[Koha] Simple acquisitions - can only search by ISBN?

[Dwiggins, David]

We're just getting started with Koha, so I apologize if this is an obvious question...

We installed Koha 1.23. We're using it to catalog our very disorganized collection of reference books. So far it seems to be working pretty well with one big exception. We're able to acquire one copy of a book using the Z39.50 search and then inserting the resulting record. If we have a second copy of that book, and the book has an ISBN number, we can go to the acquisition screen, enter the ISBN, and then add a second item record. 

But we have a some books that were published informally by small companies and don't have (valid -- or any) ISBN numbers.

When we looked at the Koha documentation, it showed a "keyword" search option on the simple acquisition screen that would allow you to find the biblio record using a keyword. But this does not appear in our installation.

Are we doing something wrong? Do we need to upgrade to one of the newer development versions?

In a pinch, I could probably whip up a quickie script to do this. But since there appears to be a different way in the manual, I'm assuming someone has already solved this problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

David Dwiggins
Systems Editor/Library Manager
The Tennessean
(615) 259-8332
ddwiggins at tennessean.com