[Koha] how to use marc records displayed on library web pages?

X Middleton x at vaults.ca
Wed Dec 19 06:46:05 NZDT 2012


I do a fair bit of cataloging for a small library that has a lot of
old/rare books, though I am an amateur librarian. I often use worldcat to
find a library that has a copy of our uncatalogued book (when I can't find
any z39.50 accessible sources). These libraries often have an option to
display a MARC record. Is there some way to get such a display into Koha
besides manually copy/pasting bits and pieces into a new MARC record?

For example:
http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b3780640/Details#tabnav

Copying and pasting the displayed record into a text file and trying to
import it via "stage for import" does not work. I notice that Library of
Congress has an option to download MARC records for its items, which can be
'staged for import" without a problem. Looking a the contents of the LoC
downloaded MARC file, it looks almost nothing like the ones displayed by
libraries which don't have a download option.

I've searched the web (i think) exhaustively for clues as to how to
actually handle or convert these "display" marc records into something
usable (something that looks like the LoC downloaded MARC records), but
with not success. I've installed and attempted to use MarcEdit and IsisMarc
hoping they might have some functionality to convert/transform this data...
but no luck.

It just seems crazy that there's all this info out there, and I can't find
any way to use it beyond the crudest (but better than nothing!) methods of
cherry picking.

What am I missing?


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