[Koha] Koha from scratch

[Baljkas Family]

Thursday, June 17, 2004     17:25 CDT

Hi, Milton,

Good for you setting up a home system! That is something I am hoping/waiting to do as well.

As for your inquiry on using the ISBN list, yes, there was a message to the listserv (I am guessing) more than a year ago now where a fellow (a Calgarian, I think) had created a program script to connect to, IIRC LC's Z39.50 portal and run through an ISBN list to try to find books.

Depending on how many books you have in your collection, and whether you really care how well catalogued they are vs. just figuring out the cyber stuff and trying to do cataloguing in as automated a process as possible (à la nerd factor), you may want to consider looking up the books INDIVIDUALLY (i.e. really from scratch!).

I've just about given up trying to get this point across on the listserv or elsewhere, but there really is a reason that professional cataloguing isn't done from compiled lists using scripts.

The first problem is what some cataloguers call false negatives: the book you are cataloguing is really there in the database you are connecting to, but the ISBN isn't encoded or isn't coded properly. Although this tends to happen less often nowadays, and especially with mass market materials, if you have older stuff or small press stuff -- i.e. without ISBNs -- it rapidly becomes an issue.

The second problem, although not so much an issue with LC, is poor positives: you find a record, but it is not a very high quality one (rife with spelling errors, not in proper formats, not following standard description conventions, etc). This is much more of an issue if one uses NLC's AMICUS.

Anyway, this is just something to think about.

If you can't find the message about the Z39.50/ISBN search program in the Koha archives, give me a shout back off listserv. I know I saved the message from the fellow referenced above, but my home system has become unstable and I am having trouble finding things, else I would have checked for you right now.

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