[Koha] Investigating Koha: import formats

[lucy.r.pearson at googlemail.com]

Thanks everyone for your help!

It's true, we really do need some funding. Ideally, a LOT of funding.
I'm not a professional cataloguer (lots of paraprofessional
experience, but in school libraries) and my aim is basically to get
something up and running which we can use in the short-term and which
won't create too many hideous problems for the future. The nature of
our collection means that it will eventually all need to be catalogued
by hand, so I can live with bad MARC records for now   - I hope that
it will all be correctly catalogued by a professional one day *misty
eyed*

Anyway, in the meantime it does seem as if MarcEdit is the way forward
for letting me get my records into Koha. I have experimented with
importing my records into the Liblime hosted demo version and they
seem to be coming across well. However, is there a way to mass import
bibliographic records with attached copy records? I'm finding the
documentation a bit difficult to follow (it seems as if most of it is
2.x based, whereas the demo is 3.x - am I looking in the wrong place?)
I imported my MARC records through Tools > Stage MARC records for
import.

Thanks very much for  all your help (and sorry for my delayed reply -
work overtook me).

Best,

Lucy

On 6/5/08, Joe Tho <koha at joetho.com> wrote:
> Hello Lucy,
>
> Your problem is fairly typical.
>
> If you import data in some non-marc format, and map the pertinent fields to
> their matching tags in the resulting marc records, you still wind up with
> bad marc records. "Bad" meaning there is a complete marc record for that
> material somewhere in the world and yours looks bad compared to it.
>
> However, it would get you up and running. With bad records.
>
> The value of a full complete marc record (in my opinion) is all the
> additional data in it. Subject headings, etc. Also, since it is an
> international standard, full marc records will allow you to make your
> catalog searchable by other libraries using the marc standard (through z39
> communication between servers). Non-marc or incomplete marc records don't
> allow that. For example, if your incomplete marc records don'[t have any
> subject heading tags, you can't search by that.
>
> Alternatively, you can do a "full retro" where you find the correct marc
> record for the material, download it into your system, add any local
> information (torn pages, shelf location, call #, etc), slap on a barcode and
> go on to the next one. Hiring a company to do a retro for you might be fifty
> cents a record or so (at least), and they will need a shelf list with
> whatever additional local info you can provide.
>
> Perhaps a better solution would be to import your csv and turn it into marc
> records, albeit incomplete marc records, and then fix those records as time
> allows. As long as you don't share out your catalog (as a z39 server) with
> other libraries, who's to know? Your patrons would only be able to search
> via the information in those csv/incomplete records, which would improve as
> you improve those records.
>
> You need some more funding, girl. And automating your catalog is an easy one
> to sell, in terms of grant proposals (are you in the US?). Aim high, include
> $ for additional equipment (a lot), and include fat money for additional
> staff salaries. You could hire a part-timer for like a year or two, and
> teach them to do what needs to be done.
>
> Good luck!
> -Joe
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz
> [mailto:koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Lucy Pearson
> Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 5:02 AM
> To: Koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> Subject: [Koha] Investigating Koha: import formats
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm new to the list, and have only just begun investigating Koha, so
> apologies if I ask any silly questions! I'm at the stage of investigating
> Koha to see if it is suitable for my needs, and I'd really appreciate it if
> I could draw on your collective expertise. I have a specific question about
> Koha, but I'll also give a bit of detail on my circumstances, in case anyone
> has any more general ideas which can help me.
>
> A bit of background: I work for a new archive which has a relatively
> substantial book collection (c. 20,000 items). Up until last year, these
> were completely uncatalogued and unlisted, so we've been working on a
> project to list our holdings. The plan is that once we have a handlist we
> can assess the collection, weed substantially and then put in place a formal
> cataloguing strategy. This last will include identifying a suitable LMS - we
> use DServe's CALM for the archive material, and may also put the books on
> there, but as it's primarily a museums / archive platform we have some
> reservations about that. To get a handlist quickly, we've catalogued using
> Readerware <http://www.readerware.com/>  , which lets you scan barcodes and
> searches the web for the data associated with those ISBNs. Now we're at a
> point where we would really like to make it easy for people outside our
> library site to access this list, even though it's not a proper catalogue.
> So, we basically need a web OPAC - Readerware is not at all equipped to
> supply this. In the long term  it would be really good to be using a
> standards-compliant library catalogue. so if I can migrate my data over to
> Koha that would be great for forward-planning.
>
> My Koha question: Is it possible to import data to Koha in CSV or
> tab-delimited format? Unfortunately, none of my existing data has MARC
> records - I can export into those tewo formats, so I need a database which
> can accept those.
>
> I strongly suspect the answer is no, but I wanted to be absolutely sure
> before I abandoned Koha completely. In addition, I'm hoping that if this
> isn't possible, this list of tech-savvy librarians might have good advice on
> alternatives. At this stage, I don't actually need a full-scale LMS - I just
> want a web app I can import my data to and which will allow users to seacrch
> by title, author, etc. (I've already explored LibraryThing, but for various
> reasons it's not really suitable.) It needs to be free software or very
> cheap, because we're so low on funds and this is an interim project.If I
> could get my data into Koha,a it would be perfect, because the full-scale
> LMS features are there if we need them, and the organisation would be able
> to buy in support if they found themseves without enough tech-savvy in
> house.
>
> Any advice? I'll be most appreciative of any and all help!
>
> Thanks!
>
> Lucy
>
>
>
>