The archive and materials from the Beginning Cataloging: First Steps to Becoming a Fantastic Copy Cataloger webinar have been posted online. I’ve linked to several different ways to “experience” the webinar, including viewing it online, listening to it, and viewing it through Blackboard Collaborate. Please let me know if you have any questions about cataloging or accessing the webinar.

Access the archive.

Image Credit: “Peeps Parade” by Flickr user bgolub under a Creative Commons license.

• Search for more than just the ISBN when looking for existing records in NExpress. This is especially important on older materials. Search by:
• 10-digit and 13-digit ISBNs (if both are available for the material)
• title
• title and author
• When bringing in records, watch out for records that include multiple ISBNs for different formats (ebook and large print, especially). Do not bring these records into the catalog whenever possible. If these records are your only option, please delete the non-applicable ISBNs from the record after you bring it in. If you have never edited a MARC record in Koha before, let your friendly NExpresshelp staff members know and we’ll help you out.
• When adding large print items, please pay extra attention to the records you are bringing in and the records you are attaching items to, to make sure they are large print records.
• If you find duplicate titles, especially those with holds, please report them.

So, you have the new Best Seller, but you can’t put it on the shelf until next month.
How do you catalog it so that patrons can start placing holds on the title before it hits library shelves?

The OLD cataloging specs were:

Item Subfield 7: Not for loan: Ordered
Collection: On order
Shelving Location: Cataloging
Item type: On order*

*We suspect that Koha gets confused when assigning holds on materials cataloged this way when/if the item type designation on the items are changed from On Order, which is completely unrestricted, to Local Hold.**

**I created an elaborate test video to recreate this scenario, but of course Koha worked just like it was suppose to!  Figures, eh?

However, the Best Practice is this:

• Go find a Bibliographic record from the ether
• Catalog your items as you would normally (Local Hold as Local Hold, Walk in as Walk in, Book as Book)
• Set the Not For Loan status in Item Subfield 7 to “Ordered”
• When you are ready to start circulating these items, edit and change the Not For Loan status back to ‘blank’

An Example:

New Features

• Cataloging from the secure link. In the new system it is now possible to catalog and bring in outside records using the same secure link the rest of the system uses. No more separate links!
• Edit/delete buttons in the items table. Sharon already covered this in a testing post, but you can now activate/ Edit Item and Delete Item from ANY CELL on the Edit Items table. Thank you Owen for this enhancement!
  

• All ISBN numbers display. In the Items display table, you can now see all the ISBN numbers, not just the first one. I have already found this useful to be able to see the need to remove remove multiple ISBNs from vendor records that include every format of the book.
• ISBN 020 order no longer matters. You no longer need to switch the order of the ISBNS in the MARC record to get the jacket art to display. The 13-digit ISBN can be first, and the jacket art will still display!
• Label creator. The Label creator has been simplified and is much easier and faster to use now. You can scan a set of barcodes and look them all up at once, instead of one by one. Please see this video from Nicole Engard at ByWater for how the Label creator has changed. The Koha manual also has a section on using the Label Creator.

Changes/Bugs

• Fast Add cataloging. Right now it’s not available through the Checkout screen. However, it is located on the circulation page, under the Circulation column. This Koha documentation manual entry describes more about the feature. There is a community bug report that is in the process of being developed that will return the fast add feature to the checkout screen.
• Parse error message when Staging MARC records/Managing Stage records/Importing records:there is a temporary parse error messageyou will see when you stage and import MARC record files. After staging the records and seeing the error message, click on the Staged MARC management link (highlighted in red below) to proceed to import your records. Click on you batch to check for matching/problems. If everything looks okay, click Import this batch. You’ll get another parse error message, but the records have imported. Refresh the screen to see the import information. A patch is being prepared for this bug and will be placed on our system when it’s available.

To be covered soon:

• Batch delete
• Batch modification
• Merging bibs
• Attaching/moving items
• New solution for cataloging magazines through the serials module

I did have to make a minor adjustment on the templates. By the fourth row down, the labels were creeping up again, so I played around with different numbers for the “gap between rows“. I changed it from 0.0625 to 0.09, and it seemed to do the trick. Now…I don’t know if the next time I print them they will be off again, but it at least worked this time!

Update from Sharon, Friday, September 24, 2010:

I spent this morning in Ottawa with Pam and the redesigned label creator.  After much fussing, printing, re-fussing and reprinting, we were able to get the Ottawa Spine and Ottawa Inside Book label templates and layouts set.  We did NOT need to set up any printer profile – in fact, we left everything as zero (0) and did all of our minor manipulations on the template.

Overview:  Templates = the label paper and Layouts = the label content and font

Spine Label Layout example – we want to print the call number (itemcallnumber) using Helvetica-bold font, size 9, with the Call Number split and Left justified:

Spine Label Template example – we want to use Demco spine labels, size 1 1/4 x 9/10 (PRD#14916750):

Finished product:

TIP: To help you set up your own template, please refer to this conversion chart for those pesky decimals.  The trick to getting our spine labels to print, was to get the Gap information just right.

With the inside labels, we had to insert a minuscule gap between the labels that wasn’t actually there to get everything to print properly.

Also, the Quill labels have a TOP and bottom – the TOP margin is slightly larger than the bottom and there are arrows punched into the label sheet to indicate which end is ‘up.’

Inside Label Layout – Set to print Full call number (952 $o), Title (245 $a), Author (100 $a), Barcode (952 $p), Permanent location (952 $a) and Date acquired (952 $d):

Inside Label Template – Quill 1 x 2 5/8 (7-20255):

Finished product as a PDF:

Original post by Heather:

For those of you who have been using the label creator, you might notice that post-upgrade, it looks somewhat different! There is a quick video at the bottom of this post that walks you through how to create a batch of labels, post-upgrade . You will already need to have created your template, printer profile, and layouts. Thanks to Nicole Engard of Bywater for creating & sharing the video with the Koha community.

Note: There is one extra step that you all will need to take for the near future. As you add your items to the batch, you’ll notice that they will start appearing in duplication or even triplication. There’s an easy fix for this. Once you’ve added all your items to the batch, click the Remove Duplicates button (see below) and this process will remove all the duplications. Then, proceed to export your batch of labels.

Video is licensed as Creative Commons 3.0 Non-commercial Share-a-like

Finally, with the upgrade, the label batch list was cleared as of Sunday. In the future, please keep this public service announcement in mind.

Or you can download a copy today here:

Finding and Importing Records from the Hybrid KLC (.doc)

In both situations, please make sure you change the settings to the ones that marked below in red: