[Koha] Seeking opinions on the OPAC MARC views

M. Brooke Helman abesottedphoenix at yahoo.com
Sat Aug 7 07:47:52 NZST 2010


Salvete!

       Have I mentioned how much I love our developers lately? *looks at floor* 
I've butchered this to the point that it's a little hard to tell Jesse from 
Owen, but uh, ye're both bril.

      I figured I might as well open the can of worms since nothing has ever 
really stopped me before, and indeed y'all kind of encourage me from time to 
time.


>Is the "raw" MARC view the one you prefer for this? As opposed to this one?
>
>http://catalog.bywatersolutions.com/cgi-bin/koha/opac-MARCdetail.pl?biblionumber=363
>
>


         I'd love to see something closer to LOC in terms of field clutter. (And 
no, I can't believe I just wrote that either.) 

http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v4=16&ti=1,16&SEQ=20100806153146&Search%5FArg=Lord%20of%20the%20Rings&Search%5FCode=GKEY%5E%2A&CNT=100&PID=lYVn89nUP7EIe2Wxje237BFCo&SID=1



        However, I like the intent and little reminder of what the fields 
actually are that Koha sticks in bold type. I think it would be really neat to 
have the bold type in LOC's catalogue incorporate a rollover that bleeps the 
field information. (So when I put the cursor on 020 the rollover box would be 
all like "Yo! This is where you put the INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER") 

        And if y'all were extra special bored, it would be neat to make an auto 
mail for suggest a subject heading or whatnot with some sort of spam filtre. But 
that is of course in the catalogue of mah dreams.



>> Too improve usability, it would be good if I could cut and paste from
>> that view. The expanded MARC view doesn't supply the tags necessary to,
>> um, 'borrow' other people's cataloging work.


 
         ++ There are definitely times we want to swipe given fields but not an 
entire record.
 

>
>If you're trying to borrow from a Koha library, why not use the "Save
>record" option?
>
More steps. (Save record, click save, wait for the download, find wherever in 
God's name Firefox put the file, go to the koha import tool, import it, click 
import, import the staged import, wait for zebra to reindex, click on the 
record, click edit). As far as I know, this is... tedious. I could be wrong, but 

I think this method involves a fair number of clicks.



          Someone (Paul? HDL? Chris? mebbe even Josh whoever Someone is thanks!) 
made this feature happen over my lunch break at some point, and I was like 
"Omigosh!" Though I agree that making Koha play nice with other Koha catalogues 
would be hawt. (All other catalogues of course would be dreaming, but I'm a 
boring person and can hang on to such dreams.) 


>>
The cataloger at my library uses raw MARC views a lot because of the textual 
MARC editor we use. Obviously, this won't apply to every library (though I'm 
trying to get this out into the world), but raw MARC views make a lot of copy 
cataloging easier.
>>

          *nod* I still think that the developers need to round us up using 
pointy sticks at some Conference or another and make us Librarians make sense in 
terms of cataloguing interfaces. We're criminal in terms of saying "This sucks 
fix it." but most of us don't provide meaningful feedback into how y'all could 
if you felt like it and had big bags of money to help you do it.

Cheers,
Brooke


      


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