[Koha] moving to Koha from an older system.

[Joshua Ferraro]

Hi Gavin,

For purposes of import, there isn't a useful distinction between
USMARC and MARC21 ... that is, if you have USMARC, you can import
into Koha as is and simply build your MARC framework to match the
data.

MARC::File::XML is a tool that you could use to manage your records
if you decide to handle them in XML for some reason. Otherwise,
I'd use MARC::Record to do any pre-processing of the records.

Finally, I should mention that Koha 2.2.6 will include a much more
complete MARC framework (for MARC21) and I'd suggest using it as
a baseline for your framework (you can find it in rel_2_2 branch
of CVS).

Cheers,

--
Joshua Ferraro                       SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
President, Technology       migration, training, maintenance, support
LibLime                                Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS
jmf at liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS

On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 01:52:23PM +0100, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like if possible to solicit a little advice for a group in Dublin who
> I'm assisting with a move to Koha.
> 
> They can export UKMarc and USMarc from their existing system, but not
> Marc21.  As far as we can tell Marc21 is the system which Koha defaults to.
> The old systems all place stuff like the copy data under different tag
> numbers so this doesn't work entirely as is.  
> 
> It seems like we can remap Koha's Marc tag stuff to suit our needs.
> Alternatively, we can convert Marc->XML, make changes to the XML and
> convert back again.
> 
> My experience, such as it is, is that with software like this one is best
> being in the long term sticking as close to the defaults as possible.  For
> this reason, I'm leaning toward doing the conversion up to Marc21 once and
> for all.  As I see it, their Marc data will then be in an up-to-date
> standard format.
> 
> I had a look at XML::Simple last night which, although rather slow on a
> large Marc file, does seem to be a fairly straightforward way of
> arbitrarily remapping the XML file automatically.  I am happy to post the
> script if I get it working.
> 
> So, am I nuts to even try this?  Should we just remap things in Koha?  Is
> there a third, better way to do this?
> 
> Gavin
> 
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