[Koha] Obtaining MARC21 records

[Harry Jackson]

Steven F. Baljkas wrote:
> Saturday, December 11, 2004    21:27 CST
> 
> Hi, Harry,
> 
> Just finished forwarding the info to Christopher, but I thought I should let
> you know that part of the solution has already been achieved.
> 
> John Voth offered the listserv his tools back in 2003.
> 
> You can check them out at URL http://www.voth.ca/bib.php
> 
> I've copied his note to Joshua below as it gives an indication of the
> broader discussions that were underway. I don't know what progress has been
> made since.

I took a pop at this at the weekend and I have a working script now.

I had a look at the script you mentioned and it look fine but there are 
some differences between the one above and mine.

1. It only searches a single server. I have written the one here to 
accept as many servers as you give it and it searches them all until it 
finds a MARC record, it then searches for the next ISBN. The order that 
the server are searched can be changed. I added some stats to the script 
so that you have some idea of which of you servers are giving you the 
best results so that you can then change the script to search these first.

2. I also added the Business::ISBN module to it at the weekend so that 
if it is installed it will check the ISBN for validity oterwise it 
performs some rudimentary checks itself. It is not necessary to have the 
Business::ISBN module installed but if you do it performs the checks.

3. The script also writes everything out to a log file so that you can 
see what it is doing ie Good/Bad ISBN's etc.

Harry