[Koha] number of item records attached to a biblio record

[Becki Whitaker]

Linda,

According to OCLC's input standards "MARC bibliographic records have a 
maximum length of 99,999 characters. For more information, see MARC 21 
Record Specifications for Record Structure, Character Sets, and Exchange 
Media (http://www.loc.gov/marc/specifications/specrecstruc.html)."  Also 
see http://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/fixedfield/mrec.shtm for more 
specifics. 

Furthermore, it is fairly easy to tell how long or how many characters are 
in a MARC record.  The first sequence of numbers in the leader is the 
number of characters in that record.  This record has 75,586 characters. 
It happens to be a Business Week subscription
 000 -LEADER   @ 07586cas a2200973 4500 

This example is 108,749 characters long.    It will no longer display 
properly.  The record was duplicated and the items moved to the new 
duplicates. This was a manual procedure.
000 -LEADER   @ 108749cas 2207657 45000 

Apparently the way items are attached to the MARC record results in them 
becoming part of the record so the size of the record increases with each 
item attached.  We run into the maximum number of characters all the time 
with large serials holdings in our shared catalog.  We have several 
records that split when we imported them into Koha.  Others that will no 
longer display until the are detected and manually duplicated and their 
items split between the twin records.  These records can also affect, as 
in halt, indexing.

We hope that when the serials control module gets redesigned this issue 
will be addressed.  We thought that was in the works last summer...but 
there is a bug report #2453.

Hope this helps.  Good luck and may your records never reach 100,000 
characters.

Regards,

Becki 
----------
Becki Whitaker
Midwest Collaborative for Library Services (MCLS)
6202 Morenci Trail
Indianapolis, IN 46268
317-298-6570 x506 / 800-733-1899 (IN only) / fax: 317-328-2380 
whitakerb at mcls.org / www.mcls.org / scion.incolsa.net



From:
Linda Culberson <lculber at mdah.state.ms.us>
To:
koha <koha at lists.katipo.co.nz>
Date:
03/22/2010 03:41 PM
Subject:
[Koha] number of item records attached to a biblio record
Sent by:
koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz



Sorry, folks.  I know I have read or heard somewhere about a limit to 
the number of items that can be attached to a single bibliographic 
record, but I can't find it now. Can someone tell me what that number is?
Thanks.

-- 
Linda Culberson lculber at mdah.state.ms.us
Archives and Records Services Division
Ms. Dept. of Archives & History
P. O. Box 571
Jackson, MS 39205-0571
Telephone:  601/576-6873
Facsimile:  601/576-6824


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