[Koha] Advice for how to update huge numbers of bib records, for former Millennium user

[Eric Phetteplace]

Hi Tasha,

We were also a former Millennium library that migrated to Koha, though it's
been a while (migrated in 2016). Reports are essentially Millennium's
"Lists" but they require more skill to create. So your example would need
to be a SQL Report filtering according to the properties you've laid out
(e.g. biblios not linked to the orders table, with item location in (X, Y,
Z), biblio.author != 'AUTHOR', etc.).

I hosted workshops (here's a recording of one <https://youtu.be/K0zTu4qZ88c>)
with our catalogers and other technicians on learning basic SQL and I write
the more sophisticated reports for them. You can use runtime parameters to
make the reports a little more flexible so that staff can adjust them to
changing needs but they're not going to be able to accomplish much on their
own without an understanding of SQL. I never use the guided reports in Koha
and my memory of the few times I tried was that you couldn't accomplish
anything substantial, but then again I prefer working in SQL anyways
as it's so much more powerful than abstractions like Guided Reports or
Create Lists.

Best,

ERIC PHETTEPLACE Systems Librarian, Libraries (he/him)

ephetteplace at cca.edu | o 510.594.3660 (cca)

5212 Broadway | Oakland, CA | 94618

CCA is situated on the traditional unceded lands of the Ohlone peoples.

Black-owned bookstores in Oakland: Ashay by the Bay
<https://ashaybythebay.com/>, Marcus Books
<https://www.facebook.com/marcus.books/>

:(){ :|: & };:


On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 10:15 AM Bales (US), Tasha R <
tasha.r.bales at boeing.com> wrote:

> What would be the Koha equivalent to Millennium Create Lists* (or Alma
> Normalization Rules and Record Sets)?
>
> So far, I see that lists and carts can be used to update records in Koha,
> but this seems to demand working with a pre-determined list of record
> numbers, or else by manually adding items to a cart.  What if I need to
> update a huge number of "unknown" records meeting specific criteria?
>
> Can anyone suggest what the approach would be to accomplish an objective
> like this:
>
> A non-administrator with limited technical skills needs to gather and
> update 40,000 bib records in Koha that can't be identified by any single
> unifying attributes.  My Millennium query might have looked like this:
>
> *         Bib record not attached to order AND
>
> *         (Location is Y or Location is X or Location is Z) and
>
> *         Author is not TODD and
>
> *         Note doesn't have FREE
>
> *Millennium Create Lists allows you to create a Boolean Search, with up to
> about 20 statements, to query the entire database (various methods to
> search subsets or existing result sets also exist) and saves it to a file
> that can then be exported, or operated on (to apply global updates to fixed
> or variable fields, for instance).  No knowledge of SQL is needed.
>
> Thanks in advance for any tips.  As an administrator, I could conceivably
> do this with SQL, but that's not feasible for cataloging staff.  We update
> large quantities of records all the time.
>
>
> Tasha R. Bales
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