No subject

librarian with very slight technical knowledge of databases.  This library
is a member of Kinetica (a large database of maybe 36 million MARC
compatible holdings) that is run by the National Library of Australia.
wwww.nla.gov.au/kinetica/connect.html to see information.  IDs and passwords
are needed to check the catalogue which costs around 80c to $1 approx per
search.  I'm pretty sure NLA would supply access to serious developpers.

There is a Cataloguing Client for MARC compliant cataloguing which is being
updated.

Small libraries now have available a shortened on the web input form for
"cataloguing".  This provides an entry of basic standard which hopefully may
be upgraded later if another library also acquires that title.  Libraries
often "add" their holdings to existing records.  Large libraries frequently
work on their local cataloguing systems and "upload" to the Kinetica
database and matching algorithms are there to prevent duplicate entries.
Please note that I am not personally familiar with these details at the NLA
"end" as work in a SOLO library now.

This shortened on the web form has the standard requirements including
author, title, format (like book, video etc etc) publisher, place of
publication, date, country of publication, ISBN etc (International Standard
Book Number), ISSN (International Standard Serial Number).  It really is a
simple form to complete - the record is saved as a whole (not line by line
as in the Client), a check of the entry appears on the screen which you
click to add to the Kinetica database in MARC format (done by the system).
You do not need to know the MARC tags to use this form to produce a basic
MARC compatible cataloguing record.  Please excuse me if any of this is
inaccurate as I have only used it as an end-user and so am not aware of the
exact details at the NLA "end" of the process.  The point I am trying to
make is that the end-user library can immediately "see" the MARC tags added
to their simple cataloguing on the screen after it has been input into the
Kinetica Database, and another, even smaller library could add its holdings
to the MARC record 1 or 2 minutes later, or indeed upgrade the complexity of
the cataloguing standard.

I got the impression that Koha "simpler non-MARC interface" form would not
allow the "simpler" libraries to see the record in MARC compatible format.
I apologise if I have misunderstood! I feel that it is very important to
have all records MARC compliant for international cooperation, even if this
is rarely needed at the local leval.  With NLA the records are stored in NLA
servers etc, not at the local leval which obviously could not store 36
million records!

I feel sure that the people at the National Library of Australia would be
very happy to liaise with Koha people.  The NZ National Catalogue "Te Puna"
is available on the Kinetica site and originally I believe it was a joint
project between the National Libraries of Australia and NZ.

Just my 2 cents.  Bonne chance!

Jean Truebridge
ADAVB Library
(VDA)


-----Original Message-----
From: koha-admin at lists.katipo.co.nz
[mailto:koha-admin at lists.katipo.co.nz]On Behalf Of Tonnesen Steve
Sent: Friday, 17 January 2003 08:47
To: Albert P. Calame
Cc: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
Subject: Re: [Koha] some thoughts about cataloguing and acquisition
(important)



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


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