Control Fields
Control fields add important information about bibliographic records. These control fields tell Koha how a record should display. The 000 Leader and 008 tags control what is displayed in the bibliographic detail view of a record.
Leader in the MARC Record
The 000 Leader and the 008 tags are linked together. The first step is to identify the material type in the 000 Leader so the correct fields show in the 008 tag.
- Using the pencil to the right of the field, a popup will appear with the information that is driving the value of the 000 fields.
To change a book to a sound recording, the leader position 6 - "Type of record", needs to be a c, d, i or j. Don't forget to hit "Save" once you have edited the record.
008 Tag
The 008, FIXED-LENGTH DATA ELEMENTS--GENERAL INFORMATION, field in Koha is the next field to be configured.
However, if you make a change to the material type in the 008 and try to save, you may find your changes don't stick. The 008 material type is driven by information in the Leader/06. A pop-up helper in the basic editor does also provide a hint to that link: "Select a type of material to specify the variable values. Default selection is based on value in Leader/06." However, the Leader/06 is what actually determines the value in the 008, so a change to material type needs to begin with editing the Leader/06.
When Koha sorts by Publication date or searches by Publication date, the year in the 008 is the one it will use.
See the Koha Manual for a Bibliographic Record Cheat Sheet.
System Preferences
If these icons are not wanted in your Staff Client or OPAC, you can easily hide them with these two system preferences:
DisplayOPACiconsXSLT : On pages displayed with XSLT stylesheets on the OPAC, ___ icons for itemtype and authorized values. The values are Allow or Don't Allow.
DisplayIconsXSLT : Asks: ___ the format, audience, and material type icons in XSLT MARC21 results and detail pages in the staff client. The values are Allow or Don't Allow.
Troubleshooting
How do I fix the Invalid length field warning for the 008?
Bug 40272 introduced a validation check for the control fields, specifically the 005-008. Koha will ensure these control fields have the correct number of spaces. Koha has historically allowed a lot of errors to exist in the control fields and this bug is catching a lot of attention.
The quickest, and simplest, way to fix the field length is to click on the tag editor in the Basic Editor for the field. This will open a modal window with the drop down selection options for each space.
Edit the tag to add the correct values for the record. Alternatively, Koha can add default values when the tag editor is saved without editing. Click on the save button in the modal window.
The 008 will now have the correct number of spaces. This will cause the warning message to disappear. Save the record to retain the changes.
The error message does not prevent saving, it just looks alarming.
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