[Koha] Serials - uploading data and setting up, suggestions and advice needed

[Hernandez, Heather]

Hi--

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 10:45 AM, Elaine Bradtke <eb at efdss.org> wrote:

> We're coming to the point in our conversion process where I need to start
> thinking about serials.
>
...

> * Create an item record when receiving this serial:
> I don't think we want to create an item record for each issue, they never
> circulate, they're always kept in the same place.  Has anyone done this,
> and why would it be a useful thing to do?
>

We do this only because we page items from closed stacks to the Reading
Room; before reshelving, we "check in" all items so that we can track
in-house usage.  So we have an item record for every page-able unit.  If we
didn't do that tracking, we wouldn't do it!

I should mention we only create subscription records for current paid
subscriptions, and the currently received free "subscriptions" for which
our users like to get an email notification upon check in of a new issue
(we enable the "Patron notification: Routing list" for this--it's cool!).


> *Vendors - we don't use vendors, but we do want to know when an issue is
> overdue so we can follow up on it.  Will we be notified even though we've
> opted out of 'claiming' missing or late issues? Or will we have to set up
> each publisher as a vendor?
>

We have "vendor" records associated with our subscription records so that
the publisher's information for claiming is one click away (an email
address, phone number, etc.).  We don't use Koha for processing the
renewals--we're a federal library, so our accounting is byzantine, but have
the vendors set up for claiming is handy.  We don't get any type of
notification of late issues for claiming--we don't have that many
subscriptions, so a simple walk around the current issue displays in the
Reading Room shows us, "Hey!  We haven't gotten in the latest...[title],"
or we notice a missed issue when the next one shows up.


> *How many issues appear by default on bibliographic records: Is there a way
> to set this to 'all'?  What do they look like?
>

We've left the "Number of issues to display in Opac" blank in our
subscription records, and this is how it looks on a typical record:
http://keys.bywatersolutions.com/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=31737
One can select the "Holdings" tab to see all 318 issues on this record.
(The "more details" link is a little misleading, since it pulls/creates a
holdings statement from the start of the subscription record, and we
haven't manually created holdings statements--we don't have them for dead
serials in our records, and, well, haven't really dealt with this.)

One other thing we find handy is putting info in the nonpublic note of the
subscription record--I wrote a little bit about here (this post also links
to a ByWater tutorial that's really useful):
http://fullfathomcollections.blogspot.com/2012/12/behind-scenes-in-technical-services.html

Feel free to look at the periodicals in our catalog, but do note the serial
searching issue we're having, mentioned in the "news block" on our opac
home page (we get a weird error with certain titles):
http://keys.bywatersolutions.com/

Let me know if you have any other questions--we're not experts or power
users of Koha's serial capabilities, by any means, but I'm happy to provide
any info that we can!  (BTW, we're on 3.10.09.000.)

Cheerio!
h2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Heather Hernandez
Technical Services Librarian
Cultural Resources and Museum Management Division
San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
heather_hernandez at nps.gov
415-561-7032 (voice)       415-556-3540 (fax)
http://www.nps.gov/safr/historyculture/library-collections.htm

"The sailor does not pray for wind, he learns to sail."--Gustaf Lindborg