[Koha] Some questions on Koha and MARC

[Steven F. Baljkas]

Sunday, August 1, 2004     18:48 CDT

Hi, all,

I appended the following questions to a message back to Joshua on the 23rd
and as I've had no takers since then, I am reposting in the hope that
someone may be able to tackle some of these questions. Any modifications
I've enclosed in [ ].

Thanks in advance for any and all efforts. And here goes ...

 * * * * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 I have a few questions that have sort of crystallised out of my (so far
poor) efforts to help out Christian Calle with his Koha questions. [snip]

I played around online with the test version of Koha, not realising that any
changes I made there would remain. I apologise if I've screwed anything up
for anyone.

At the time, I was intending to delineate the complete MARC21 field
structure, but then I thought (erroneously?) that it wouldn't be available
for anyone actually to use so what would be the point.

Now, Christian [was] asking for a delineation of MARC tag structure (I think
he was expecting that it was included withinn Koha to begin with, which I
understood is not the case), so ....

* Question 1: For his sake and for the sake of others, if I and/or
interested others 'fix' what is available in the test version online, would
it be possible for him/others to simply download it somehow?

# From looking at this, it dawned on me that I wasn't seeing the Leader or the
001 defined (and had forgot to try to add them myself when mucking about),
hence ...

* Question 2: What is the relationship of the MARC record data within Koha?

[Specifically, for the moment] what does Koha actually do with the
information in the fixed-length fields if anything?

 (BTW the current connection in the 003 test drive is wrong according to
what I was taught/have seen).

 I had thought that Koha cataloguing could be worked without reference to
the underlying database. If not, (follow-up questions): how do we connect
all the potential MARC fields to whatever [and however many] fields are in
the core of the Koha database? [How does Koha deal with fields that can
repeat in MARC, for 2 common examples, 500 notes and 650 subject headings?]
Does Koha just turf info that doesn't fit into those, i.e. are records
deconstructed and fields lost once imported?

 Devolving from this worry about MARC cataloguing and the integrity of
records within the database (again: important for sharing and any future
migrations), I realised I had never seen an answer to a rather
straightforward OPAC matter, thus:

 * Question 3: What is the correspondence between the MARC structure and the
actual records displayed in the Koha OPAC?

 I have to try to explain what I mean by analogy.

 The systems I am most familiar with (TKM MicroCat, Athena, Voyager) allow
the library administrator/s to decide how to display information retrieved
by OPAC searches. Librarians assumed a default non-MARC record display
(which is almost certainly right [in that who other than a librarian would
want that format]) and the systems allowed decisions to be made about which
fields to display, which to suppress, and in what order elements from tags
should appear, and (with 2 of the systems), the label that would appear for
the user beside the information (e.g. Author(s):, Title:, etc.).

For that matter ...

* Question 4: How/Where does one set which MARC fields one wants searchable
for a given search type? Is this adjustable?

Just a few 'light' questions. ;-)  Any and all answers appreciated (good
ones, especially so ;-) ).

 Cheers,
Steven F. Baljkas
library tech at large
Koha neophyte
Winnipeg, MB, Canada



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