Paul et al, In Paul's proposed scheme for item statuses, the items.notforloan field is linked to MARC field 942$k and then an authorized value is set for that field (defined by the library). Before we invest too much development energy on this idea I'd like to question whether it's even a good idea to store status information in the MARC record, especially we we move toward using Zebra to store our textual (MARC) database. Stephen and I spoke earlier today and he's got me thinking that maybe it's not such a good idea to store statuses in MARC. MARC wasn't really designed for anything but the static record information. It's ill-suited for transactional based data such as statuses. I propose that for Koha 3.0 we create a new field in the Koha tables called 'items.status'. items.status can be a numeric value and have a set of library-defined authorized values. We can then add a framework for setting those values that a library must setup when they install the system. For instance, it should be possible to set Koha to automatically set an items status to 'in transit' when an item is on reserve to a patron in a branch other than the holdingbranch (when the item is returned) and 'waiting' when it arrives and is scanned. But the goal would be to make this a setting that the library could define when setting Koha up, a set of 'status rules'. Comments, suggestions, volunteers? Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro VENDOR SERVICES FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE President, Technology migration, training, maintenance, support LibLime Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS jmf@liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS
Joshua Ferraro a écrit :
Paul et al,
In Paul's proposed scheme for item statuses, the items.notforloan field is linked to MARC field 942$k and then an authorized value is set for that field (defined by the library). Before we invest too much development energy on this idea I'd like to question whether it's even a good idea to store status information in the MARC record, especially we we move toward using Zebra to store our textual (MARC) database.
I just want to explain again that, imho, there are 2 different "status" : * the "permanent" status. the one that is set by the librarian, and that don't change often neither automatically. For example, when a library has 2 books, they often choose to set 1 issuable, and the other not. Or a book that is issued for a long term to another library, so not really in the library anymore... * the "small duration" status. it's the one that is set by the book normal life, like "on issue", "in transit", "reserved". Those statuses are NOT in items.notforloan field, and I 100% agree they don't have to be (the have not to be...) But I think the "permanent" status can be in MARC item. No perf problem & interesting information for the borrower. Note that in "recommandation 995", the 995$o is reserved for this (although non mandatory) -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)
participants (2)
-
Joshua Ferraro -
Paul POULAIN