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

[Jared Camins-Esakov]

X,

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?
>

Not easily if they do not provide a Z39.50 server or raw MARC record
download. What you are seeing when looking at the "MARC view" is a
representation of the MARC format that has been designed to be easily
readable for humans. MARC records are actually (usually, anyway) stored in
the binary format that LC provides their records in.


> 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?
>

Most libraries that use copy from libraries other than their national
library use OCLC or Skyriver (or a similar union database) for obtaining
records. It would be possible to write screen scrapers to harvest MARC data
from OPACs, but since there is no standard formatting, you would need at
the very least a screen scraper per ILS, if not a screen scraper per
catalog to cope with minor customizations made by various libraries.

Regards,
Jared

-- 
Jared Camins-Esakov
Bibliographer, C & P Bibliography Services, LLC
(phone) +1 (917) 727-3445
(e-mail) jcamins at cpbibliography.com
(web) http://www.cpbibliography.com/