[Koha] Migrating, analyticals and MARC frameworks

[Elaine Bradtke]

We're experimenting with migrating from a database into KOHA and I've
got three sort of interrelated questions.
1) once you've sucked in the newly minted MARC (I'll skip over the
techno-magic our IT wizard is doing to get to that point) it seems as
if it's still necessary to go into the MARC record and add info into
003 005 and 008 fields.  Is there any way that can be done either as
part of the conversion process or as part of the importation? If it
isn't done until sometime later (like when we get around to adding
barcodes), does it wreak havoc in some part of the system that I
haven't thought of?  It looks as if searching works fine on unedited
records.

2) Analyticals - we've got lots of them, and they're one of the most
useful features of our database. One of our advisory committee has
suggested that we make a live link between the child record (eg. a
conference paper in a book of proceedings) and the parent record (the
proceedings themselves).  I know where to do this in MARC, but I'm not
sure what should go in there.  How do you put a hotlink between
biblios?  Has anyone tried? Does it use the biblio number as a target?

3) There seem to be quite a profusion of MARC frameworks.  While I
understand it will be useful when we bring in our data on Serials, and
possibly the audio and video collections, I'm wondering what the point
is for all the rest of the stuff.  I've had to do some tweaking to the
MARC framework to accommodate some of the complexities of our
collection.  So far I've done this in the Books, Booklets, Workbooks
framework.  But the import seems to go into the Default framework.
Should I be making all my tweaks in the Default framework and not
worry about the others for now? The items we're currently attempting
to import are (mostly) some form of printed material.

4) Ours is primarily a research collection with very few items that
circulate and very few borrowers. I'd like to switch off the display
of the 'not for loan' status, and perhaps hide the number of items
(since, in the case of the analyticals it will say no items, which
might be confusing).  Has anyone made this sort of modification?

thanks!
-- 
Elaine