[Koha] Data Conversion

[Stephen Hedges]

Luke Ottrey said:
> If anyone has any ideas and or thoughts - or could be kind enough to
> point me in the direction of either:
> a.  How to import the data direct into the MySQL tables - which tables
> and fields? (and I do have a pretty good knowledge of MySQL etc etc)
> b)  How to create MARC from this data (limited knowledge of PERL, PHP
> etc but willing to learn to make it happen)
> Or, if anyone had the time to create the script required that would be
> tops.

Luke -

Re: a.) One issue you will run into right away is generating the "control"
numbers for your data:  the biblionumber, biblioitemnumber, and
itemnumber.  While it would be fairly easy to map your data to the
corresponding Koha tables and columns, it would be difficult to generate
the control numbers with the correct relationship.  (i.e. the items table
would not only have a unique itemnumber for each item, but also the
correct corresponding biblioitemnumber and biblionumber.)  The
bulkmarcimport script handles all of this for you -- if you have MARC
records.
Re:  b.) You could use the Perl MARC::Record module to build MARC records
from your data, but you would need to know not only Perl but MARC.  There
are some functions in the Koha C4/Biblio module that do this (I think they
work), but they assume that you already have your data in the Koha tables
and are building MARC records from that.  Seems like you're caught between
a rock and a hard place.

I hope someone else can be more helpful...

-- 
Stephen Hedges
Skemotah Solutions, USA
www.skemotah.com  --  shedges at skemotah.com