[Koha] ItemType icons and "biblio vs biblioitems" revisited (sorry)

[Owen Leonard]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 4:35 AM,  <hansbkk at gmail.com> wrote:
> And a whole lotta talk about "biblio level" vs "biblioitem level"
> fields.

With regard to your question the talk is about biblio level vs item
level. Right now it is true that biblio and biblioitem are more or
less 1:1. They both refer to biblio-level information. The item type
stored in the biblioitems table is a biblio-level item type.

On the other hand, the items table also has an item type column
(itype) as well as a collection code column (ccode). The purpose of
the item-level field is to make it possible to have different items
under one biblio record which have, for instance, different
circulation rules. I might have one copy of a dictionary which
circulates and one which stays in reference.

> I see there is a preference as to which table's itemtype to use,
> between biblioitems's itemype or items' itype - is that relevant and
> even if not why would I choose one over the other?

If you choose to have item-level_itypes OFF, it means you cannot do
what I cited above, having multiple items attached to one record each
with different circulation rules. In fact, this setup is pretty much
what you describe below:

> It seems to me that I must catalog these as separate biblios, which
> creates multiple identical copies of the biblio-level MARC data, and
> just different ("holdings level") data in the items table, including
> item type.

You could do this. This is what we did before Koha could do item level
itemtypes. If we wanted one copy to circulate and one to stay in
reference each had to have its own record.

> So when a patron searches for "2009 Proms Gala" they will
> get four identical but separate results. How can I indicate the
> different item types right there without them having to go back and
> forth between the search results and the detail screen?

If you don't mind having duplicate records, then you turn
item-level_itypes OFF and Koha will display the biblio-level itemtype
icon on the search results screen.

> A related question - is there a way to bulk update the "biblio" level
> information for all four of these separate records in a single
> operation?

There will be in 3.4, I believe.

  -- Owen


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