[Koha] MARC Records

[Tonnesen Steve]

MARC records have an astonishing amount of detail, both in terms of data
about the book, as well as ways in which the data can be described.  I'm
wondering how I should handle the first difficulty: subject headings.
MARC records have several different entries for subjects:


650 Subject added entry -- Topical term
  
  Subjects like Mammals, Nuclear Warfare, Law, Alcohol, Child Welfare,
  etc.  Appears to be the most common type of subject entry, at least with
  my data.


651 Subject added entry -- Geographic name

  Subjects like Canada, Rome, Moon, China, British Columbia, etc.


600 Subject added entry -- Personal name

  Subjects like Plato, Helen Keller, Charlemagne, etc.


In addition each subject entry also specifies a source "system" such as
Library of Congress Subject Headings or Sears Subject Headings.

Obviously Koha doesn't have this complexity of subject headings, and
probably doesn't need it, but I'm suspecting that we probably don't want
to mix subject headings from different cataloging systems.  Any
possibility of adding a field to bibliosubject to specify a subject
heading system used?

Also, should I be adding any subject headings gathered from MARC records
to the catalogueentry table (which I assume is used to deter librarians
from adding new, conflicting subject headings like "Cows" and "Bovines"). 


I also have a request.  Could people send me some samples of their MARC
records so I can do some sanity checking?  A lot of my MARC records are
not from "formal" sources, but were hand entered by the librarian here.
I'm also curious to know how librarians typically use commercial CDs of
MARC records.  Do they import all of the records into their library system
at once, or just import records for books they hold?  How are the MARC
records typically stored on a CD?  Is it just one big file full of MARC
records?


Steve.