[Koha] Re: MARC Records

[Glen Stewart]

Hi Folks,

I recently sent Chris a script developed for our small company library, which
ran GLAS (a very yucky Windows software) until yesterday.  It takes what GLAS 
exports and acts as a SQL generator.  GLAS thinks it's exporting MARC records,
but I wasn't so sure.

Regardless, it may be trivial to modify it for use with MARC data.  Because I 
couldn't make sense of the MARC output GLAS provided, I used the subfield option 
instead of MARC tags to identify each record item (a-z line prefixes).  You may 
be able to plug the MARC tags back into the code and put it to good use.

When the script is done running, the admin types "mysql Koha < koha.sql"  and
all the records are brought into Koha.

GLAS uses the concept of "book ID's" to identify each book as unique in the
database.  I used these same ID's in Koha, as biblionumber and barcode number.
Our library uses these numbers on book labels as well as Dewey numbers.

I should note that we still use physical cards to track overdue items.  The
librarians want to switch to Koha to do that, as soon as it supports automatic
member number assignment.  I'd love to get one of those free Radio Shack 
scanners and have Koha check out items using that.  (-:

Anyway, Chris has the script and will hopefully get it out with 1.07 or sooner.

Enjoy,

Glen