[Koha] Item types in Koha
Gaetan Boisson
gaetan.boisson at biblibre.com
Sat Feb 4 04:52:29 NZDT 2017
Thanks for the input Joy. It's a discussion that has caused actual
flamewars here, so i'll try to make it not too complicated! Maybe a
topic for the next hackfest too.
-- to the point version : --
Does the community think it's a good idea to add a "bibliographic type",
to qualify records, with specific indexes and search features so that we
can differentiate clearly the typology set up at the bibliographic level
and the one at the item level?
The item-level_itypes system preference would remain the same, and would
allow libraries to choose which of these two criterias they want to use
for circulation rules. It would then of course be possible to have a
set-up where only one of the two levels is used, but having both would
be possible, and wouldn't be too confusing.
-- convoluted version : --
Catalogs aren't frbr-ized in France either, and we usually have one
record for the ebook, and one for the print, a different for each
edition, etc. (Maybe my example wasn't so great...) Libraries also tend
to have a number of records without items, which makes the record-level
type mandatory in most cases. They also tend to have elaborate
circulation rules for their items, which makes an item-level type
mandatory as well.
I am confused by your first paragraph though. You seem to say US
libraries will have a record for each type, but the system preference is
always set to item level. Wouldn't the type be the same for all items then?
I think we cannot really get rid of the 942$c (which for some reason is
in 099$t in French unimarc set-ups), it makes sense in a lot of
situations, not least when a record has no items. It doen't have to be
renamed to "record type" though. I would say Koha has two entities here
which need a type : Biblios and Items. So it could be "biblioitem type"
to be consistent with the odd name in the database. Or "bibliographic
type" which sounds better if you ask me.
I think they should be indexed separately, and deserve separate
checkboxes lists in the advanced search, maybe even separate facets.
Right now for me the issue really has a lot more to do with terminology
than with features. In a lot of situations, we just create an authorized
value that we use at the bibliographic level, with a specific index, use
the item-type at the item level for circulation rules, and we have a
setup that fits our need and makes sense. But then, the item level type
is called "type de document" everywhere in the interface, and that
drives some librarians insane.
We could start right now by changing the translation at least to "type
d'exemplaire" (which is anyway more consistent with the terminology in
the english templates), but i'll take this issue to the French part of
the community!
Le 03/02/2017 à 01:13, Joy Nelson a écrit :
> Gaetan,
> I've spent some time pondering this. I have not encountered the
> confusion that you seem to have run into. It may be a difference in
> how 'things' are cataloged in the US versus Europe. In the US,
> catalogs are by and large not FRBR-ized. We rarely run into a
> situation where libraries will place different types of items onto a
> single MARC record. Typically there is a MARC record that is specific
> to E-books, another MARC record for the second edition print version,
> another MARC record for the large print version. It seems US
> catalogers prefer to have things separate in the catalog. So for the
> vast majority of our libraries that system preference is never
> considered. It is set to item-level_itypes is set to the item level,
> not the Bibliographic level.
>
> I do appreciate your discussion on the searching aspect of the
> catalog. The biggest use I see in the 942 'itemtype' is for
> eresources. Often those bibliographic records have no item records in
> the catalog. So the 942$c is needed to be able to search for those
> titles. And yes...this is where we too run into confusion explaining
> 'itemtype' at the bib-level versus 'itemtype' at the item level. I
> can see value in renaming the 942$c the Record Type. Would we then
> introduce confusion by explaining that the 'item type' search searches
> both Record Type and Itemtype? Further, for US catalogers, 'record
> type' is something that is coded in the leader and the 008 tag of the
> MARC record. So I would anticipate we would see significant confusion
> from catalogers with the use of 'record type'.
>
> One library I am working with now is interested in using the itemtype
> category to help with patron searching. So a DVD, VHS, BLU-RAY items
> could all be assigned to the VIDEO itemtypecat. When the patron
> searches VIDEO, (and assuming they don't care about the format), they
> would see a result list containing all the itemtypes. This is new
> territory for me, so I'm excited to explore this with them. (Thank
> goodness they have a test server we can play on before implementing on
> production). For me, this seems to be another way to use a 'higher
> level type' to group items into 'like' types, while still maintaining
> the circulation item level rules. Perhaps another way out is to get
> rid of the 942$c altogether? That would make me happy.
>
>
> Interesting discussion.
>
> joy
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 9:46 AM, Gaetan Boisson
> <gaetan.boisson at biblibre.com <mailto:gaetan.boisson at biblibre.com>> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> there's a part of the Koha set-up i found always creates a lot of
> confusion with new libraries: the possibility of having the item
> type taken into account for circulation rules at the item or at
> the bibliographic level (the item-level_itypes system preference).
> Things are to a certain extent made worse by the French
> translation for item type, which translates back to "document
> type". That translation does make sense to some extent though,
> because if you decide to use "bibliographic level item types" then
> "item types" sounds like the wrong name. In a lot of libraries you
> do want to have a list of document types here, but not always.
>
> There are 2 features behind this : identifying item types (search
> and display), and defining circulation rules. Koha allows you to
> separate both, and a common scenario is to have the system
> preference at item level, and a different piece of information at
> the bibliographic level. This is because at the bibliographic
> level, you can say for instance that this record is of the "novel"
> type, and indeed all items attached to it will be novels, and it
> has a couple items, one of which is a physical copy, another one
> is an ebook, and a third one is a physical copy as well, but
> linked to different circulation rules for some reason. So usually
> the type at the bibliographic level makes a lot of sense for
> searching, and the one at the item level much less. Unfortunately
> in that case, the one at the item-level will be the one used for
> searching, identifying, etc.
>
> I am curious to know whether the current wording and situation is
> confusing for other users as well.
>
> My proposal would be to add a "record type", that would look very
> much just as "item type" does. The system preference could be
> reworded but the feature remain the same. It would just clarify
> things, and we could get rid of the "document type" terminology,
> which currently, in French, ends up being very confusing since
> most of the time it defines circulation rules and is not linked to
> what librarians would see under the "document type" taxonomy. My
> guess is that in English, there's a similar ambiguity with "item
> type" possibly ending at the bibliographic level.
>
> What is your experience on this? Does this seem like a good idea
> to clear things up?
>
> Best,
>
>
> --
> Gaetan Boisson
> Chef de projet bibliothécaire
> BibLibre
> +33(0)6 52 42 51 29
> 108 rue Breteuil 13006 Marseille
> gaetan.boisson at biblibre.com <mailto:gaetan.boisson at biblibre.com>
>
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>
> --
> Joy Nelson
> Director of Migrations
>
> ByWater Solutions <http://bywatersolutions.com>
> Support and Consulting for Open Source Software
> Office: Fort Worth, TX
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> What is Koha? <http://bywatersolutions.com/what-is-koha/>
>
--
Gaetan Boisson
Chef de projet bibliothécaire
BibLibre
+33(0)6 52 42 51 29
108 rue Breteuil 13006 Marseille
gaetan.boisson at biblibre.com
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