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

[Jane Cothron]

Hi--
    Apologies for not copying to the entire list.  MarcEdit is a freely
available text editor for MARC records which will also compile records into
MARC.  There are several tutorials available (
http://people.oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/tutorials.html).
Best--
Jane Cothron
Chinook Library Network
Newport, Oregon

P.S.  The default marker used in MarcEdit for subfields is the "$" and
fields are indicated by "=" instead of the pipe "|".  This variation seems
to vary by software program.

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 12:33 PM, X Middleton <x at vaults.ca> wrote:

> Thanks, Jared, for confirming my suspicions. It still seems weird to me how
> many library interfaces "display" MARC and don't provide a machine-usable
> format. It's better than nothing though, I suppose. At least Koha isn't one
> of these systems -- Koha provides so many options for downloading records
> it's an embarrassment of riches!
>
> I also received a reply from someone (who doesn't seem to have CC'd the
> list?) who reported they copied and pasted the example link I provided into
> MarcEdit, and after a bit of manual re-formatting to remove "subfield
> markers" (I presume the | characters) and possibly adjust some spacing they
> were able compile the text to an importable MARC record. (They kindly
> attached the result for me.) To duplicate this prodigious feat, I guess I'd
> need to do some more research on the MARC format acceptable to MarcEdit...
> it would be handy to know how to do.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 12:58 PM, Jared Camins-Esakov <
> jcamins at cpbibliography.com> wrote:
>
> > 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/
> >
> >
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