1. KOHA HOLDINGS STRUCTURE. The structure of the Koha database can be read even if not reliably interpreted from kohastructure.sql, http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=blob;f=installer/data/mysql/... . If the intention is to have a system in which the user identifies user appropriate copies by proximity and other relevant factors, the user would need to first query for needed bibliographic records. Ideally the bibliographic records would be indexed centrally instead of running highly inefficient distributed queries. Acquire all the bibliographic records in advance by whatever means seems suitable with frequent updates. Koha currently has holdings in a single Koha holdings field within the bibliographic records with some correspondence to MARC 21 bibliographic holdings for MARC 21 and the French interlibrary loan standard Recommandation 995 for UNIMARC. The unified bibliographic and holdings design within the bibliographic records has problems, but if you have the MARC bibliographic records from a Koha installation then you should also have the holdings embedded within them. [Beware, Koha MARC 21 frameworks are overdue for an update and are certainly missing what is needed for MAB2 unification. Updating all the variant frameworks for different material types in vim is a tedious time intensive task which needs some time invested in improving the updating process or better yet improving the design. I have some not quite finished work on updating MARC 21 frameworks which I did not commit over a year ago and which now needs a few days work again. German users especially should be cautioned that data loss can result from incomplete Koha MARC frameworks in some cases where records are saved within Koha for which the MARC framework acts as a filter for the data from the record.] 1.1. ITEM IDENTIFIER. The default Koha MARC location for storing items.itemnumber is 952 $9 for MARC 21 and 995 $9 for UNIMARC. In case of library modification of the Koha bibliographic frameworks, a reliable identification of the items.itemnumber MARC field and subfield from a Koha Perl script would be the following line. my ($itemsMARCFieldID, $itemsItemnumberMARCSubfieldID) = &GetMarcFromKohaField('items.itemnumber', ''); Avoid presuming that holdings information stored in the holdings field is current. Add a feature to Koha for querying the items table by itemnumber in real time for whatever values you may need. 1.2. ITEM NOTES. Any item notes intended for the user should be presented to the user from the MARC record stored. The default Koha MARC location for items.itemnotes is 952 $z for MARC 21 and 995 $u for UNIMARC. In case of library modification of the Koha bibliographic frameworks, a reliable identification of the items.itemnotes MARC field and subfield from a Koha Perl script would be the following line. my ($itemsMARCFieldID, $itemsItemnoteMARCSubfieldID) = &GetMarcFromKohaField('items.itemnotes', ''); The default Koha MARC location for a periodical number, items.enumchron, is not set for MARC 21, set to 995 $v for French UNIMARC, and not set for English UNIMARC. [Koha English UNIMARC frameworks are incomplete, although, Recommandation 995 has been generally well specified within them.] In case of library modification of the Koha bibliographic frameworks, a reliable identification of the items.enumchron MARC field and subfield from a Koha Perl script would be the following line. my ($itemsMARCFieldID, $itemsPeriodicalNumberMARCSubfieldID) = &GetMarcFromKohaField('items.enumchron', ''); 1.3. LIBRARY BRANCH IDENTIFIERS. Library location codes can be obtained from items.homebranch and items.holdingbranch. The branches table can be queried by branchcode for information in the branchname, branchaddress1, etc. columns. Except for branchcode, the columns in the branches table should not be assumed to be populated or current. 1.4. LOCATIONS. Location codes and location descriptions within the library can be queried by itemnumber from the items table such as itemcallnumber and location columns. Electronic location is much more likely to be stored in MARC field 856 than in items.uri. 1.5. STATUS. [Circulation is certainly not my speciality and it is generally the most active area of development. If I have some mistake, I hope that someone will correct me. There are certainly points of confusion where ordinary language use of programmers has been used in the code which conflicts with the prevalent library terminology.] 1.5.1. REFERENCE OR CIRCULATING USE. Whether an item may have reference or circulating use can be queried by itemnumber from items.notforloan. If items.notforloan is NULL, then the notforloan value for the Koha itemtype should be checked. The Koha itemtype could be identified by itemnumber in items.itype. If items.itype is NULL, then the Koha itemtype may be found by itemnumber via the corresponding biblioitemsnumber in biblioitems.itemtype. Find the biblioitemsnumber to use by itemnumber in the items table. Once the itemtype is is identified, the notforloan value can be found in by itemtype in itemtypes.notforloan. Unfortunately, the meaning of the notforloan values is not well standardised for Koha which achieves flexibility for individual libraries at the price the ability to design useful circulation features for all Koha libraries setting some useful values automatically. MARC 21 notforloan defaults are: -1 Ordered 0 Circulating item 1 Not For Loan 2 Staff Collection UNIMARC notforloan defaults have not been committed to Git. 1.5.2. AVAILABLE STATUS. Unavailable status of the item can be queried by itemnumber from the items table for some reasons contained in the onloan (date value), damaged, itemlost, withdrawn, and restricted columns. Unavailable status from a hold can be identified by itemnumber from the reserves table checking that date of the reservedate column is not in the future and has no date set in the cancellationdate column. Taking some code from Koha C4::Search.pm may be useful for determining availability, http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=blob;f=C4/Search.pm . See the searchResults() function, especially code following the comment "# For each grouping of items (onloan, available, unavailable), we build a key to store relevant info about that item". Whether an item may be circulated involves many checks including lending rules. Taking some code from Koha C4::Circulation.pm may be useful, http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=blob;f=C4/Circulation.pm . See code following the comment "# ITEM CHECKING" in the function CanBookBeIssued(). 1.5.3. LOAN STATUS. Status of a loan can be queried by itemnumber from the issues table such as the date_due and renewals columns. Additional information about possible holds and additional renewals permitted by the current borrower can be complex and liable to change in the next intermediate version. Obviously, the date due does not guarantee a return and there may be a lag between the return of material to the library and the material being properly reshelved. Some helpful additional status clues may be obtained by querying by itemnumber for issues.returndate and items.datelastseen. 2. EXTENDING NCIP. NCIP is an extensible standard even if not currently well suited for the purpose intended. Jacob, would you intend to extend NCIP with DAIA in addition to making DAIA available independently? Thomas Dukleth Agogme 109 E 9th Street, 3D New York, NY 10003 USA http://www.agogme.com +1 212-674-3783 [...]