[Koha-devel] Serials and MARC

[Stephen Hedges]

Paul POULAIN said:
> Russel Garlick a écrit :
>> So I guess we are asking the same questions as Joshua. If someone can
>> define exactly what MARC compliant serials are, that would be great.
>
> +1.
> I would be pleased to have a librarian explaining how to manage serials
> in MARC21.
> In UNIMARC too also, as afaik, there are no specific fields for serials
> in UNIMARC

There are a few special fields in a MARC bibliographic record that are
important for serials, especially the ISSN field (022 in MARC 21, 011 in
UNIMARC) and the Key Title field (222 in MARC 21, 530 in UNIMARC).  These
are important because serials are notorious for changing their titles over
the course of their publication history.

But the really interesting MARC stuff pertaining to serials (for our
purposes, anyway) happens in the MARC holdings records.  If you look at
the Captions and Patterns fields (853-855 in MARC 21, 500-502 in UNIMARC)
and the Enumeration and Chronology fields (863-865 in MARC 21, 510-512 in
UNIMARC) you'll see a lot of complex ways to define publication frequency,
numbering patterns, etc., very similar to the type of information we're
currently storing in the Koha "serial" table. (see
http://www.loc.gov/marc/holdings/echdhome.html and
http://www.ifla.org/VI/8/projects/UNIMARC-HoldingsFormat04.pdf)

The "Holy Grail" of serials management for libraries is an easy-to-use
software that: 1) describes the publication in general terms (and keeps
track of name changes); 2) warns the librarian when issues are missing or
late; and 3) allows adding of issues with item information that is
detailed enough to identify the item by barcode _and_ date (without
creating a separate MARC record for each issue).  I don't know of *anyone*
who's come up with a really good system for this.

Maybe the law library Joshua has been talking with has _lots_ of money?

-- 
Stephen Hedges
Skemotah Solutions, USA
www.skemotah.com  --  shedges at skemotah.com