[Koha] Need Barcode Wisdom

[Gwyan Rhabyt]

The new non-Follett scanner is USB; the Follett is some other format but
has an adapter to USB. The old Follett system wanted the barcodes to come
in as a T 3028 format, so it makes sense that this is what the Follett
scanner does. But it is frustrating that the new generic scanner does the
same.
The scan comes in as T 3032 in TextEdit, Excel, etc., so I'm confident that
it is a correct reading.

The difficulty is that the manual allows dozens of possible changes and it
is not clear which to use.  How can I find out what kind of barcode I am
dealing with? A web search tells me that Follett seems to use three
kinds: Codabar,
Code 39 (Code 3 of 9), or Interleaved 2 of 5 .They all look the same to me.
Is there any specific way to distinguish them? Should I be counting the
lines?

- Cheers,
Gwyan


On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 11:49 AM, James Ghiorzi <JGhiorzi at cosb.us> wrote:

> Dear Gwyan,
>
> How do you have the scanner connected?  USB, PS/2, WedgeSaver, etc.  The
> first step I would do is open a notepad, and scan the barcode there, if it
> does not scan correctly on either the generic or the Follett than its a
> matter of going through the programming manual and scanning the correct
> settings.  If it does scan correctly than I am at a loss of what the
> problem could be (other than its attached to a generic adaptor and not a
> proper WedgeSaver).
>
> Hope that helps,
>
> James Ghiorzi
> Library Assistant II
> San Benito County Free Library
> 470 Fifth St.
> Hollister, CA 95023
> (831) 636-4107
>
> ________________________________________
> From: koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz [koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz]
> On Behalf Of Gwyan Rhabyt [gwyan.rhabyt at csueastbay.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 5:42 PM
> To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> Subject: [Koha] Need Barcode Wisdom
>
> I'm migrating a small elementary school library from Follett to Koha. All
> has gone well until now. Our problem is a mismatch between the barcodes as
> read by the scanner  which give readings like T 3210 and our biblios in
> Koha which have the codes like T0003210.
>
> At first I thought it was the Follett 3800 scanner that was dropping the
> zeros, but a new generic scanner reads the same way.
>
> So what is the easiest fix? I can imagine four but none sound easy:
> 1) Reprogramming the scanner -- seems possible but the manual is written
> for a barcode expert (so many different formats and sub formats) -- how do
> I express the kind of change I want to make in the language of scanner
> firmware?
> 2) Batch changing the biblios from within Koha  -- it seems to support
> batch work but you have to list the items. I can't work out how to make it
> change every single record.
> 3) Batch changing via the MySQL database -- I don't know SQL, so there is a
> serious learning curve
> 4) Going back to the MARC records, massing the barcode field there and then
> reimporting -- I don't know how easy that would be in MarcEdit and I am
> loathe to go that many steps backwards.
>
> Could anyone provide some wisdom to help?
>
> Cheers,
> Gwyan
> --
>
> Gwyan Rhabyt
> Associate Professor, Art Dept. and Multimedia Graduate Program
> California State University East Bay
> President of the Board of Trustees, Pacific School District
> gwyan.rhabyt at csueastbay.edu
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