[Koha] Periodical items - magazines.

[Steve/Ollie/Steven F. Baljkas]

Thursday, June 3, 2004     20:10 CDT

Hi, Ernesto,

Regarding your queries on periodical items and articles within magazines -- 

> I'm not a librarian but apparently every magazine publication has to be 
> added to the database as a new (kind of) biblio and must have a 
> reference to the master record of the magazine.

If you mean each issue, this is NOT technically required by the rules that are used in the English-speaking world, the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2* for short) which we are taught are the basic convention for bibliographic description globally (and I apologise in advance if that sounds jingoistic/is ultranationalist but hey, it's literally what my classmates and many professional librarians I know were taught). If your librarians are following different standards, they may view this as necessary, though.

AACR2R 1998 allows for the creation of Serials records (I believe the category is now Continuing Resources), which is for most periodicals (magazines, journals, etc., things that are basically meant to come out at regular or irregular intervals on an ongoing basis, with no projected termination).

So, Ernesto, one doesn't NEED to add a new record for each issue of a serial. The librarians should be able to add barcodes into the basic record as needed in the appropriate MARC field. (What I've gone on with below deals with MARC21 but I can write you with the UNIMARC equivalents if you need - let me know).

That said, your librarians certainly could CHOOSE to make entries for any individual or special issues. There are various ways of handling the cataloguing, all of which should work well within Koha. Your librarians would have to choose between (and hopefully use consistently) the method they think best.

At my local provincial university library, which does individual records for special issues, the special issues are catalogued as Monographic items, with brief cataloguing and a clear note referring back to the main Serials item listing. Usually (although this is a bit of overkill), they also add 525 Supplement Notes to the main Serials record. This would correspond most closely to AACR2R 13.5A ("In" analytics). Your librarians might want to use that method.

Alternatively, your librarians might want to do a more regularised analytic entry using added entry fields in MARC within the main record for the Serials title. The 76x-78x fields are for linking entries, including "related items that have to be obtained physically in order to use the target item (e.g. the host item for a component part: a journal issue containing a specific article"). You would be using the 77x MARC tags, specifically the 770 Supplement/Special Issue Entry.

This could also be used to highlight specific articles within specific issues (if so, they might want to add 700 and 740 tags in for the sake of the user: that way, the individual article author/s and individual article titles could be more clearly highlighted for the library patron using these). Other notes they desire could be added to clarify things further (500, 520, etc.).

I assume that with its new MARC compliancy, Koha would handle this from the cataloguing side, but I don't know how Koha would handle *the display* of all that information in the OPAC. Has anyone had experience dealing with complexities like this?

If the librarians are allowing circulation of serials, the easiest method might be to use 852 holdings statements to detail specific issues or groups thereof, linking the barcodes within the main record to the appropriate issues.

In truth, I've only seen this done for periodicals holdings that have ended up (because of age) in 2 or 3 different spaces (most recent, in reference, non-circulating, 1-2 years old in circ, 3 or older in storage) but it has worked. In these cases, though, the work had been done retroactively and uninterrupted groups of barcodes had been set aside for each serials title.

> 	Even worse they told me that they usually make an special procedure to 
> add some "important" articles as a new (kind of) biblio with a reference 
> to the specific monthly (to say something) magazine issue.

This is do-able within the context of AACR2R and is provided for in MARC-cataloguing. Depending on how they want to handle the cataloguing, a separate Monographic item (as suggested above) might be best, as it would allow them to have qualifying note fields (without the whole thing becoming needlessly confusing for the library users). Otherwise, again you would be looking at those 700, 740 and 77x fields as I outlined above.

> 	Are this things "doable" with Koha version 2.0 ??

The only thing I would be unsure of would be how Koha would handle *the display of the information*. As far as I understand, Ernesto, Koha is up and running for the complexities of the actual behind-the-scenes cataloguing.

Hope this helps a bit. If you want help structuring the records (or need UNIMARC outlines), just give me a shout.

Cheers,
Steven F. Baljkas
library tech at large
Koha neophyte
Winnipeg, MB, Canada