[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Importing Bibliographic Information

[Don McMorris]

Karen et al:

As Deanna said, MARC21 tag 852 is for item holdings.  The LC site has
some explanation of this at
http://www.loc.gov/marc/holdings/echdloca.html.

If your current ILS can export data into the standard MARC format with
holdings information stored in this standard way, Evergreen can import
it.  Bulk imports (generally) take place using a script at the command
shell.  This script can be customized to adapt to your current
vendors' verison of "standard".


As far as patron information, most ILS vendors don't follow /the/
standard MARC21 Community Information records
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/community/eccihome.html).  However, they can
usually export in /some kind of/ standard (such as
tab/comma/space-delimited ASCII database).

Transactions... Current transactions should be importable (again,
depends on how they are exported from your existing ILS).  Statistical
information should be included on the bibliographic information, and
thus importable.  In general, if the data can be exported in an open
format, it can be imported into Evergreen.


Regarding your question of import success... In the 2006 PINES
migration to Evergreen, millions (billions?) of bib, item, and patron
records were successfully imported.


There are some example scripts in the source tree for importing data.
If you'd rather 'outsource' your data import, companies like Equinox
Software Inc. have much experience importing data like this.

Hope this answers more questions than it makes ;).  If you have any
more, please don't hesitate to contact the list again.

Sincerely Yours,

--Don McMorris

On 7/25/07, Karen Collier <kcollier at kent.lib.md.us> wrote:
> Deanna,
>
> Thank you for replying.  That's great to hear it has been done successfully!
> If you find any more details about how he did it, I would love to hear.
> Meanwhile, I'll pass that info about field 852 along to my coworker, and
> we'll see what we can do with it.  :)
>
> Out of curiosity, have you had any success yet with importing patron and/or
> transaction information?  Has anyone else?  We're not at that point yet, but
> we're looking ahead and wondering.
>
> Thanks,
> Karen
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Deanna Frazee [mailto:dfrazee at ci.killeen.tx.us]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 1:44 PM
> To: kcollier at kent.lib.md.us; open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org
> Subject: RE: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Importing Bibliographic Information
>
> Karen,
>
> We exported 10,000 of our bib and item records from Horizon and loaded them
> successfully to a test of Evergreen.  I know he had some problems initially,
> but it looked great when it was done.  Basically, he just transferred the
> item information to one of the 800 tags; for some reason, I'm thinking it
> was 852.
>
> Deanna Frazee
> Killeen City Library System
> (254) 501-8995
> (254) 501-7704 (fax)
> dfrazee at ci.killeen.tx.us
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
> [mailto:open-ils-
> > general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Karen Collier
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 12:27 PM
> > To: open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org
> > Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Importing Bibliographic Information
> >
> > I found a page in the Wiki on Importing Bibliographic Records
> > http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=evergreen-
> > admin:importing:bibrecord
> > s
> >
> > It looks like good information, but there's a point not yet covered
> that
> > my
> > coworker and I were wondering about.  Specifically it states:
> >
> > "You can add a copy manually through the staff client via the Holdings
> > maintenance screen, but if you're bulk-importing MARC records you
> probably
> > want to bulk load the associated copies, call numbers, and barcodes as
> > well.
> > To be written - sorry!"
> >
> > Our question is, can you import copies, call numbers, locations, etc
> in
> > bulk?  Our existing ILS (Horizon) will let us export our MARC Records
> and
> > holdings info together, but the question is what to do with this, and
> will
> > the instructions from the wiki page above still apply, or how would
> they
> > differ?
> >
> > Going through thousands of bib records one at a time, adding holdings
> info
> > is just not practical, so I'm sure there's got to be a better way.
> Any
> > guidance is appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Karen
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Karen Collier
> > Public Services Librarian
> > Kent County Public Library
> > 408 High Street
> > Chestertown, MD 21620
> > 410-778-3636
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>