[Koha] exploring Koha

[Doug Dearden]

Hi Sean,

A little advice on moving your records from your current system to
Koha.  I have not worked with the Innovative system so cannot speak to
details, but there should be some way to export records in MARC format. 
These records won't be in perfect Koha format, but the basic fields
should match up correctly.  The devil is in the details though, and the
way that the item info including item type, bar code, and other item
specific info probably won't be in the right place.  You can download
MarcEdit (created by Terry Reese at Oregon State) to break a MARC
encoded file into a human readable format, and it also has tools to make
changes to files.  Koha stores item specific info in the 952 field, so
the challenge I faced during our migration was getting all the item info
moved into the correct place in the record.  MarcEdit can create a VB
script that you can then modify to do the changes you need.  Koha has
tools to do the importing, you will find them in the staff client under
Tools.  There is also a perl script to do the importing
(bulkmarcimport.pl if memory serves me) that can be used from the
command line.  I would suggest you see if you can do an export of some
of your data from your current system in MARC format, then break the
file using the MarcEdit tool into human readable format a take a look. 
As a test you can copy and paste a record into a new file, edit it
manually, use the MarcMaker function in MarcEdit to put it back into the
correct format and do the import into Koha to get a feel for the
process.

Good luck with your project.   

Doug    



>>> spark <spark at cclsd.org> 4/2/2009 10:41 AM >>>
Hello all,
We are a consortium (8 public, 3 academic libraries) in Oregon
currently 
running an Innovative ILS (since '91). We are exploring open source ILS

options, with Koha 3.0 running on a test system. Does anyone know of
any 
contacts who might be versed in Innovative and willing to counsel a 
fledgling Koha user regarding some pointed cataloging questions? Would

anyone have advice on exporting Innovative records and importing them 
into Koha (we'd like to import a small sampling to simulate our 
production system, looking to Liblime for full system migration when/if

the time comes)?

This is a tall order! Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

- Sean, Coos County Libraries
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