Hi everybody, Here is Paul, from the old Europe ;-) i just spended 20mn to read all those answers to my request, and I'm not happy because what i've read is NOT RELATED to my question. 1st : my question was a LIBRARIAN question. And i think almost all answers are related to DEVELOPPERS problems ! 2nd : my question was to imagine a solution to get the best possible acquisition and cataloguing process ! not to do a code -or db- revolution in koha ! and what are you speaking about ? DB normalization, and other -interesting but not in the scope- question. The most interesting thought, imho, comes from Stephen, from NPL (which funded MARC support, so, is always right :-) ) I think that a strong acquisition component would be a very valuable asset for Koha. In fact, I think acquisitions are much more important than cataloging. That means that I support your idea of separating the two, so it would be easier (to my mind) to focus development effort on acquisitions. If they are not separated, then I think cataloging should at least be handled as a sub-task of acquisitions. Incidentally, this is my opinion too :-) So, my proposal for acquisition and cataloguing is the following : *ACQUISITION* During acquisition, you define as few datas as possible. You can define less than ISBN, title, author and editor if you want. The acquisition part does NOT deals with marc (ie : from a librarian point of vue. the mySQL DB is something else !). when the book is recieved, the librarian will note this in the acquisition part of koha, then, will automatically reach the cataloguing chapter This WILL be in the 2.0, it's almost the normal acquisition of the 1.2. this acquisition process will be the same wether MARC or non-MARC. Acquisition in a future will also get : - suggestions *CATALOGUING* - The library can use MARC or non MARC cataloguing. - The cataloguing can be called after an acquisition, or as a specific and single task - The cataloguing means : entering biblio and entering items. All those will be in the 2.0. It's part from acqui.simple in MARC for MARC, and part from normal acquisition of the 1.2 cataloguing in a future version will also get : - z39.50 support - import of "commercial" MARC cdroms like "electre" or "Rameau", in France. I think that everybody agrees to say that books that will arrive soon in the library can be shown on opac or catalogue search part of koha, with a specific flag. So, that will be done too. I hope that at least every LIBRARIAN will be happy with those proposals. -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)