[Koha] Old Barcodes - Location Data and Checksum

[Irma]

Hi Jochum and Nathan, 

I found a way around this problem.
I called the distributor of the hand held scanners and they helped me
re-programme the way the scanners read the info from the barcode labels. In
other words, the scanners were re-set to ignore the first 4 digits and last
2 letters (that was our situation).
The library decided after a while to buy new barcode readers and I went back
to programme those as well.
If your barcode reader is older and does not have a model number on it, take
a digital photo of it beside a ruler and send it to the distributor. It
impressive how someone there will recognise the shape, colour and size and
tell you the exact model number (which you will need to get to re-programme
it). In my case I think the readers were over 10 years old.

Hope this helps.  

Irma
www.calyx.net.au
 

-----Original Message-----
From: koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz
[mailto:koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Jochum van der Heide
Sent: 02 September 2008 22:18
To: Nathan McNew
Cc: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
Subject: Re: [Koha] Old Barcodes - Location Data and Checksum

Hi Nathan,

Nathan McNew wrote the following on 11/06/2008 23:18:
> Joshua Ferraro-3 wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 Nathan McNew <agreatnate at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> My library is migrating to koha from Winnebago.  I have used 
>>> bulkmarcimport.pl to import our entire collection into koha, which 
>>> looks to have been successfull.  I am running into trouble scanning 
>>> in the barcodes on our books however, because winnebago stored only 
>>> the 5 digit material number in the 852p barcode field, but the 
>>> barcodes on the books contain much more information, in what I 
>>> understand to be the codabar format.
>>>
>>> After the import, Koha now has for instance that a book's barcode is 
>>> 12345; But the barcode on the book, which we would like to keep is 
>>> 3055500012345x, where 3 means it is a book, 0555 is our location 
>>> code and x is a check digit.  In the old software typing in either 
>>> the short version, 12345, or the long version 3055500012345x, would 
>>> get the same results.  Koha works fine with the short version, but 
>>> reports an invalid barcode if you use the barcode scanner to scan in 
>>> the book, since it is in the long format.  Is there any way to get 
>>> koha to interpret these barcodes correctly?
 >>>
>> Yes, there is ... and it's a system preference, barcode input filter 
>> or something like that. One of the options is 'codabar'. Hope that 
>> helps.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> --
>> Joshua Ferraro
 >
> I can't find any reference to a barcode input filter in 2.2.9, the 
> version of the software we're using.  Looking at liblime's 3.0 demo, 
> there is an ItemBarcodeFilter option, but the possible choices are 
> whitespace, T-prefix and cuecat.  Is there a way to do this in 2.2.9, 
> or if we upgraded to 3.0 would one of these choices correctly manipulate
codabar?
> 
> Nathan McNew

We have the same problem here you've been describing in your email some
months ago. Our books have a long 11 digit barcode but only 4 were stored in
our old system. A barcode looks similar to yours, like I1025059820 where the
first digit I is used for books or B for patrons, the following
4 digits are the same for everything and the last digit must be a check
digit.

We're running Koha 3 and as you say only have the choices "whitespace",
"T-prefix" and "cuecat".

Did you get this to work eventually?

Cheers,

-Jochum
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