[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Data migration – Best practices

[Donald Butterworth]

Colleagues,


We are approaching the point of migrating records from our Symphony system
into Evergreen, and we are unsure what the best method is to accomplish
this.


Based on insights from the listserv and some serious cogitation, we have
created hierarchies, parameters, and values that we hope will take
advantage of Evergreen’s architecture. All along my expectation has been
that we would export records from Symphony, take the data found in the 999
tag and massage it until it matches the values of our new Evergreen
structures, and then do an import. However, recently it has been suggested
that a better method would be to take the structures and values we
currently have in Symphony and duplicate them (as much as possible) in
Evergreen. Then once, the data is in Evergreen, change the values into what
we really want them to be.


I have to say that method number two make me very nervous because I
remember that making global changes in our former “Horizon” system was
virtually impossible. Here are some of the questions we are confronting:

·        * What is the best way to simply re-label an Org Unit? For example
changing the value ATSFLA to ATS-DCL?

·        * What about circulation modifiers? What is the best approach to
changing the values DVD to dvd, FAC-MED to dvd, and ARC-MED to dvd?

·        * In Symphony we currently have two “Libraries” one for the main
campus and one for a branch. But in Evergreen we want to take advantage of
the “sub-library” option for our Archives and two other satellite
collections. The Symphony “match points” that can be used to identify these
sub-libraries are called “Home Location” and “Current Location”. What would
be the best way to approach this problem, short of a light gun and a
laptop?

·       *  Is it true that all bibliographic records must have attached
item/copy records in order for the bib record to appear in the public PAC?
We have several thousand “analytic” records that have no attached item/copy
records.

 Any insights will be greatly appreciated!


Don



-- 
Don Butterworth
Faculty Associate / Librarian III
B.L. Fisher Library
Asbury Theological Seminary
don.butterworth at asburyseminary.edu
(859) 858-2227
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://libmail.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-general/attachments/20130308/b8138593/attachment-0001.htm>