I know I've been... not contributing anything for quite awhile (a few pesky and inconvenient problems associated with finishing my degree, my apologies to everyone). I was going to start working on the FAQ which has been on the list for me at Sourceforge for quite awhile.... since it is intended for the user community, I was going to get submissions from them as to what it should include. Thoughts? Objections? Other requests? The quicky links page I threw together is still there at http://www.people.virginia.edu/~nsr4n/Koha if anyone needs it for anything? Randomly, the test drive option at Koha.org may have a problem in http://hlt.katipo.co.nz/catalogue/ has a link ("acquisitions") to http://hlt.katipo.co.nz/catalogue/acquisitions, which doesn't exist. In case you hadn't heard, the OpenBook people are in a "technical beta", but warn users that the database (and anything else) may be unusable in future versions... assuming you're interest in the status of the Koha "offspring." I have a collection of small libraries at my institution interested in using Koha, but they all want to know if there is some form for easy entry of data -- they all would be using volunteer labor to manually key in a fair amount of their collection information (probably from old style card catalogs) and really would like as-simple-as-possible forms for that. I see the order/receive forms, but don't see (forgive my missing it if it is there, I've not played with the acquire setup in a loooong time) a form to manually create items. The ability key in an ISBN and have a lookup (say at some National Library MARC/Z39.50) server is there. I know the MARC project is going along well -- what are the chances of them being able to do that (instead of typing in complete records) soon? I was considering trying to pitch in on that over this past summer, but was... daunted... by the scope of the MARC format. Thanks, apologies for the rambling length of this, Nick
On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 11:57:44AM -0400, Nicholas Stephen Rosasco said:
I know I've been... not contributing anything for quite awhile (a few pesky and inconvenient problems associated with finishing my degree, my apologies to everyone).
No need to apologise :-)
I was going to start working on the FAQ which has been on the list for me at Sourceforge for quite awhile.... since it is intended for the user community, I was going to get submissions from them as to what it should include.
Thoughts? Objections? Other requests?
Yep perhaps a request on the main list would be the best way to start, plus a read back thru the list archives to see what questions have been asked and answered.
Randomly, the test drive option at Koha.org may have a problem in http://hlt.katipo.co.nz/catalogue/ has a link ("acquisitions") to http://hlt.katipo.co.nz/catalogue/acquisitions, which doesn't exist.
Ahh ill fix that up, good spotting.
I have a collection of small libraries at my institution interested in using Koha, but they all want to know if there is some form for easy entry of data -- they all would be using volunteer labor to manually key in a fair amount of their collection information (probably from old style card catalogs) and really would like as-simple-as-possible forms for that. I see the order/receive forms, but don't see (forgive my missing it if it is there, I've not played with the acquire setup in a loooong time) a form to manually create items.
The ability key in an ISBN and have a lookup (say at some National Library MARC/Z39.50) server is there. I know the MARC project is going along well -- what are the chances of them being able to do that (instead of typing in complete records) soon?
I was considering trying to pitch in on that over this past summer, but was... daunted... by the scope of the MARC format.
I think Steve has gotten something like this going ... I think he has managed to do some z39.50 importing already?? Chris -- Chris Cormack Programmer 025 500 789 Katipo Communications Ltd chris@katipo.co.nz www.katipo.co.nz
I have a collection of small libraries at my institution interested in using Koha, but they all want to know if there is some form for easy entry of data -- they all would be using volunteer labor to manually key in a fair amount of their collection information (probably from old style card catalogs) and really would like as-simple-as-possible forms for that. I see the order/receive forms, but don't see (forgive my missing it if it is there, I've not played with the acquire setup in a loooong time) a form to manually create items.
On this note, esp. if we still have z39.50 importing still "under construction", would it be possible to build some sort of form for entering info on existing books (rather than going through the purchase/acquire process). The small-libraries people are rather concerned at the concept of having to face teaching people how to by-hand-enter into the DB via mysql the cataloging data.... a web form for this would be exceedingly useful for them (and shouldn't be too hard to add, I would hope). I may have missed such a form if Koha has one since the link to acquisition wasn't behaving itself last time I visited. If the z39.50 thing is working, that would be ideal, but it needs to be configurable (as to which z39.50 server you use) :) Thanks again, NSR
On Mon, 29 Oct 2001, Nicholas Stephen Rosasco wrote:
On this note, esp. if we still have z39.50 importing still "under construction", would it be possible to build some sort of form for entering info on existing books (rather than going through the purchase/acquire process). The small-libraries people are rather concerned at the concept of having to face teaching people how to by-hand-enter into the DB via mysql the cataloging data.... a web form for this would be exceedingly useful for them (and shouldn't be too hard to add, I would hope). I may have missed such a form if Koha has one since the link to acquisition wasn't behaving itself last time I visited.
If the z39.50 thing is working, that would be ideal, but it needs to be configurable (as to which z39.50 server you use) :)
I played with z39.50 before the summer. The perl library I was using worked fine for connecting to the library of Canada via z39.50, but I couldn't get it to return straight MARC data. It would only return a textual version of the data, which is all but impossible to parse. I might play with it again sometime. If anybody has any experience working with any z39.50 perl library, I'd be glad of a hand... On the simple acquisitions process, I do have an answer. Check out: http://142.28.224.14/ and click on the acquisitions link. This is not a production library server, so feel free to enter data to test it out. You can also try out my first attempt at a MARC record importer by following the "Marc Importing Tool" link from the Acquisitions page. I'm not overly happy with this. It's difficult to squeeze the data available from a MARC record to fit in the default Koha databases. The alternative solution that I'm working on (albeit slowly) is to add full MARC record support to Koha. Having said that. I do have librarians using both of these tools currently and they seem happy with them. This acquisitions module is currently available in the Debian package I'm working on, and is in CVS, but might not have been in the latest official release of Koha. Steve.
Morning Steve, re: http://142.28.224.14/ Well done again!! I liked the layout a lot - very simple and direct. Rosalie Blake
On Wed, 31 Oct 2001, Rosalie Blake wrote:
Well done again!! I liked the layout a lot - very simple and direct.
Thanks! At the moment, I have it setup so that a Koha administrator can switch between having either the normal Koha acquisitions process or my simplified entry form. The librarians see one or the other. It might actually make more sense to offer both to the librarians and let them choose the method that makes sense for them at the moment. I think my format makes more sense during the initial cataloguing of a library's holdings, while the Koha format is more useful for ongoing acquisitions. Steve.
participants (4)
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Chris Cormack -
Nicholas Stephen Rosasco -
Rosalie Blake -
Tonnesen Steve