[Koha-devel] Re: [Bug 516] biblioitems.itemtype does not load

[paul POULAIN]

Stephen Hedges wrote:

>The "only solution" is not a solution at all.  The only place the itemtype 
>exists in a MARC record is in the holdings tag (be that 952, 995, whatever), so 
>Koha _must_ be able to move that info into the biblioitems table.  The user 
>should not have to invent a workaround!!
>
>Just a general note -- DATA IMPORT PROBLEMS ARE CRITICAL!!  The libraries you 
>want to see using Koha are already going to have their data in a commercial 
>ILS, and Koha must be able to smoothly incorporate that data into its tables.  
>
>I appreciate the beauty of the Koha database structure, but the import scripts 
>cannot be limited by that structure.  Since the itemtype info is located in the 
>MARC holdings tag, then Koha has to retrieve that info from the MARC tag and 
>put it in the appropriate table.  If items attached to a MARC record have 
>different itemtypes, that is a MARC cataloguing error and should generate an 
>error message when an import is attempted.  Perhaps the import scripts could 
>parse the file to check for such errors before a load is attempted.
>
>Stephen 
>  
>
This is not a problem of the koha IMPORT tools. this is a problem with 
the DB structure, and internal behaviour.
I think this is a MARC problem in fact.
Let me explain :
if you have some really differents items (various itemtypes, various 
edition date, various editors), do you have 1 MARC record ? I think that 
no. You have one MARC record for each different kind of "material" you have.
I suspect that MARC21 first idea was to have 1 record for each item (but 
maybe i'm wrong, it's just a feeling when seeing 050-060 & 760-780 tags).

In the default DB, the field itemtypes is mapped to 300$f. If i read all 
300 subfields, i see that it speaks of "item physical description", 
that's what biblioitems is supposed to speak of.

How to solve this problem if you have various itemtypes on the same MARC 
record ? i think the solution is to duplicate your records.

Sorry for this bad news, but i don't think it's a bug in Koha.

-- 
Paul POULAIN
Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres
responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)