Thanks for the welcome!
Thanks to everyone who offered me feedback, but especially to BWS
Johnson for the awesomely thorough welcome and response.
I guess the ultimate answer is that I am going to have to get more
comfortable with marc :(. The good news is that my 12 year old helper
has started helping with inventorying the collection and doesn't seem
too phased by the default Fast Add Framework. I will definitely be
reading up more and hopefully just getting comfortable with the MARC in
general and with cataloging in general. My degree is in English lit,
but my day job is as a software developer, so I hope I can eventually
contribute back to the community in meaningful ways.
Thanks,
Robert Flach
On 09/16/2018 03:59 AM, BWS Johnson wrote:
Salve!
First, welcome to the Koha Community.
Second, you've stumbled upon the reason that Librarians have a
Master's degree. Tell yourself this when your swearing about your
current situation.
>>
My name is Robert Flach, and I'm the new librarian for a small church
library that was on a card-catalogue system and then managed by several
people who didn't keep up with said catalog. I've gotten koha installed
(ubuntu package version), and mostly configured. I've purchased a barcode
scanner and receipt printer and have them working as well. I would
seem to
be on my way. So my first project is to do a complete inventory, and that
starts with transferring all records into the electronic system from the
card catalog and getting them barcoded.
>>
Yep, you are well underway.
>>
The big challenge I have is with cataloging non-traditional books.
Basically, I can handle adding records when I can find a MARC Record
that I
can download through Z39.50/SRU, but the church library has a very large
contingent of materials that don't have isbn's and don't exist in any
Z39.50
db. Lot's of pamphlets and small self-published books and the like.
I was
looking for a solution that would give me a super simplified entry
form for
these types of materials that would match the info that I have
available in
the card catalogue (title, author, subject, dewey #, section,
barcode), and
which would be halfway readable and usable by my children helpers who are
helping me inventory and catalog everything. I could live with a few
extra
fields, but even the most simplified MARC-looking record interface is
daunting for them (and for me for that matter, though I can get by and
have
been reading about marc).
>>
Normally this is where I would tell someone to think about a
Library that kind of matches theirs and just add the Z39.50 gateway to
their search. However, you're at a church Library, so I'll tell you
the liklihood of you finding a similar Library with a gateway is slim
to none, so don't try too hard or at all.
Here are three of the fields you wanted.
title: 245 $a
author: 1xx $a
subject: 650 $a
A field that I would recommend because it's awesome:
URL: 856 $u
Abusing this bad boy will let you link to a website easily,
which is insanely handy.
If you haven't already read it, head on down to:
https://www.loc.gov/marc/umb/
Don't try to read all of that in one sitting, or you're like to
make yourself sick.
Those XXs in author really mean you have to go read the MARC
rules for that field since it's not properly 100 $a. This is
particularly true at a church library. A lot of the exceptions we're
taught about in Library School come from religion. For instance, the
Bible. For another example, materials originating from the College of
Cardinals. Religious stuff just does not fit nicely in a box, which is
what MARC is. That said, since you're at a tiny Library, no one is
paying attention to how naughty you are or are not anyway. Any
electronic record you generate is better than no record whatsoever. So
I'm totally going to spare you my RDA spiel. I will however say that
you are pretty much the reason Koha was made in the first place. Don't
forget that if you catch any snark from someone.
>>>The better you make each record, the faster you will be able
to find stuff later.<<< I cannot stress this point enough. Everything
seems all innocent now. If you don't spend enough time thinking now,
it will be a total mess for the next person and for your patrons
later. So take comfort in the fact that you are providing a major
upgrade going from a card catalogue to Koha, but not so much comfort
that you cut way more corners than necessary.
If you're absolutely overwhelmed by frameworks even after a
little grinding, what you might want to do is mock up a simple
spreadsheet and then use MARCedit to dump that information in Koha.
This is a terrible idea, so it's very much a last resort. You should
definitely get to know MARCedit, though, since it will let you do cool
stuff to save time. Anyway, if you do decide to do terrible things
when no one is looking, do a Google search for MarcEdit import from
CSV. Just realise that you are not meant to keep batch importing
crappy records until the end of time. It does horrible things to your
database, which defeats your primary purpose of saving the time of the
reader. Which you probably won't know, so I'll put those here courtesy
of Ranganathan, who was right about all stuff Library and Information
Science. His laws fit on my old Library business cards, so no excuses,
go read this.
https://librarysciencedegree.usc.edu/blog/dr-s-r-ranganathans-five-laws-of-library-science/
Cheers,
Brooke
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