[Koha-devel] data import question & 008 use in Koha

[Magnus Enger]

2009/11/3 Christopher Curry <ccurry at amphilsoc.org>:
> Hello all,
>
> We're in the middle of migrating MARC data to Koha.  We tried importing
> serials data into Koha and a record that had 1900+ items attached did not
> import.  I found the record and tested importing it, removing items until it
> would import and found out that 1238 was the maximum number of items I could
> import with one MARC record.  Can anyone tell me if there is a way to
> configure the import to accept more items?
>
> I used bulkmarcimport.pl on Koha 3.0.1, running on Debian Lenny.

I think you are running into one of the limitations that the MARC
format inhertited from the days when magnetic tape was the cool new
thing...

"Record length  (character positions 00-04 [in the leader]), contains
a five-character ASCII numeric string equal to the length of the
entire record, including itself and the record terminator. The
five-character numeric string is right justified and unused positions
contain zeroes (zero fill). ***The maximum length of a record is 99999
octets***." (My attempt at emphasis.)
http://www.loc.gov/marc/specifications/specrecstruc.html#genrec

And if you have enough items you reach that limit in size.

I have this same problem with one of the records i tried to import for
my client #1 - my plan is to try and transform the record to MARCXML,
which does not impose arbitrary limits on the size of a record, and
import that with the "-m MARCXML" option for bulkmarcimport.pl.

Regards,
Magnus Enger
libriotech.no