[Koha] some thoughts about cataloguing and acquisition (important)

[Tonnesen Steve]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Albert P. Calame wrote:

>     To do that, the cataloguing module must allow for the editing of all
> parts of the record - not a trivial matter for a data structure with
> 1000 variable length fields, most of which may be repeatable, and a
> maximum record size of 99999 bytes. (I have an article I wrote for
> School Libraries in Canada called "Hitting the MARC" that discusses the
> use of MARC as the data structure for library automation that may help. 
> Send me a message and I'll forward it back to you). It would be a
> serious mistake to produce a system that doesn't allow for full record
> creation and editing the MARC structure records. It is complex enough
> that I suspect it should be a module of its' own. 

The next version of Koha will be fully capable of storing all of the data
that a MARC record can hold.  It will also be able to enforce the
restrictions set in the chosen standard (MARC21 or UNIMARC for now) like
which fields or tags are repeatable, etc.

Our goal is to allow two or more "interfaces" for cataloguing.  One of
these will definitely be the full MARC interface, where librarians will
add a 245a subfield for a title record, and a 100a subfield for an author,
etc.  I believe that Paul Poulain has already done some nice work on a
MARC editor for Koha.

There will also be a simpler non-MARC interface where the librarian will
fill in a set number of fields (such as title, subtitle, author,
publisher, etc.) without having to know anything about the MARC structure
that the data is actually stored in.  This interface will basically be the
same as the existing cataloguing interface in the 1.2 version of Koha. 
This is much less flexible but allows Koha to be used in settings where a
trained librarian is not available, or where the librarians feel that they
don't need the flexibility (and the associated complexity) that MARC
offers.

Steve Tonnesen