[OPEN-ILS-DEV] ***SPAM*** question about metabib.rec_descriptor.char_encoding

[Joe Atzberger]

The problem is often that the leader/09 is not set correctly for the data in
the record itself.  That is to say, when the record contains UTF8 data, but
the leader/09 is blank, the data is incorrect.  You can verify this by
directly viewing the MARC output from the source system, or by using
yaz-client on the command-line with the appropriate settings.

Many systems, including common proprietary and open source platforms failed
to flip that indicator when encoding the record for import.  There is no
great way to resolve this problem except by fixing the data or preprocessing
it.  I'm sure other Evergreen users have encountered this problem, so there
may already be a script to help diagnose or fix.  For reference, here's a
script I wrote for Koha to attempt fixing records in that system:

http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=blob;f=misc/maintenance/MARC21_utf8_flag_fix.pl;h=e7e915651e8f18c979caf62fede5eaedc69b2165;hb=HEAD

--Joe Atzberger,
Equinox Software, Inc.

On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 8:25 AM, Melissa Belvadi <mbelvadi at upei.ca> wrote:

>
>  Hi. We're trying to troubleshoot a problem we're having with the z39.50
> target server.
>
> We think it has something to do with the value of the 9th field in the
> leader, the character encoding field, which can according to MARC rules have
> values of blank or 'a' but maybe z39.50 can only handle records with an 'a'
> and perhaps gives a nasty Zoom error when it encounters records that are
> other than 'a'.
>
>  I've noticed that in the metaib.rec_descriptor table, there is a column
> called char_encoding, but it has no data in it for any of our bibs - the
> entire column is null.
>
>  So my questions are:
>
> 1. is metabib.rec_descriptor.char_encoding in fact referring to the 9th
> position in the MARC leader?
>
> 2. if so, should it be populated (that is, is this a bug just for us, or is
> no one getting any data in that column)?
>
> 3. is this column used by the z39.50/Zoom code?
>
>  Thanks!
> ---
> Melissa Belvadi
> Emerging Technologies & Metadata Librarian
> University of Prince Edward Island
> mbelvadi at upei.ca
> 902-566-0581
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://libmail.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-dev/attachments/20100909/e2d2ac74/attachment-0001.htm