Thanks to Rachel, it's down to two questions:
43 -- How are item statuses used? Can they be converted from DRA Classic to the new system?
(I assume that this refers to 'lost', 'shelved', 'on hold', 'checked in', or 'on loan'. I really have no idea how these would be used in practice though. Any thoughts?)
Item status's are used for display - to tell public/librarians that and item is lost or on hold, available or unavailable. They are used in conjunction with Reserves - for example -you can reserve items with certains status's but not others I think They are used for reports - for stock take, for the auditors, for reports to board of directors etc (total number of lost items in a year etc etc). Is that the sort of thing you wanted?
51 -- What is the hierarchy of the bibliographic database (bibliographic records, call number records, item records)?
(Paul, ?!?!?!?HELP!?!?!?!)
Not really sure I understand the question - but I'm thinking they want to know 1/. Biblio records: contains only the high level, generic intellectual property about a work - ie the title, author, etc You can have a biblio record with one or many groups, and one or many items. Different formats of a work that has the same IP have the same biblio - for example the Paperback, hard cover and large print editions of a work would all be on the same biblio. 2/. Group record (Item Record): Contains the information about a group of items that are all identical - carrying on the above example, there would be a group for the hardbacks, a group for the paperbacks and a group for the large print versions. If there were paperbacks published by two different publishers, then they would have a group each. 3/. Item Record (Call number record): Contains the information unique to that particular item, so is essentially it's life history after it enters the library, including cost, replacement price, when it was aquired, it's loan number, who it's been loaned too, it's status etc. diagrammtically... BIBLIO / | \ Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 | | | / | \ | | \ Item 1 Item 2 Item3 Item 4 Item 5 Item 6 Not sure if it is more or less confusing to "taranslate" into the terms they use. Cheers Rachel _____________________________________________________________ Rachel Hamilton-Williams Katipo Communications WEBMISTRESS ph 021 389 128 or +64 04 934 1285 mailto:rachel@katipo.co.nz PO Box 12487, Wellington http://www.katipo.co.nz New Zealand Koha Open Source Library System http://www.koha.org