[Koha] Fwd: Converting MARC 21 from AACR2 to RDA

[Paul A]

At 11:24 AM 7/7/2015 +1000, Bob Birchall wrote:
>On 07/07/15 04:05, Paul A wrote:
>>On a sort of related point, our cataloguers have recently brought to my 
>>attention the "new" RDA "264 - Production, Publication, Distribution, 
>>Manufacture, and Copyright Notice" field, which some of the Z39.50 
>>imports appear to be using *instead of* 260 -- they tell me they're 
>>seeing it more and more often.
>>
>>264 does not exist in Default framework (therefore in no others) so they 
>>are having to manually copy the data fields.
>>
>>Has anyone looked into this? Any thoughts of how best for Koha to deal 
>>with it?
>
>Yes Paul, I know you don't like it, but its time to upgrade.
>Bob

Bob, thanks for your thoughts, but as you well know I spent quite some time 
earlier this year (Koha-devel) looking into 3.18.x on Ubuntu 14.04LTS. We 
came to the conclusion that the search speed penalty was unacceptable (for 
us, I am not generalizing), and that there was no solution easily 
available. For the record, we were truly looking forward to upgrading, but, 
after over 100 hours of IT time, backed out of it.

We rely on Koha, genuinely appreciate it, and since 2010 have developed it 
from an internal management tool to a full on-line catalogue attracting 
much more traffic than we expected. We are not a lending library, therefore 
a lot of Koha's capability is unused, but have customized it to allow for 
full inventory control (physical and fiscal), the production of tax 
receipts for our donors, etc., and, above all, the internal (LAN) version 
has become a very good research tool.

As a charity, my budget does not allow me the luxury to upgrade a major 
system every few weeks or even months. My 58 years of experience with 
"computer sciences" (the term hadn't even been invented when I first got my 
hands on an IBM 704) have led me to a philosophical belief in 2-year cycles 
for upgrades, *exception* made for security fixes. I certainly am not 
pretending, nor preaching, that this is the right or only approach to IT -- 
just that it works for me in my circumstances.

Best -- Paul

---
Maritime heritage and history, preservation and conservation,
research and education through the written word and the arts.
<http://NavalMarineArchive.com> and <http://UltraMarine.ca>