Editing MARC Records

How Do I Move an Item to the Correct Record?

Sometimes, in spite of all best efforts, cataloging errors happen. Here's one scenario that happens occasionally: a patron checks their account and sees a title they don't recognize in their checkouts. It takes a bit of back and forth and maybe the patron digging through their bag of items to prove they don't have the item, when a staff member realizes the issue: the barcoded item in the patron's hand doesn't match the bibliographic record it is attached to.

Luckily, there is a tool to fix this issue. The first step is to copy down that errant barcode. If the record it belongs to is already in the catalog, navigate to that record. The Edit menu has several options, including "Attach item."

This will open a text box asking for the item barcode to transfer to the target record. Problem solved!

If the record is no longer in the system or was never migrated to the system, library staff will need to use the cataloging module to either create a new record or copy catalog it through Z39.50 or their Connexion Client. Once the record is in Koha, the same process as above can be followed using the new record as a target for the item attachment.

At this time, "attach item" only works for one item at a time.

How Do I Add a Link to a Record?

Sometimes libraries have records that need to link out to an electronic resource. The most common way to add that link to a record is via the 856 tag.

From that tag, which will typically be included in the default framework and visible in the basic editor, librarians can add hyperlinks out to electronic resources, using the 856$u for the URL and 856$y for the text of the hyperlink. Other libraries may need to link out to documents they host; the upload box to the right of the 856$u field allows for libraries to upload a file and link to it from the bibliographic record.

How do I edit a subfield in bulk on MarcEdit to update my existing Koha records?

It can easily be done by creating a report of the records you want to edit, exporting the records from Koha, then using MarcEdit to edit one or two subfields.

Create a report

First, create a report of the bibliographic records you'd like to edit. You are going to want to grab just the biblionumber.

Run the report and download the list of biblionumbers as .csv.

Export the records from the report

Then, go to Cataloging -> Export catalog data to extract the specific bibliographic records.

Within the 'Export catalog data' module, you should see an option to 'Use a file' where you can upload the .csv file from the report.

Please note that if you're trying to import a large collection (i.e. more than 50k), you might need to export your data in chunks. If it's more than 100k records, please do submit a ticket and our team should be able to export the data in the backend.

Typically, libraries who are wanting to update a certain subfield tag are not looking to update any item information. There's a better way to update items and/or holdings data in Koha rather than directly editing the 952 item tag. For this instance, we'll assume that you don't want to edit items. In which case, select 'Don't export items.'

By default, Koha gives your MARC file a name (koha.mrc). To make it a bit more identifiable, you may rename the file.

Once that's done, click 'Export bibliographic records' to start downloading the MARC data.

Open the .mrc files in MarcEdit

Then, you'll have to "break" the file in MarcEdit by double clicking the .mrc file. You can keep the default character encodings. Click 'Execute' to break the file.

Once the file is ready, you should be able to click on 'Edit Records' and the 'Result' section should show you the number of records in the .mrc file.

The records should look as if you're using the Koha's Advance Editor.

To edit a subfield en masse, go to 'Tools'

Then, click on 'Edit Subfield Data'.

Editing a subfield is useful when you are trying to edit a particular subfield value in a bulk. For example, I'm updating our library's collection to bib-level item type from BOOK to BK.

If you know a few or very familiar with regular expressions, you can be a little bit more granular with what you're editing.

PRO TIP: You can use 'Edit Subfield Data' to edit or update your LDR fields by placing 'LDR' in the 'Field.' Then, you'll notice that the 'Subfield' text changes to 'Position.'

Once you're happy with your update, click 'Replace Text.' MarcEdit will tell you how many modifications have been made.

If the number is as expected, click 'OK'.

You will then recompile your records to UTF8 to stage and import into Koha by clicking File -> Compile Options -> Compile File to UTF8.

Once you've saved your edited file, you can import the file back into Koha by staging the records, matching on 999$c, ignoring items, and then importing.

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