[Koha] some thoughts about cataloguing and acquisition (important)

Mon Jan 20 13:13:54 NZDT 2003

Greetings All!

    I'm always concerned when we start talking about using "basic" or
"brief" cataloguing records, simply because so often the "quick and dirty"
ends up being the final version - mostly because we have so little time to
take care of fixing things up later.

    That said, in the systems that I've worked in we usually had templates
for short records and for more complete records. I think that the system
should be able to allow us to enter acquisitions data directly into the MARC
database, and an "On Order" status, or an "Under Consideration" status added
to the record could be applied so that users searching in OPAC would realize
the items are not available. When the item is received, and the status
changes, the system would then flag the record for update so that the
librarian could complete the cataloguing with the item in hand (incidentally
allowing you to fetch an appropriate MARC record for the item online, or to
load the record that you could receive from the vendor if the service is
available to you.).

    The system should allow the creation of records that have only a certain
minimum of information: namely, Author (100#a); Title (245#a and b);
Publication information (260#a,b,and c); Physical Description (300), if
available; and, standard numbers such as ISBN (020), ISSN (022), and LCCN
(010) when they are available. Of course, the system should allow you to
make sure the Leader of the record reflects the appropriate type of
material, and that the fixed field (008) field has the basic information in
it.

    The final version of the record, after the item is received, would add
the subject access and notes, and all the other pertinent local holding
information like call number, price, and barcode.  All this should be
recorded in MARC format, and I concur with others who have written that the
system should allow for the entry of all 1000 MARC fields.  If records are
stored in this structure, there is no reason why they can't be displayed any
way the user desires.  The data entry templates can use the full MARC
designations for those who use them, but a more simple interface could
easily be prepared that would insert the data into the appropriate MARC
field or subfield, supplying appropriate punctuation automatically - or
"automagically" as a fellow librarian says!

    I think it is wasteful to have records in two different formats - one
MARC and one non-MARC.  It means that if you want to move information from
one to the other that you have to convert the data. Storing the information
in one standard format makes much more sense to me.  In this I strongly
agree with Regula!

Regards,
Al Calame

Librarian-at-Large,
Montreal, Québec, Canada

514-745-3424
albert.p.calame at sympatico.ca

----- Original Message -----
From: "Regula Sebastiao" <reseba at yahoo.com>
To: <koha at lists.katipo.co.nz>
Cc: "Joshua Ferraro" <jferraro at alma.athenscounty.lib.oh.us>
Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2003 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Koha] some thoughts about cataloguing and acquisition
(important)

> Hi again
>
> my question was aimed to know wheter a "basic" record for acquisitions,
> e.g., could be in a kind-of-reduced MARC-format. ordering information is
> often incomplete and thus not all required fields of a MARC record can be
> filled in.
>
> in the systems I know, this problem is solved in various ways. either by
> having incomplete records (non-MARC) in a separate database or an
> incomplete MARC-record signalled as such with "record status". one such
> status could be "acquisition-incomplete" e.g. another one would be deleted
> notice etc.
>
> and i absolutely do agree that if MARC is used, then ALL MARC fields
> should be possible in the database. and the required-optional fields
> should be respected for a full record. but there should be possibilities
> for not complete records.
>
> personally, i think that there should be one and only one database where
> all bibliographic-"minded" records - ev. with different statuses - should
> be stored.
>
> Regula Sebastiao
>
>
>
> --- Joshua Ferraro <jferraro at alma.athenscounty.lib.oh.us> wrote: > On Fri,
> Jan 17, 2003 at 12:16:59AM +0000, Regula Sebastiao wrote:
> >
> > > - does a marc-record necessarily need to be complete? or is it
> > possible to
> > > have something like a "temporary marc record" which has only a few
> > marc
> > > field used, and still have every record in the same bibliotable?
> >
> > I understand the question to be this: why should Koha preserve full MARC
> > records when both the format of the records is archaic (sorry you MARC
> > fans) and only some of the fields are used; can't we simply build a
> > program to grab the standard MARC fields and stick thim into the Koha
> > database?  If this is your question I can take a stab at it.
> >
> > One major problem that I see with not having all the MARC fields in the
> > Koha database arises when libraries try to move data: many libraries are
> > used to using the extra fields in MARC to document things that MARC did
> > not contain standard fields for.  If Koha does not have the capacity to
> > retrieve all the MARC fields from a record, libraries that use the extra
> > fields in MARC will have difficulty transfering their data from the old
> > system to the new one.  Not storing the complete MARC record could turn
> > out to be a severe limitation.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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