[Koha] Re: Questions about Koha

Thu Sep 16 01:52:50 UTC 2004

Wednesday, September 15, 2004     20:20 CDT

Hi, Amber, Joshua, et al.,

Depending on how fussy your standards are for the records that you get, Joshua's scripting solution may work well, but you may get some records that are real duds: all CAPS, title and statement of responsibility with errors, no imprimatur, no SH's, etc., etc.

I don't know if it's possible, but Joshua, if it is at all practicable, it **might be a good idea to write the script to reject records that are too short (less than 10 tags).** (If you are still in the beginning process of writing it, it might also be worth your while to check with Terry Reese; I vaguely remember a statement of willingness to share code with other open source-rs.) 

Amber, LC is pretty good with its catalogue (and you can access it for free!), so you shouldn't have too much trouble trusting the script for it. But be careful with other sources, including NLC (also free) which used contributing libraries' cataloguing without screening them for quality. There can be quite a bit of junk that will be pulled up just by an ISBN.

Also, please note, even with LC, sometimes the ISBNs are miscoded, so you may end up with what I was taught to call a false negative, where there is actually a record there, but it won't be pulled by a simple standard number search. Before coding a record from scratch, always check by title and/or author, just in case (this was standard practice at our local ISM, now an OCLC branch).

In terms of MARC, one little addendum to Dave Bigwood's excellent advice: **_Understanding MARC Bibliographic_ off of the LC main MARC page -- URL <http://www.loc.gov/marc/umb/> -- ** is a really nifty e-booklet that deals with pretty much everything, even getting into the actual structure of a record in part XI.

** The Concise Bibliographic format pages -- main page at URL <http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/ecbdhome.html> --  detail the specs for each MARC field/tag and also provide LC examples of their proper use. ** Depending on your local cataloguing standards and budget concerns, that may be enough to spare you the expense of the MARC Format manual.

One further minor addition to Dave's super advice on retrospective conversion (almost verbatim what we were taught in library tech training here) from my experience and that of my instructors:
   Conversion is an excellent time to introduce useful new
   perks that will impress patrons and justify the process.

With the cataloguing, e.g., before you start, think about how detailed you want your records to be.

Think carefully about what notes and added entries you would have wanted to make, ones that would have helped and would help your patrons, but aren't practical when trying to economise space in a card catalogue. In MARC, they are just  extra lines of code.

# From my experience and that of several of my local peers, **I would strongly recommend Contents analysis for anthologies and collections**. It has often been ignored in card catalogues because of space concerns, but online it really pays dividends in the long run and seems to be appreciated by patrons who can then tell -- sometimes without recourse to (expensive) short story or poetry indexing volumes -- what they will find inside.

Whether or not you find that Koha is for you, best wishes with the recon and automation! It can feel really frustrating some days, but it really is worth it in the end.

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

> From: Joshua Ferraro <jmf at kados.org>
> Date: 2004/09/15 Wed PM 05:02:32 CDT
> To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> Subject: Re: [Koha] Re: Questions about Koha
> 
> Amber,
> 
> If most of your books have ISBN numbers it should be fairly trivial
> to write a script/form to grab the MARC records from LOC or somewhere ...
> that way you can avoid adding all the fields for every item ... all
> you'll need to specify in that case will be local holdings info like
> barcode, etc.
> I need to write such a script for a Koha installation I'm doing right
> now and I'll release it when I've finished ...
> 
> Good luck!,
> 
> --
> Joshua Ferraro
> http://kados.org
> 
> On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 03:57:22PM -0500, Bigwood, David wrote:
> > Amber,
> > 
> > I can't say if it is the system for you, too many variables. Before you begin a retrospective conversion (fancy term for moving to an automated system) get your collection ready.
> > 
> > 1st and most important: Weed the collection. No sense wasting time and effort on worthless items.  See the SUNLINK Weed of the Month program page for some very helpful tips. http://www.sunlink.ucf.edu/weed/
> > 
> > Then get your collection in order. Make sure your cards have an ISBN, proper copy information, call number prefixes are standard, etc. if you will be working from the cards. Learn about MARC most importantly the holding field and what goes where there. There is some helpful advise at http://www.dgiinc.com/advice/main.html on getting ready. I'm sure there is plenty more. Read about other retrospective conversions and see what they wished they had done different.
> > 
> > The tool MarcEdit has a very basic Z39.50 client as well as some useful tools. http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/index.html Download it for free.
> > 
> > This work will pay off no matter what system you decide best fits your situation.
> > 
> > Sincerely,
> > David Bigwood
> > bigwood at lpi.usra.edu
> > Lunar & Planetary Institute
> > http://www.lpi.usra.edu/library/whats_new.shtml
> > Catalogablog
> > http://www.catalogablog.blogspot.com
> > 
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: koha-admin at lists.katipo.co.nz
> > [mailto:koha-admin at lists.katipo.co.nz]On Behalf Of Rosalie Blake
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 3:30 PM
> > To: Amber Amland
> > Cc: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> > Subject: [Koha] Re: Questions about Koha
> > 
> > 
> > Hello Amber
> > Welcome to the Koha community. I've taken the liberty of copying 
> > your email to koha at lists.katipo.co.nz, because I know there are 
> > people there who can give you a better answer than I can on your 
> > specific question about transferring MARC records. My libraries are 
> > not yet using the new version, and we don't download MARC 
> > records, so I can't comment on that aspect, but I can tell you that we 
> > are very happy with Koha. It meets our needs as a public library, 
> > and it is quite flexible in terms of specific needs of school libraries. I 
> > am sure you will find it worth further investigation.
> > Good Luck
> > Rosalie
> > 
> > 
> > On 14 Sep 2004, at 22:38, Amber Amland wrote:
> > 
> > > Dear Rosalie Blake,
> > > 
> > > I'm the secondary librarian at a small international school in
> > > Southeast Asia that uses U.S. based curriculum.  We have a card
> > > catalog and would like to move to an automated library system.  I
> > > discovered Koha while doing some research online on library systems. 
> > > How is it working for you?  We have about 6,500 titles in the high
> > > school and would like to also automate our elementary library (fewer
> > > titles) in the future and link it to the secondary library. Would Koha
> > > be a good option for us?  How is the new version working with
> > > downloading MARC records and using the Z39.50 search tool?  This is my
> > > first time automating a library system.
> > > 
> > > Thank you!    
> > > Amber Amland
> > > Librarian
> > > Mountainview ICS
> > > amamland at yahoo.com
> > > 
> > > 
> > > ---------------------------------
> > > Do you Yahoo!?
> > > Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
> > 
> > 
> > Rosalie Blake
> > Head of Libraries, Horowhenua Library Trust