[Koha] Question on Z39.50 cross-format queries

[Robin Sheat]

Op 13-08-12 21:36, Manos Petridis schreef:
> a) It it were simply a case of either/or, then why can I select the MARC flavour of the various Z39.50 origins set up at my installation? What is the reason to let koha know of the MARC flavour/dialect, if it not able to use the data that each server sends? There must be some functionality behind the dropbox selections, even if it only defines the query statement dialect.

Koha needs to know what you are using, so that it knows what field to
pull from for the title, and how to index the title in zebra to make it
correctly searchable, for example. There are a number of other cases
where the differences are a bit deeper than just different field IDs.

>>b) From What I can see in the data presented (in the MARC form window) it sometimes is just a matter of mapping. For example, it seems that 

It's not really feasible to correctly map from UNIMARC to MARC21 in an
automated fashion. MARC rules extend beyond what field something is in,
to what information is made available, and how it is formatted within
the field. You could probably get a pretty good automated conversion,
but it would almost certainly be lossy.

-- 
Robin Sheat
Catalyst IT Ltd.
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