Sorry to be talking to myself here, but I've brought this up on the
Koha ILS list and thought a link to the response there might be of
interest to anyone with similar questions googling later on.
http://lists.katipo.co.nz/public/koha/2011-February/027825.html
On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 3:14 PM, <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all, noob here, both to the list and to MARCedit. Let me start by
> thanking (mostly but not only) Terry for this wonderful tool, as well
> as those of you that have been contributing to the development process
> over the years.
>
> My current issues:
>
> Due to the limitations of my ILS' MARC-editing functionality, I'm
> exporting a batch of my ILS' records (biblio level only) in order to
> merge in enhancing data from matching MARC records from other sources,
> and them bringing them back into the ILS using the Delimited Text
> add-in.
>
> I'd like to do the "data massaging" in a spreadsheet (I find
> OpenOffice better at text-handling than Excel). I put all the MARC
> records for a given title (including my ILS' "old" one) into one
> worksheet, so it's easy to see the different fields and their
> contents, cut and paste, delete unused fields, consolidate everything
> into one row and then convert it back to MARC.
>
> (Side note - it would be great if such functionality were available as
> a MARCedit add-on - put multiple MARC records side by side (all for
> the same biblio), tic which fields you want to keep from which sources
> and merge them all into one - sorry I'm not a coder nor have the
> resources to sponsor, just putting the idea out there (as if it's a
> new idea I'm sure 8- and I realize it wouldn't be that easy to code,
> and maybe not many people would want to do this)
>
> I *am* surprised however that once I've used MARCedit to convert
> *from* MARC to tab-delimited, and the latter contains the
> field/subfield tags in the first row, the Delimited Text tool to
> convert it *back* to MARC doesn't "just work" - I have to re-define
> the field-to-tag mappings all over again. Not that big a deal, but one
> would think the files resulting from going in one direction could be
> easily re-purposed for going back in the other. Manually adding lines
> to the profile list for any new mappings would of course be trivial
> and pretty much self-explanatory.
>
> So that's IMO an area that could use improvement - easy round-tripping
> back and forth between MARC and CSV - but as I said NBD just an
> inconvenience.
>
>
> This next one is more serious, in that it requires a lot more trouble
> and skill to overcome than the above. This is the fact that the
> MARC-to-CSV direction concatenates all the multiple-field values (e.g.
> 700$a, 500$a) into a single column separated by semicolons, which when
> going back in the other direction results, in a single such field with
> everything - potentially completely different categories of
> information - all squished in together, much less readable/useful for
> my library's patrons than keeping them separate.
>
> I'm looking at two possible workarounds - use the spreadsheet tool to
> do a "text-to-column" style splitting of the data manually, or use two
> separate target files for the MARC-to-CSV conversion, both containing
> the control key field, but one for single-fields and the other for
> repeating ones. This will allow them to be brought into the
> spreadsheet with different delimiters spec'd, so the repeating fields
> stay separate. However this would then mean massaging their data in a
> separate step and then also an added step to merge them back later,
> either before or while bringing them back into the ILS.
>
> Both are major kludges that IMO shouldn't be necessary.
>
> I'm hoping (best case) I'm missing something here in my use of the
> MARCedit tools and that someone will enlighten me on how to keep these
> repeating fields separate during the MARC-to-CSV step.
>
> Next-best possibility is that someone suggests a more elegant
> workaround solution than the kludges outlined above.
>
> And obviously it would be great if future improvement to MARCedit
> would make these processes easier.
>
> Thanks for your time and consideration, and in advance for any and all
> responses.
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