[Koha] MARC Records

[Tonnesen Steve]

On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 kaye.guidetti at wesley.com.au wrote:

> As a librarian my suggestion would be to combine all subject headings into
> one field and allow some sort of check against the authority file (ie. do
> you want to accept it or not if it does not match an existing subject
> heading). This would allow the librarian to reject sears headings if you
> use LC etc.

For this to work, we'd need a source for the subject headings of the
various authorities in an electronic format.  Anyone know if these are
freely available somewhere?


> Alternatively allow something in set up that allows you to decide at the
> start if you will accept only the fields which contain sears headings or
> only the fields that contain LC headings and ignore the others.  I know
> nothing about programming so I don't know how easy this is to do - or if it
> fits in with what you are trying to do

This makes more sense to me.  If the MARC records are also stored in the
database, you could even switch at some point between sears and LC
headings by reloading the desired subject headings from the MARC records
(assuming that the MARC records contained both, that is).

Another alternative I can see is to add a field to the bibliosubject table
that lists the authority for the heading.  You could have a preference set
that you wanted to only use the sears headings for your library system,
but the other subject headings would also be there.

Rosalie, you mentioned "trimming" the MARC records in the past.  Just out
of curiousity, what part of the records do you trim, and why?

Steve.