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| Time | Nick | Message |
|---|---|---|
| 18:28 | thd | kados: are you there? |
| 18:30 | chris: can you tell me if a working normal acquisitions for 2.2.4 is committed to CVS now? | |
| 18:31 | chris: I met with someone Friday who actually would want to use it. | |
| 18:34 | rach | chris is away today - sending a library live - with all our acqui mods |
| 18:35 | thd | rach: I failed one test with the prospective bookshop Koha user I have, with whom I met Friday. |
| 18:36 | rach | oh no, what was that? |
| 18:36 | thd | rach: Her confidence dropped when I told her that no bookshops were know to be using Koha. |
| 18:37 | rach: And also that even most librarians will not have heard of koha. | |
| 18:37 | rach | ah yep, we don't have many small bookshops here - it's mostly chains |
| 18:39 | thd | rach: Even in NYC it is mostly chains but in big cities in the US bookshops have difficulty paying the high rents for a good location. |
| 18:40 | rach: I have to provide her with some more confidence. I told her that I would make some modifications to support inventory control. | |
| 18:40 | rach: Which libraries are now using normal acquisitions in Koha? | |
| 18:47 | rach | Horowhenua & rangitikei public libraries |
| 18:47 | thd | rach: I need some names and email addresses of someone at libraries using normal acquisitions so that the bookshop I hope will adopt Koha can ask some actual users about how wonderful Koha is or is not. |
| 18:47 | rach | are the only 2 I know for certain are |
| 18:47 | send them to talk to rosalie - she speced it :-) | |
| 18:47 | she's head of libraries @ horowhenua public | |
| 18:52 | rosa | hi thd |
| 18:53 | thd | hello rosa |
| 18:55 | rosa: The smallest bookshop in New York City might adopt Koha if I can persuade them that there is enough there to manage inventory for a bookshop with modest modifications. | |
| 18:57 | rosa | Are they looking at downloading data from publishers? |
| 18:57 | thd | rosa: The bookshop manager wanted to communicate with people who actually use the system to ask how they liked it in particular with reference to managing acquisitions. |
| 18:58 | rosa: libraries have better bibliographic records than publishers. | |
| 19:00 | rosa | it's true. I'm trying to get my head around just how a bookshop would use Koha acquisitions. |
| 19:00 | thd | rosa: The point that I think is especially good about Koha for this bookshop is that it can use MARC records instead of merely publisher records that have very little information. |
| 19:00 | rosa | We use it with prime purpose of managing expenditure in a group of funds (ie subsets of the total budget) |
| 19:01 | thd | rosa: Bookshops order books in the same way that libraries do. |
| 19:01 | rosa | which doesn't seem particularly relevant for a book shop |
| 19:01 | thd | rosa: However, it would still track the use of a general fund. |
| 19:02 | rosa | and Koha acquisitions manages discounts (varaiable) and local taxes with aplomb |
| 19:03 | We specced it so that we could place orders pre-publication(we see a lot of publishers reps) and then receive them at some future date | |
| 19:03 | thd | rosa: and foreign currencies which may be helpful to her as well. |
| 19:03 | rosa | yep, that works flawlessly for us. |
| 19:04 | what we don't do is download MARC records | |
| 19:04 | thd | rosa: Do you do copy cataloguing or just create original records? |
| 19:05 | rosa | But if you're calm that you cna download a MARC record that will bump the short acquisitions record, I don't see why it wouldn't work |
| 19:05 | We do a mixture. Because we order a lot pre-publication, we have to create short records just as a marker. | |
| 19:06 | thd | rosa: What do you mean by bump the record? |
| 19:06 | rosa | Then we tend not to overwrite fiction records, but we do copy nonfiction |
| 19:06 | rach | bump = replace |
| 19:07 | thd | rosa: that is a beneficent bump not an injurious one :) |
| 19:07 | rosa | terminology used here for replacing an inferior (local, short, temporary) record with the LC or BL record when that record becomes available |
| 19:07 | is this a NZ term? | |
| 19:07 | seems too useful to do wothout | |
| 19:08 | rach | :-) |
| 19:08 | thd | rosa: bump is good. Upgrade is more common in the US for that function. |
| 19:09 | rach | bump has that more "it could be a surprise" element |
| 19:09 | rosa | don't airlines use it too? |
| 19:09 | rach | and can be negative- so if a user put effort into their short records, they might not like the MARC one that came in over the top |
| 19:09 | rosa | though not always an upgrade! |
| 19:10 | thd | rosa: Koha uses reserve for what I had always found described as hold in library jargon as opposed to ordinary English usage. |
| 19:11 | rosa: Is 'hold" not part of the NZ library jargon? | |
| 19:11 | rach | there are some words that we use because it's what the patrons understand - hold implies you have it, where as when you reserve it |
| 19:11 | it means the book might not come in for a while - but you're in line for it | |
| 19:11 | so if you hold something for someone at a shop, you put it behind the counter until the customer can come pick it up | |
| 19:12 | but reserves are put on books that aren't actually in the library generally | |
| 19:13 | I would expect that librarians would know what you mean by either term here | |
| 19:13 | thd | rach: Reserve is better for ordinary English. It is just a little confusing as library jargon because reserve has a reserved sense of short circulation material or a special non-circulating reserve collection as distinct from a larger reference collection. |
| 19:13 | rach | depending on what library systems they've used probably |
| 19:13 | where there was a " | |
| 19:14 | "clash" of meanings between what a member of the public would understand, and what a librarian might understand, we generally favoured making it easy for the public | |
| 19:15 | Reserves and Requests are the two terms I'd seen used here for the same thing - both less "active" words than "hold" | |
| 19:16 | but I would expect that different countries would have different "normal | |
| 19:16 | thd | rach: the reserve desk is mostly a feature of large academic libraries where material has been taken for circulation periods reduced to hours rather than days so that more patrons can use the high demand material :) |
| 19:16 | rach | words |
| 19:17 | the reason we went with HTML templates for the OPAC & Intranet was basically so we didn't all need to argue over terminology :-) | |
| 19:17 | so you could just go and put in the words that were appropriate to your country/library if it was going to cause problems | |
| 19:17 | rosa | The same word is used for the same service in NZ academic libraries too - as in "the reserved book room" |
| 19:17 | thd | rosa: What form do the copy catalogue records that you use have before you add them to non-MARC Koha? |
| 19:18 | rosa | they are MARC records, but we cut and paste the bits we want |
| 19:18 | tend to be subjects | |
| 19:19 | thd | rosa: I would have thought that you had a conversion script to do that automatically. |
| 19:20 | rosa: What software do you use for the general ledger at the library? | |
| 19:21 | rosa | We have used such a thing in the past, but we've got pickier over the years - some subject headings we use, some we change. The classic Hogs-juvenile literature would be meaningless for a NZ reader looking for the Three little pigs. Pigs are pigs, not hogs |
| 19:22 | by general ledger you mean an accounting programme? | |
| 19:22 | thd | rosa: yes |
| 19:23 | rosa | we use a NZ programme called Cash Manager |
| 19:24 | thd | rosa: using tracings and references from subject authority records pigs can become hogs in a future version of Koha. |
| 19:24 | rosa | we do not require it to interface with Koha - just to get a close figure for expenditure on books |
| 19:25 | thd | rosa: So you do not export information from one to the other? |
| 19:25 | rosa | within 3% isclose enough for me |
| 19:25 | no | |
| 19:25 | thd | rosa: what accounts for the 3% error? |
| 19:26 | rach | 3% is pretty usual I think error for stock taking in general |
| 19:27 | so if you run a shop, you'd get that sort of error - better than the 30% that I seem to recall was the old rate :-) | |
| 19:27 | but would be bad data entry, exchange rates not quite right I think | |
| 19:27 | thd | rosa: was it stocktaking that you were referring to not accountancy of funds? |
| 19:27 | rosa | staff purchases being coded as library purchases, stock arriving at a different discount from usual and the staff member not remembering to change the setting in Koha. |
| 19:28 | and Rach's comments, too | |
| 19:29 | thd | rosa: I see. I am certainly accustomed to errors in the system even though I had a business partner who had a fit if the till did not balance to the penny. |
| 19:30 | rosa | anyone who can manage that isn't busy enough |
| 19:31 | thd | rosa: my business associate had no experience of larger businesses where the idea of counting pennies is laughable. |
| 19:31 | rosa | a red letter day |
| 19:31 | rach | ok lunch time for me, then dogs to vets |
| 19:31 | rosa | dog sick? |
| 19:31 | rach | yeah I got in lots of trouble with the other till grrls |
| 19:31 | thd | rosa: he was just over anxious about being audited for tax. |
| 19:31 | rach | um no, just cartrophen injections and checkups |
| 19:32 | sam itchy - she will help me in the garden the rat, and olive had a stone bruise I think but seems fine now | |
| 19:34 | thd | rach: too much eating the garden can induce illness. Hope your dog is better soon. |
| 19:36 | rosa: Only on Friday did I discover that the bookshop would want to use the acquisitions module for recording orders. | |
| 19:37 | rosa: And she also has no interest in a till module for real time order entry as she suspects hand written receipts will always be faster. | |
| 19:38 | s/order entry/sales entry/ | |
| 19:38 | rosa | oh dear |
| 19:38 | this may be the book shop we all dream about? | |
| 19:39 | where the owner actually cares about books? | |
| 19:39 | thd | rosa: It is a very friendly small bookshop that does not even have an automated till. |
| 19:40 | rosa: It is a specialist shop with all decorative arts books, mostly new with some rare used books as well. | |
| 19:43 | rosa: The gap that I would have to bridge is to persuade the manager that a modest addition to Koha of managing sales of material in a manner akin to circulation but much simpler is not a difficult project. | |
| 19:45 | rosa: She needs to just have some reassurance about how well what is already there works. | |
| 19:47 | rosa: I can always cheat and create functionality that interacts directly with the database where I find deciphering some of the Koha Perl modules a little unfamiliar. | |
| 19:50 | rosa | I think you're right. If you use circulation as sales - once it's gione, it's gone |
| 19:50 | thd | rosa: Koha already has the code to manage patron transactions. The items table needs a few new columns to simplify the reference to 20 copies of the same book where a separate bar code should not be needed. |
| 19:50 | rosa | Woulkd she have to barcode every copy? |
| 19:51 | or use RFID (which I would have thought was more terrifying than a till) | |
| 19:51 | thd | rosa: The new books already have barcodes with the ISBN. |
| 19:52 | rosa: I would attempt to implement something that is actually consistent with a libraries use for the possibility of selling deaccessioned items. | |
| 19:52 | rosa | how were you going to cope with mutliple copies? |
| 19:54 | thd | rosa: I would either add a column to the items table to use multiple instances of the same copy or automate the process of adding copies. |
| 19:55 | rosa | and each time one was sold you'd drop the inventory by one |
| 19:55 | thd | rosa: Koha likes everything to have a unique barcode which is more than a shop needs. |
| 19:57 | rosa: exactly, just changing the quantity of an item would be the easiest approach but may not mesh well with individual copy based acquisitions. | |
| 19:58 | rosa: I guess you do not order 20 copies of the same title very often :) | |
| 19:59 | rosa | mm that's true. Koha wants individual barcodes tyo receive more than one copy |
| 19:59 | no, but we often order 6 copies of local publications that we expect to go out of print and stay out of print | |
| 20:00 | thd, sorry I've got to gofor a an hour or so | |
| 20:00 | be back later | |
| 20:01 | thd | rosa: A little more work is incrementing 20 separate copies with unused sequential barcode numbers. The ISBN barcode can still be used to locate the books. |
| 21:11 | rach | dogs are fine, have had their injections but are a little fat after a slothful winter |
| 03:48 | hdl | Everybody hello |
| 03:56 | thd | hello hdl and paul |
| 03:57 | hdl | hello thd |
| 03:58 | thd | hdl: I have been trying to find the script that controls how the Koha tables are filled with mapped MARC subfields. |
| 03:59 | hdl: Can you guide me. | |
| 03:59 | ? | |
| 04:00 | hdl | checkmarc.pl in admin directory. |
| 04:01 | thd | hdl: There has been a change in 2.2.4 with the treatment of how biblioitems.isbn is filled. |
| 04:01 | hdl: Is not that a mappings validation script? | |
| 04:03 | hdl: I am looking for the script that actually populates the Koha table columns from the MARC data. | |
| 04:05 | hdl | thd: rebuildnonmarc.pl in scripts/misc should answer all your questions. |
| 04:08 | thd | hdl: Does bulkmarcimport.pl use rebuildnonmarc.pl to populate the values? |
| 04:09 | hdl | Nope; does it with addbiblio and additem |
| 04:11 | thd | hdl: I would have thought that addbiblio was what I was looking for but I do not see anything for treating ISBNs differently from other values. |
| 04:13 | hdl | thd: what do you mean differently : which peculiar treatment do you expect ? |
| 04:14 | thd | hdl: Somewhere repeated subfields are being inserted into Koha table columns with values separated by a piping symbol. Since 2.2.4 this is no longer happening for ISBNs which would have no difference for French books but for English language books is a problem. |
| 04:17 | hdl: English MARC records often have the multiple ISBNs in one record for the various ISBNs for different bindings of the same title issued by the same publisher.. | |
| 04:19 | hdl: This is standard Anglo-American cataloguing practise and an easy way to get the popular binding ISBN from a library record. | |
| 04:22 | hdl: Prior to 2.2.4 I could just increase the size of biblioitems.isbn to accommodate multiple ISBNs separated by '|' but now I have only one per record in biblioitems.isbn even for MARC records that have more than one ISBN.. | |
| 04:28 | hdl: Something just occurred to me. Would running bulkmarcimport.pl behave any differently in how the Koha tables are populated with normal acquisitions on than with it off? | |
| 04:29 | hdl | thd : is YOUR MARC ISBN field repeatable ? |
| 04:29 | thd | hdl: yes |
| 04:30 | hdl: actually, I did not change the framework since that parameter was added. | |
| 04:31 | hdl: Do I need to set repeatability for proper import behaviour in 2.2.4? | |
| 04:32 | hdl: Other repeatable subfields are being populated in the Koha tables with the '|' separator. Only ISBN is not now. | |
| 04:33 | hdl | And there is no difference in code, unless ISBN is UNDER 010... But it is likely not. So, this OUGHT to be a parameter failure. |
| 04:33 | thd | hdl: However, now that subfield ordering is fixed I have noticed a problem for the manner in which all repeated subfields are populating the Koha tables from the MARC record. |
| 04:34 | hdl: ISBN is 020 in MARC 21. | |
| 04:36 | hdl: Other repeated subfields have the data populated in the Koha tables in reverse order with the '|' separator. | |
| 04:39 | hdl | thd: ISBN will folow the same rule. |
| 04:39 | thd | hdl: I imagine the reverse order comes from pushing the new values onto an array as they are read or some similar construct such that when the array values are joined together they are backwards from the MARC record.. |
| 04:40 | hdl | you guess well. |
| 04:41 | thd | hdl: But I have not found the code that adds the '|' when joining an array or the code that reads the subfields into the corresponding array for the mapped Koha columns. |
| 04:42 | hdl | line 1159 in Biblio.pm |
| 04:42 | MARCmarc2kohaOneField | |
| 04:43 | comes from NEWnewbiblio | |
| 04:43 | then a call to marc2koha | |
| 04:43 | then marc2kohaOneField | |
| 04:54 | thd | hdl: fixing the reversal should be as simple as popping the repeated values onto a new array. Is there an easier way? |
| 04:57 | hdl: I will use a function for array reversal. | |
| 05:01 | hdl: I was hoping this code was not in Biblio.PM as paul said that removing all the warnings raised by this module might be 12 hours debugging for him which would be many more for me :) | |
| 05:17 | hdl: thank you for pointing me to the right section of code. I should have been searching for use of '|' but I feared too many uses outside the context for which I was looking. | |
| 05:17 | hdl | thd : You're welcome |
| 05:21 | thd | hdl: did you see the comment in line 1128 in Biblio.PM? |
| 05:23 | hdl: How should I interpret "FIXME ?" ? Does that mean something that needs to be done or has been done? | |
| 05:49 | hdl: If there is something that partly functions according to that comment it would help explain the problem for having only one ISBN populating biblioitems.isbn when there should be two in some cases .. | |
| 06:29 | hdl: nevermind my last post. I think line 1128 at the top of MARCmarc2kohaOneField() describes the previous problem that MARCmarc2kohaOneField() is designed to fix. Previously, only the one value from repeated subfields was retrieved for old-db but after MARCmarc2kohaOneField() all values should be retrieved. |
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