Very naive question from a non-librarian (resent from the right email address)
Folks, This is probably going to sound like a very simple question to the real librarians amongst you, but I'd like a little guidance if anyone can spare the time. I'm using Koha to catalogue our family book collection (I hesitate to call it a library). Its about 3000 or so volumes and scattered through various book cases throughout the house. It is vaguely organised by various criteria, like size, suitability for children (low shelves), fiction (by author), non-fiction (roughly by subject) etc. What I would like Koha to tell me is where (bookcase) each volume is located. Which would be the appropriate field in the biblioitem to store this information? If this is a stupid question, then tell me, I'm not a librarian but a computer scientist with an interest in books. Many thanks Nigel
Hi
I'm using Koha to catalogue our family book collection (I hesitate to call it a library). Its about 3000 or so volumes and scattered through various book cases throughout the house. It is vaguely organised by various criteria, like size, suitability for children (low shelves), fiction (by author), non-fiction (roughly by subject) etc. What I would like Koha to tell me is where (bookcase) each volume is located. Which would be the appropriate field in the biblioitem to store this information?
It would seem to me that you have a couple of options... some more sane than others :-) You could set up each shelf as a "branch" unless you plan to catalogue books in your friends & relatives houses - in which case you should save branch for them. I think in an actual library, the class (or itemtype) is what usually determines what shelf an item is on - so they have fiction, junior fiction etc and they all tend to be shelved together. So you could do that. Steve has been doing work on virtual bookshelves - I'm not sure if that would suit your requirements, as you're talking about actual bookshelves. Or there is always the notes - where you can put whatever you want. Cheers Rachel_____________________________________________________________ Rachel Hamilton-Williams Katipo Communications WEBMISTRESS ph 021 389 128 or +64 04 934 1285 mailto:rachel@katipo.co.nz PO Box 12487, Wellington http://www.katipo.co.nz New Zealand Koha Open Source Library System http://www.koha.org
Nigel, The model used in my employment (a public Library based on the commercial [and horribly expensive] Dynix software), is that each shelf in each subject division (broadly speaking) has a "collection code". JFIC (Juvenile fiction) corresponds to a set of shelves in the Children's area of the building, and J+FIC (slightly older) is somewhere in the same locale, but a distinct subset of materials. Within each "coll code" on a set of shelves, the titles are organized in alpha or Dewey order. The collection codes form an overlay applied on the physical spaces, but are not themselves part of the bibliographic data. Rather they describe collection management. I am afraid I do not know the specifics of Koha well enough to steer you further, nor even to state if Koha has such a feature set as of yet. I hope this helps rather than muddies the discussion. - Erik Rachel Hamilton-Williams wrote:
Hi
I'm using Koha to catalogue our family book collection (I hesitate to call it a library). Its about 3000 or so volumes and scattered through various book cases throughout the house. It is vaguely organised by various criteria, like size, suitability for children (low shelves), fiction (by author), non-fiction (roughly by subject) etc. What I would like Koha to tell me is where (bookcase) each volume is located. Which would be the appropriate field in the biblioitem to store this information?
It would seem to me that you have a couple of options... some more sane than others :-)
You could set up each shelf as a "branch" unless you plan to catalogue books in your friends & relatives houses - in which case you should save branch for them.
I think in an actual library, the class (or itemtype) is what usually determines what shelf an item is on - so they have fiction, junior fiction etc and they all tend to be shelved together.
So you could do that.
Steve has been doing work on virtual bookshelves - I'm not sure if that would suit your requirements, as you're talking about actual bookshelves.
Or there is always the notes - where you can put whatever you want.
Cheers Rachel_____________________________________________________________
Rachel Hamilton-Williams Katipo Communications WEBMISTRESS ph 021 389 128 or +64 04 934 1285 mailto:rachel@katipo.co.nz PO Box 12487, Wellington http://www.katipo.co.nz New Zealand Koha Open Source Library System http://www.koha.org
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participants (3)
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Erik Stainsby -
Nigel Titley -
Rachel Hamilton-Williams