[Koha] Serials framework

[Paul]

At 02:52 PM 7/15/2012 -0400, Jared Camins-Esakov wrote:
>Serials framework, Leader 000 position 7, must be changed from m - 
>Monograph/Item to s - Serial.
>How do I make "s" the default in that specific framework (obviously 
>without modifying default, books etc frameworks), or do our cataloguers 
>have to remember to change it? Â Even after setting 942$c to serials, the 
>"m" keeps appearing in the leader.
>
>You can set the default in the framework. Click "display more constraints."

Thanks, done, fully functional.  [Moment of mental madness on my part -- I 
was looking to default just the "s", not the whole string "     nas 
a22     7a 4500" including the spaces that Koha completes.]

>Just a reminder: item type has absolutely thing to do with the physical 
>characteristics of the item it is describing. If I wanted to give my 
>non-circulating reference materials the item type DUCK, that wouldn't make 
>any less sense than calling them REF (think about it... when you go to a 
>nature preserve, you're not allowed to bring the ducks home, no matter how 
>much you like them). Item type is a category for the circulation rules.

The item type may not be physical (and, while I don't want to break 
circulation rules, we're a reference library -- nobody gets out the door 
with anything from our stacks), but one of our cataloguing volunteers has 
30 years of experience with MaRC at a major university and Library Archives 
Canada, and she suggested an audit of our MaRC coding, strictly to Z39.71 
standards (LoC documentation, CONSER, NASI, etc.)

What we found was that our "book" biblios, which I had really concentrated 
on during Koha setup (and MarcEdit import) 18 months ago, was at least half 
decent; on the other hand, our serials (we hold 275,000 items) was not very 
clever. I've been able to correct most of the egregious, repetitive 
mistakes (direct manipulation of MySQL) but am now involved in trying to 
make the cataloguers' job (Koha staff client) easier to do and less prone 
to errors (framework, on screen presentation and help files) while the 
"expert lady" is setting up some training sessions.

The bottom line is that Z39.50 biblios for serials (particularly 
historically "dead" ones, which are our raison d'être) seem difficult to 
come by (maybe someone knows of a good source?) and one day we intend to 
make ours public via a Z39.50 server at our end.  I'd like to think that by 
them they would be pretty clean.

Again, thanks for your assistance,
Paul