[Koha] 008 Fixed length data elements: problems with imported records in 3.12

[Elaine Bradtke]

Still, there's an underlying quirk - if Koha sees a character it doesn't
like in the 008 editing window, it skips over it and collapses the rest of
the data.
While the non # characters were originally in the correct place - once we
touch that field in the editing window they are moved to a different
position, and either ignored because they're not valid or dumped in the
wrong place where they are valid, but incorrect.

Of course if it didn't do this, we probably would have never noticed the #
issue.
Elaine


On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 2:00 AM, Doug Kingston <dpk at randomnotes.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 5:05 PM, Galen Charlton <gmc at esilibrary.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi Elaine,
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 4:31 PM, Elaine Bradtke <eb at efdss.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Here's an example of the imported 008:
>>> 130515s2006####stka###gr#####000#0#eng#d
>>>
>>
>> Just to confirm, for the migrated records, "#" in the 008 represents a
>> literal hash character, not a space?
>>
> We are using a literal '#' (hash).  Your question prompted me to check the
> MARC21 standard, specifically
>   http://www.loc.gov/marc/specifications/specrecstruc.html
> where we find the following notacion on the documenation:
> *blank (SP).* ASCII character 20(hex) (represented graphically in MARC 21
> documentation as [image: ASCII character 20 (hex)] or #), which is used
> in *indicators* and data elements containing coded values (and occurs in
> data content). Generally, blank stands for "undefined," but in some
> instances it has been assigned a meaning. ASCII name is space.
> So our MARC is has # where it should have ' '.  We'll fix this and
> re-evaluate this problem.  This interpretation is not obvious from the
> specification.
>
> -Doug-
>
>
>>
>>
>>> How important is the 008 field  in the long term? I know it does
>>> influence a few display and search functions in Koha.
>>>
>>
>> In my view, in general it's worth going to some effort to maintain the
>> 008s, as the information encoded in them is either not to be found anywhere
>> else in the record, or if it is, is in the form of free text that can cause
>> indexing indigestion.  For example, I'd rather grab the primary language
>> from the 008/35-37 than have to parse language names.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Galen
>> --
>> Galen Charlton
>> Manager of Implementation
>> Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
>> email:  gmc at esilibrary.com
>> direct: +1 770-709-5581
>> cell:   +1 404-984-4366
>> skype:  gmcharlt
>> web:    http://www.esilibrary.com/
>> Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org &
>> http://evergreen-ils.org
>>
>
>


-- 
Elaine Bradtke
Data Wrangler
VWML
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