[Koha-devel] Re: cataloging on the koha ils

[Rosalie Blake]

Hello Michelle,
I can only answer part of your question, but I'm sending both your 
question and my reply to the kohalist, where people with eperience 
in MARC will pick it up, and offer some more answers, I'm sure.

Koha is easy for novice cataloguers. As a small public library, we 
don't need detailed cataloguing for most records, and we do need 
fast records - we like to get our books on the shelf without delay. So 
we don't import MARC records any longer. We used to, but gave it 
up some years back, when we realised it wasn't meeting our needs - 
too slow and too detailed, and sometimes not appropriate.

But I am very well aware that other libraries' priorities are different, 
and a team of Koha developers has been working on the MARC 
interface - notably Paul Poulain. I will leave him to comment on your 
questions about auto-coding.

We love Koha. But then it was written to meet our needs, so we 
would say that, wouldn't we? But I can also say that everyone else 
here also likes it - and I'm thinking especially of people like 
volunteers, borrowers, casual users, all of whom find it easy to use. 
We are particularly proud of Acquisitions, which gives us much 
better budget control that we ever had in the past. 

We are just in the process of re-developing our web page 
(www.library.org.nz), improving the integration with the OPACs and 
adding functionality for our members to access their own records 
and renew and reserve from home. Watch out for it towards the end 
of this month.


Cheers,
Rosalie Blake
Head of Libraries, Horowhenua Library Trust 
  
 On 31 Oct 2002, at 15:56, Michelle Swanson wrote:

> Hi:  Is koha easy to use for "novice" catalogers?  Does it have a fill
> in the blanks template with author, title, publisher, etc., which
> auto-codes marc?  Does the cataloger need to be very familiar,
> somewhat familiar or unfamiliar with marc code?  Please advise.  Also,
> please share your personal views on the koha system.  I tried out the
> Koha OPAC at Horowhenua Library Trust via the web and it looks
> impressive. best regards from,
> 
> 
> Michelle Swanson
> Acquisitions Dept
> University of Winnipeg Library
> 515 Portage Avenue
> Winnipeg, MB Canada R3B 2E9
> address@hidden 
> (204)786-9806
> 
> 
>