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

[hansbkk at gmail.com]

Aha, getting clearer, thanks so much!

Well, I expect that the biblio records will be getting updated
frequently, and since I also plan to use virtual shelves (lists) and
have members using tagging, item-level item-types seem the way to go
rather than duplicate biblios, right?

Plus (correct me if I'm wrong) this eliminates my having to choose for
Advanced Search - only Collection Code will be available for that?

Back to icons then, is there a good biblio-level field to indicate in
the search results (ideally with an icon) that a given biblio has
available (child items with) format A only, or formats A+B or A+C?
Fortunately there aren't that many possible combinations. . .

I don't mean Koha calculating this from the child item records, the
biblio-level field's value could be hard-coded in the MARC before
importing, and updated as new-format version items get added later on.

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 6:20 PM, Owen Leonard <oleonard at myacpl.org> wrote:
> 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.