[Koha-win32] Re: [Koha] Tag 880

Sat Feb 25 14:46:53 NZDT 2006

Friday, February 24, 2006    19:21 CST

Hi, Carol, Joshua, et al.,

Just catching up with the e-mail a little late today.

Carol had posed a question a while back on getting actual Chinese characters both in MARC records and out in the Koha OPAC display.

I had suggested MARCEdit might be able to help with some things in the past, but if memory serves -- I'm not 100% on this and you would have to check the MARC standards online or in print to confirm this but--, the $6 linking fields have to be generated by the ILS itself to provide such linkages. Most of the ILS I have experienced simply cannot do this. (I assume that Voyager and Aleph can because they are known for multiscript abilities.) I don't think Koha can (not that that is a bad thing for this stage in its development, considering the complexity and rarity of the need for $6 linkages).

The purpose of the 880, Joshua, according to my erstwhile go-to guy on the history and evolution of MARC coding, was to hold non-Roman script characters.

I gather that, although computers may have been able to code for them for a long while now (since the 1960s? via hexadecimal and ASCII and Lord knows probably other codes), there weren't any ILS at the beginning that could make use of them. Hence, 880 and associated fields were contrived so that data could be preserved against loss (recall our discussion of backing things up: I tell you, we cataloguers are THE pre-eminent packrats of humanity - no iota to be lost! ;-D).

If I recall my original advice to you, Carol, it was to ***try to see if Koha could display the original Chinese script correctly in the 100 and 245 fields*** (and for that matter, the other core descriptive fields, although I know I didn't say that before).

I know that there have been questions -- some of them intiated by you, IIRC -- on UTF8 etc. that are relevant to this. I just don't know what Koha's status is on using non-Roman scripts. Sorry. It would be really good to know how that works though. From what I am used to seeing in other ILS, it usually requires that the cataloguers enter special codes -- either hexadecimal or system proprietary ones -- in order to ensure that special characters will display properly for patrons (usually, the cataloguers end up having to look at codes or messy weird stuff in place of real letters or logograms).

Continuing the re-iteration of my original advice to you, Carol: if you are able to put the actual Chinese characters into the 100 and 245, you could use a 700$a or 900$a to provide access to the author entry transcribed, and perhaps a 242 (technically TRANSLATION of title, which is never a bad thing), 246, 700$t, 730 and/or 740 fields to provide transcribed title access.

Although anyone who knows me knows I actually like the cataloguing rules, what I am proposing (other than the 900$a which is free to do with as you please) bends if not breaks the cataloguing rules. However, it should work, given that Joshua has assured us that Koha can access 700 fields (at least from 2.2.5 on) and 246s.

A quick word about transcriptions, because I know this topic has caused headaches for Chinese-language cataloguers.

In 2000, LC prescribed that the Pinyin system of romanization was to supersede the previously used Wade-Giles system.

Carol, ***if you are retrieving older MARC21 (really USMARC, etc.) records, you may very well have to move the transcribed fields and create the now REQUIRED pinyin transcriptions.*** 

(There is not, so far as I know, a requirement to DELETE the older Wade-Giles transcriptions, but someone working directly in the field may well correct me on that point .)

Now, Carol, please also note: you can take all this with a grain of salt (ignore it) if you don't care about having your library comply with the ALA-LC practices mandated in this case. I have seen libraries request and rely on their own transliteration systems for Russian and Ukrainian so I know that ALA-LC practices are not always heeded when it comes to dealing with non-Roman script cataloguing matters.

I hope that this re-iteration and amplification will help somewhat. I am very interested to learn how this resolves for you and I do hope it will work out well.

Best wishes with this tricky problem!

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

============================================================
From: Carol Ku <carolcool01 at yahoo.com>
Date: 2006/02/24 Fri PM 03:41:35 CST
To: Joshua Ferraro <jmf at liblime.com>
CC: Koha Mailing List <koha at lists.katipo.co.nz>, 
	Koha Windows <koha-win32 at nongnu.org>
Subject: Re: [Koha-win32] Re: [Koha] Tag 880

You are perfectly right.  I noticed that most libraries such as Library of Congress, they represent Chinese pinyin in tag 100, and this piece of info is linked to tag 880 $6100 and with other related subfields etc...

  We would like to do the following:

  1) save the pinyin and Chinese in Koha.
  2) Display Chinese info in OPAC
  3) Allow user to search using pinyin if they don't have Chinese input

  Since Koha display only one line item for title, author etc, we are thinking may be we need to use MARCEdit to tweak tag 100 to 880 $6100.  I was advised by others that I should instead designate new tag e.g. 900 for tag 880 $6100, 901 for tag 880 $6245 etc.

  To make things more complicated, MARCEdit does not seem to recognize the $6 link either.  So it will treat all tag 880 as one tag.
Joshua Ferraro <jmf at liblime.com> wrote:
  On Fri, Feb 24, 2006 at 12:26:29PM -0800, Carol Ku wrote:
> i think the $6 linking field is different from a regular 
> subfield a, b or c
> etc.
> 
> In MARC, all the information on the book will be stored in the native
> language in tag 880. Then they use $6 linking field to tie 880 to tag 100
> for Name etc... so e.g. 880 $6100 a.... so this tag means information
> stored here is the author name (designated by code $6100) in e.g Chinese. 
> $6 is not a regular subfield....
OK ... first let's discuss what you're trying to do. I have had two
years of Chinese language classes so I know that there are several
ways to represent Chinese. Are you attempting to put 'pinyin' in the
100a and then link to the actual characters in 880? What is your goal
in using the 880?

Cheers,

-- 
Joshua Ferraro VENDOR SERVICES FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
jmf at liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS
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