unimarc where there's another MARC21 to UNIMARC XSLT file that actually works: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/reeset/unimarc/master/marc21xml2unimarc.xs... The solution to my Z39.50 import from MARC21 servers into an UNIMARC Koha instance was to download the file from the link above, dump it unmodified in /etc/koha/sites/instance/marc21xml2unimarc.xsl and then put that path into the configuration of each individual Z39.50 server that uses MARC21. So at this point it works, we're happy, but I did expect Koha to take care of this. If not, why does it ask us to specify which MARC flavour the server uses, only not to act on the information? -- René Seindal
I strongly believe that Koha should come up with a solution of converting from Unimarc to Marc 21 otherwise we have to rely third party like Marcedit On Tue, Feb 21, 2023 at 3:27 PM René Seindal <rene@seindal.dk> wrote:
Hi,
I'm very new to Koha, so please excuse me if the following is obvious. I wasn't for me, and in case is isn't for others too, I'd like to share the information. That way it'll be in the mailing list archives for others to find.
I've setup a Koha 22.11 instance for my wife, who's a librarian. I'm not.
We're in Italy, so the instance uses UNIMARC, which allows for smooth interaction with the SBN, the Italian National Library System.
A lot of our records are imported from the SBN, but not all. Some will have to come from LOC, British Library and others.
If I searched LOC or BL (both of which use MARC21) for a record, there would be some results, but the titles, authors and ISBNs wouldn't appear in the search result. The only column visible was the Z39.50 server name. There were not error messages, just no data displayed.
A click on a row, then selecting "Preview MARC" on the menu would show the record, but not in UNIMARC format.
In my ignorance I expected Koha to do the conversion, after all there's a choice of format in the Z39.50 server configuration, but apparently it doesn't.
Getting my head around this took a while, but in the end I found out that an XSLT conversion is needed, even though the displayed MARC records don't look like XML at all.
There's an old bug report here: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=6536 which discusses the problem. It is marked FIXED and CLOSED.
In there I found a tentative MARC21 to UNIMARC XSLT file which didn't work. My Koha instance gave me a "500 Internal server error".
Searching a bit more, I found this by the author or MarcEdit: https://github.com/reeset/unimarc where there's another MARC21 to UNIMARC XSLT file that actually works:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/reeset/unimarc/master/marc21xml2unimarc.xs...
The solution to my Z39.50 import from MARC21 servers into an UNIMARC Koha instance was to download the file from the link above, dump it unmodified in /etc/koha/sites/instance/marc21xml2unimarc.xsl and then put that path into the configuration of each individual Z39.50 server that uses MARC21.
So at this point it works, we're happy, but I did expect Koha to take care of this. If not, why does it ask us to specify which MARC flavour the server uses, only not to act on the information?
-- René Seindal _______________________________________________
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-- Assistant Librarian, Confucius Institute Scholar 13-14, R.D. National College, Bandra (W.)
On 2023-02-21 11:00, Himanshu Aggarwal wrote:
I strongly believe that Koha should come up with a solution of converting from Unimarc to Marc 21 otherwise we have to rely third party like Marcedit
There's a UNIMARC to MARC21 XSLT file from the same source (Terry Reese, author of MarkEdit) here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/reeset/unimarc/master/UNIMARC2MARC21.xsl Terry Reese doesn't place any restrictions on the files, so they could conceivably be included in Koha to make the conversion automatic. -- René Seindal
participants (2)
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Himanshu Aggarwal -
René Seindal