[Koha] Importing records into Koha

[Gregory Garretson]

Hello, all,

I hope somebody can give me some good advice.

I have been asked to put the catalog for a fairly small university 
department collection online, and Koha seems to be the perfect solution. 
I've got it installed without much problem, but I'm not sure what the 
best method is for importing the records. The problem is that they are 
in an idiosyncratic format in spreadsheet form, not in MARC. It appears 
that the only format in which Koha (v1.2.3) accepts batch files is MARC. 
I'm a Perl hacker, and I know about MARC::Record, etc., so I can create 
MARC records if necessary.

BUT here's the problem: whoever catalogued these books did not see fit 
to record any ISBNs! And Koha apparently rejects any records without 
ISBNs, according to my tests (though it's hard to know when the error 
message is "Error: Problem with...<title>"). So, short of typing all the 
information in, can you suggest a method for getting these records into 
the database? I assume that the MySQL tables are sufficently complex 
that I don't want to go mucking about with them. Perhaps there is a 
Z39.50 solution for getting the ISBNs? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Gregory Garretson
Boston University