{"id":6,"date":"2009-05-21T19:08:32","date_gmt":"2009-05-21T23:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.17.17\/wordpress\/?p=5"},"modified":"2009-05-21T19:08:32","modified_gmt":"2009-05-21T23:08:32","slug":"dbtext-for-libraries-considerations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/?p=6","title":{"rendered":"DBText for Libraries Considerations"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have been running DBText for Libraries for about seven years.\u00a0 During that time a lot of garbage has accumulated in the database.\u00a0 There are three areas of concern.\u00a0 I will be covering them and my solutions later.<\/p>\n

Borrowers file:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whenever we do a mailing, we manage to find and fix problems in the borrowers file.\u00a0 We run the names and addresses through MyMailingList for each mailing.\u00a0 That adds the ZIP+4 to the ZIP codes and checks the addresses for validity.\u00a0 You would think that it would be easy to export the Borrowers file in a comma delimited format and import that to Koha.\u00a0 However there are a number of problems.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Embedded CR\/LFs:\u00a0 When an address has multiple lines such as subdivision and street address, the staff has entered a carriage return.\u00a0 These totally confuse any program trying to read the comma delimited file.<\/li>\n
  2. Blank names:\u00a0 Apparently someone started to enter a new user and accidently hit save before entering any data.\u00a0 This happens often enough to cause some problems.<\/li>\n
  3. Missing fields:\u00a0 We will list and drop any borrowers that do not have a street address or city.\u00a0 State defaults to Florida and we can fix the ZIP code using MyMailingList.<\/li>\n
  4. Koha has a separate field for street number and street name.<\/li>\n
  5. We have a number of types of entries in the borrowers file such as\u00a0 businesses, publicity contacts or potential donors.\u00a0 These have to be coded for the patron category.<\/li>\n
  6. DBText has a facility for multiple entries in a field.\u00a0 It exports them separated by a pipe(|) symbol.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Catalog:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The catalog has many of the same problems as the borrowers file; embedded CR\/LFs, blank entries or missing fields. \u00a0 These records should be converted to MARC records for import into Koha.\u00a0 Other problems include:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Originally the media type field was user entry.\u00a0 That gave rise to “Book”, “book”, ” \u00a0 Book” and any other way you could mis-enter the word.\u00a0 DBText recognizes them all as\u00a0 a book, but exports them as is.<\/li>\n
    2. Title could be missing.\u00a0 If there is no title or author, the record is dropped.<\/li>\n
    3. Call numbers started out using Library of Congress call numbers.\u00a0 We are in the process of recoding all the fiction as FIC plus the first three letters of the author’s name.\u00a0 Some of the LoC call numbers have been simplified in recent years.<\/li>\n
    4. Early cataloging was wildly inconsistent.\u00a0 In recent years we have had the help of professionals to do the cataloging.<\/li>\n
    5. As a specialized library, our subject headings are more detailed than in general.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Serials and Archives<\/strong><\/p>\n

      This should be relatively straight forward once I understand what Koha wants.\u00a0 We generally have one record for each serial or archive box.\u00a0 For serials, the holdings field is a list of all the issues and is updated as new ones arrive.\u00a0 The archive records basically describe the contents of a box.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      We have been running DBText for Libraries for about seven years.\u00a0 During that time a lot of garbage has accumulated in the database.\u00a0 There are three areas of concern.\u00a0 I will be covering them and my solutions later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversion-to-koha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobsown.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}