[Koha] Koha Cataloging Archives

[Linda Culberson]

  There are three standards central to archival description: DACS 
(Describing Archives: A Content Standard), MARC, and Encoded Archival 
Description (EAD). Koha can handle 2 out of three, plus allow us to 
track in-house use of our materials and link to digitized copies of the 
originals where they exist.   So, I like Koha.

  The real problem we have with Koha is the lack of analytic record 
support  ( http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Analytic_Record_support ) 
because many of our collections have item-level descriptions which are 
handled as analytics.  We also have a number of journals which have 
analytic records for specific articles in certain issues and we need to 
be able to tie the analytic record to the particular issue of the 
serial's record.

Another problem is that Koha seems to only allow for the borrower to 
make only one hold request per title - a real problem with serials (and 
collections with linked item level analytical records)  - because a 
person may really want to see the Spring and Fall issues of 1994 and the 
Summer issue of 1995 of a serial.  Hopefully, I'm wrong about this being 
a problem and somebody can tell me how to do this?

On a personal note, I  would be very interested in sharing ideas with 
other archives or libraries with archival materials about how to best 
use Koha for archival collections.

Thanks for asking, Nicole!
Linda

>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Is anyone on list using Koha to catalog archive collections? Someone
>>> asked me for examples of libraries using Koha for this purpose and I
>>> was just wondering if any of you happened to be doing this and if so
>>> how have you found it to work?
>>>
>>> Thanks a bunch,
>>> Nicole C. Engard
>>>
>>
-- 
Linda Culberson			lculber at mdah.state.ms.us
Archives and Records Services Division
Ms. Dept. of Archives&  History
P. O. Box 571
Jackson, MS 39205-0571
Telephone:  601/576-6873
Facsimile:  601/576-6824