[Koha] z39.50 and holdings

[Seaman, Graham]

MJ RAy wrote:

>As you know, holdings data is not necessarily availability data.

I would prefer availability, but if holdings is all that's practical, that's fine too.

>Happily, Koha will return holdings data in the 952 tag described on
>http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Holdings_data_fields_(9xx)
>ncluding the due date in the q subfield if it's on loan.  I checked
>and this still seems to be visible in a Zebra z39.50 connected to
>a recent master version.

The site I'm querying is not returning anything in the 952 tag. There is a note on the wiki page you pointed to which reads "As of 3.4.x, holdings data is no longer stored in a 952 field and that information is introduced in the items table only." I guess that means this site may be using 3.4.x.  But that statement seems to conflict with yours above that 952 is still populated in a recent version. The only 900 fields I am seeing populated are 942, 962 and 999.

>However, it's only useful if you know you're talking to Koha.  In
>general, what Owen said is correct and we don't get availability.

I'm working on a cross-library Z39.50 search where I know what each LMS is. At the moment the only ones I can't get any holdings or availability data from are Capita Alto and Koha (I only have one Koha library in my list, the IDS library in Brighton). If there is nothing simple I can ask the Systems person for the Koha library to turn on to give me holdings in a Marc field, another possibility would be to query both holdings and availability through a web interface, if Koha has one?

Thanks for the helpful information

Graham