- Koha-devel - lists.koha-community.org

MARC import issues
by Stephen Hedges 10 Aug '03

10 Aug '03

I would like to update all the Koha developers on two issues that have come up as NPL has been migrating to Koha. Both relate to the difference between the way Koha stores bibliographic information and the way MARC records (USMARC) structures the same information. First a reminder of what those differences are. Koha subdivides bibliographic information into three tables (basically): biblio, biblioitems, and items. Biblio holds the basic information about the work -- title and author, copyright date, that sort of thing. Biblioitems holds information about a particular manifestation of the work -- item type, classification, actual publication year (which may be different from the copyright year), etc. And items stores information about individual copies of the particular manifestation of the work -- price, barcode number, date acquired, etc. MARC, on the other hand, currently subdivides bibliographic data into two area: "Bibliographic," which holds the information that Koha would put in biblio and (some) biblioitems, and "Holdings," which has the information that Koha would put in items and (some) biblioitems. It's the process of fitting two-part information into a three-part database that leads to complications. 1. The process of importing MARC records results in one and only one row in biblioitems for each row in biblio. That's because MARC makes an individual record for each manifestation of a work, so when you import a MARC record you are really importing each record into biblioitems, with a related row in biblio to hold the information that cannot be mapped to biblioitems (author, title, etc.). That, of course, is exactly backwards from the way Koha is designed to work. The import works OK, but when you do a search, you get lots of duplicate titles listed, because each printing or video or audio recording of a work has its own row in biblio. That makes it very hard to decide which title listing you want to look at more closely. Which "Gone with the wind" is the audio recording? MARC handles this problem by providing tag 245h for the "Medium" of the work, surrounded by square brackets. (The title itself is in 245a.) Many MARC-based library systems display this tag when showing the results of a search, so you know that "Gone with the wind [audio recording]" is different from "Gone with the wind [videorecording(DVD)]" or "Gone with the wind." There are two solutions I can think of for this problem, neither of them very satisfactory. One is to add a column to biblio to hold "medium" for the 245h tag. That, of course, violates the whole philosophy of what the biblio table is supposed to store. The other is to actually modify the title that is stored in biblio. That's the workaround solution we are using at NPL. We periodically run a crude but efficient script that handles the job: my $sth_getformat = $dbh->prepare("SELECT bibid,subfieldvalue FROM marc_subfield_table WHERE tag = '245' and subfieldcode = 'h'"); my $sth_gettitle = $dbh->prepare("SELECT title FROM biblio WHERE biblionumber = ?"); my $sth_put = $dbh->prepare("UPDATE biblio SET title = ? WHERE biblionumber = ?"); $sth_getformat->execute(); my $row; while ($row = $sth_getformat->fetchrow_arrayref) { my $bibid = $row->[0]; my $subfieldvalue = $row->[1]; $sth_gettitle->execute($bibid); my $titleref = $sth_gettitle->fetchrow_arrayref; my $title = $titleref->[0]; $sth_gettitle->finish; $subfieldvalue =~ /.+]/; my $newtitle = "$title $&"; $sth_put->execute($newtitle,$bibid); } Could something similar be included as part of the MARC import process? It's not elegant, but it does solve the problem. Or better yet, can anyone think of a way to combine duplicate biblio rows into one biblio row? (Seems like this would really screw up the relationships between tables.) 2. While Koha stores the copyright date in biblio and the publication year in biblioitems, MARC puts both in one tag (260c), which of course can only be mapped to one Koha table.column. So currently the library importing their MARC records into Koha has to decide which Koha table.column to fill, and then the Koha Biblio.pm strips out the first date found in the 260c tag and puts it there. This is not good, because: a) either the screens which display biblio.copyrightdate or the screens which display biblioitems.publicationyear are going to have nothing to display; b) we're losing information in the import which could easily be retrieved; and c) it leads to inaccurate information, because (in the US) if 260c has two dates, the first is always the publication year and the second is the copyright date, and the current Koha solution could end up putting the publication year in the copyright date column. Again, we periodically run a (crude) script at NPL to load both table.columns: my $sth_get = $dbh->prepare("SELECT bibid,subfieldvalue FROM marc_subfield_table WHERE tag = '260' and subfieldcode = 'c'"); my $sth_cprdate = $dbh->prepare("UPDATE biblio SET copyrightdate = ? WHERE biblionumber = ?"); my $sth_pubdate = $dbh->prepare("UPDATE biblioitems SET publicationyear = ? WHERE biblionumber = ?"); $sth_get->execute(); my $row; while ($row = $sth_get->fetchrow_arrayref) { my $bibid = $row->[0]; my $subfieldvalue = $row->[1]; if (length $subfieldvalue > 8) { # if it is this long (even with extra # letters and punctuation), it must be # publication date, copyright date $subfieldvalue =~ /(\d{4}).+?(\d{4})/; $pubdate = $1; $cprdate = $2; } elsif ($subfieldvalue =~ /(\d{4})/) { # only one date $pubdate = $1; $cprdate = $1; } else { # no dates $pubdate = ''; $cprdate = ''; } $sth_cprdate->execute($cprdate,$bibid); $sth_pubdate->execute($pubdate,$bibid); } Again, could this somehow be worked into the MARC import process? Stephen Hedges Director, Nelsonville Public Library 95 W. Washington St., Nels.,OH 45764 (740) 753-2118 fax (740) 753-3543

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Stop words
by Owen Leonard 08 Aug '03

08 Aug '03

How are stop words supposed to work? It appears that if you do a search on a single stop word, it will execute the search: searching for 'the' will return results in our catalog. If you do a search on a stop word plus another term, it seems to ignore the stop word: searching for 'the stuff' will only return results from 'stuff.' Is this the intended behavior? -- Owen ---- Nelsonville Public Library Koha 2.0.0-pre2-R2

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Bug questions from meeting
by MJ Ray 08 Aug '03

08 Aug '03

http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=557 seems to be specific to a single site. How should we handle it? It seems that we will have a fix for http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=561 today but should there be a category for "Templates"? Other edited highlights of the shortened meeting: <slef> 59 bugs open, 6 new this week, 310 bugfixes awaiting checking, 0 awaiting closure <owen> If you don't mind, could you talk about 'bugfixes awaiting checking'? What needs to be done there? <slef> Those are bugs that a developer says they fixed, but no-one has checked that independently. It shows up on koha if you search for bugs marked "RESOLVED" against 1.9x and 2.0 version. If you have a 2.0 pre-release koha running, you can check to see if a bug reported as fixed before it was released really is. <owen> So anyone can (and should) go in and check those fixes? <slef> Yes, please. I'm still plodding through installer fixes, so I've not done any for a few weeks. <slef> It would be great if we can catch any half-fixed bugs before 2.0.0 <slef> 2.0.0pre2 was released on 9 July <slef> The bug life cycle is something like: reported -> NEW -> ASSIGNED -> RESOLVED -> VERIFIED -> CLOSED <slef> right now, we're not getting that many reports, but things seem to go from NEW to RESOLVED quite quick and they get stuck there just now. <slef> owen: oh, small point: the developers of that part of koha should not be the ones to mark a bug VERIFIED I think -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ jabber://slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ Thought: Edwin A Abbott wrote about trouble with Windows in 1884

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Koha installation problem
by albert 07 Aug '03

07 Aug '03

Dear, I install your koha library system into my Linux server8.0. I meet the following problem. I would like you to give me some suggestions to solve it. To ensure that I have start the MySQL dataabase by ' mysql -ukoha -pkohapass Koha ' ,perl is worked well in my workstation and I have also instaled HTML::Template Then I follow your installation guide, I untar the software. I follow the step until I make the opac/cgi-bin in /var/www/cgi-bin and opac/htdocs in /var/www/html. Copy koha/opac-cgi/* into opac/cgi-bin, koha/opac-html/* into opac/htdocs, copy the koha.conf into /etc and koha/modules/C4 into /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386_linux. When I use the browser to run the library system. http://domain.com/cgi-bin/opac/cgi-bin/opac-main.pl , it shows : Server error! The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request. Error message: Premature end of script headers: opac-main.pl If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster Error 500 soqhome.com Thu 07 Aug 2003 02:44:02 PM HKT Apache/2.0.40 (Red Hat Linux) When I ues command in linux text mode, perl opac-main.pl , it shows : HTML::Template->new() : Cannot open included file /htdocs/default/en/opac- main.tmpl : file not found. at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/HTML/Template.pm line 1580 HTML::Template::_init_template('HTML::Template=HASH(0x8283a08)') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/HTML/Template.pm line 1177 HTML::Template::_init('HTML::Template=HASH(0x8283a08)') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/HTML/Template.pm line 1071 HTML::Template::new ('HTML::Template','filename','/htdocs/default/en/opac- main.tmpl','die_on_bad_params',0,'global_vars',1,'debug',0,...) called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/C4/Output.pm line 122 C4::Output::gettemplate('opac-main.tmpl','opac') called at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/C4/Auth.pm line 45 C4::Auth::get_template_and_user('HASH(0x83feb3c)') called at opac- main.pl line 11 The problem I post above. It confuses me for period of time. And I have tried to find some solution in Google or Yahoo. But no one can help me. Please help me to give me suggestion to solve. If you want any other details, I will re-send to you immediately. best regards, Albert Lee albert(a)soqhome.com

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[IMPORTANT] bug report & template
by paul POULAIN 07 Aug '03

07 Aug '03

PLEASE : When you think you have discovered a bug, BEFORE entering a bug report, check the following elements : - if your template is not "default", then, switch back to default. If the bug is still present, it's a bug. If the bug has disappeared, then it's a problem in your template, fix it yourself. Only default template is official for instance. You can report a problem with OPAC & theme = vanilla, but explain in your bugreport that the problem happens with theme=vanilla in OPAC. - if you're not language = english, switch back to english. If the bug is still present, it's a bug. If the bug has disappeared, then it's a template problem. If your initial language was french, enter a bugreport, specifying it appears only in french. If the language was something else, then you should NOT enter a bugreport, as for instance only english & french are supposed to work : other translations are badly broken. -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)

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Want to help with 2.0?
by MJ Ray 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

Just a short reminder that there should be an IRC meeting at 1900 UTC (that's +0000, ie 2100 CET/MESZ) today (Wed). Amongst other things, it's a good place to bring new bugs to and help us review/prioritise current bugs. I'd really appreciate help from more user-testers and I should be around for about an hour this evening if you need a hand getting started with http://bugs.koha.org/ It takes place on server: irc.katipo.co.nz and channel: #koha Some basic notes on IRC can be found at http://www.irchelp.org/ -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ jabber://slef@jabber.at Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ Thought: Edwin A Abbott wrote about trouble with Windows in 1884

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Not sure how to contribute, but I thought I'd share.
by Collins, Jeremy 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

I've never contributed code to an Open Source project before so if I'm doing it all wrong I'm sorry. I work for an adult learning center (state funded basic education for adults) with a small library. We just downloaded and installed Koha and it looks great. The z3950 search tool didn't function quite as we expected. We were hoping to be able to use a barcode scanner to read the barcode and start the search, but the form only takes ISBN and the barcode is EAN (which has 8 of the ISBN digits encoded in it). We modified '/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/acqui.simple/marcimport.pl ' so that if the ISBN query was 13 digits instead of 9, then convert the 13 digit EAN to a 9 digit ISBN before its submitted to the queue. It seems to be working, but we aren't using any other part of the search so I'm not sure how well the patch works. I'm attaching a diff of the changes in case those in charge decide they would like them or if anyone else on the list can use them. Again if this isn't the right place, or more information is needed please let me know. Thanks for such a great, open source software package. Jeremy Collins collins_jeremy(a)rsccd.org Continuing Education Orange Center Santiago Canyon College Rancho Santiago Community College District <<koha_EAN_to_ISBN.diff>>

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Returns
by Owen Leonard 05 Aug '03

05 Aug '03

Working on the returns template I noticed that as you're returning books, the page is reloaded with new hidden form fields with details about each book returned in that 'session.' What's the purpose of that? Could it be used to create a continuous list of returns displayed onscreen? -- Owen ---- Nelsonville Public Library Koha 2.0.0-pre2-R2

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Returns messages
by Owen Leonard 04 Aug '03

04 Aug '03

In the template for returns.pl, there's a loop to display error messages: <TMPL_LOOP Name="errmsgloop"> <font color='red' size='+2'> <TMPL_IF Name="badbarcode"> No Item with barcode: <TMPL_VAR Name="msg"> </TMPL_IF> ...etc. But there doesn't seem to be a way to hide it when the 'errmsgloop' loop is empty. Adding this: <TMPL_IF NAME="errmsgloop"></TMPL_IF> around the loop doesn't hide it like I thought it would. Is there a way to achieve this? -- Owen ---- Nelsonville Public Library Koha 2.0.0-pre2-R2

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Returns: trim whitespace
by Owen Leonard 04 Aug '03

04 Aug '03

I'm thinking that returns.pl should trim whitespace from entered barcodes. Does anyone see a problem with that? -- Owen ---- Nelsonville Public Library Koha 2.0.0-pre2-R2

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