OpenBiblio

we are using resoucemate plus and we try to export marc file but it has error by itself, but i can export to excel file, is there a way i can import this to save me some time, i have about 3000 items.
we want to test this make sure it is right before we jump all the way and find a big wall right in front. so far we like all the design it meet all our requirment.
thanks.

Hi,

I also have the problem that my current librarian is using a student made access database as her library one, as I am getting rid of M$ Office this will be replaced with Biblio but........will access convert to this MARC format?? I have never heard of it and don't use Windows at home so can't test it till next week. If not is there anyway of importing access data?!

Many thanks,

Jo

I converted an MS Access Database with German MAB records (equivalent of MARC = Machine Readable Catalog(u)ing) to MARC using the MarcEdit tool: http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/downloads.html
First you export your database into a file in delimited text format (i.e. with tab, comma or semi-colon).

Install the program from the site above, click on Add-ins, then Delimited Text Translator and import your delimited file and choose a filename for the exported version (in Save File). Then click on Next and define the fields as per MARC (see http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/ecbdhome.html). Easier said than done, I know!

Depending on the number of records you have, it may be quicker and easier to download them in MARC format directly from the Library of Congress http://catalog.loc.gov/.

The method I used to convert the records does not give "pure" MARC, but it was approximate enough for our purposes.

chris dot dagleish at gmx dot de

There are a number of ways of 'skinning these cats'. I think I've used them all.

1) If you are still using a Windoze machine, get the ODBC driver for MYSQL. You can then use msaccess to link to the openbiblio mysql tables as well as the spreadsheets and or ms-access tables (or for that matter foxpro tables for resourcemate).
2) At this point you can either do query appends from the (msaccess/foxpro/excel) data to the appropriate openbiblio tables.
3) or generate Ascii marc records based on the (msaccess/foxpro/excel) link tables and convert them with the opensource marcedit tool mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

I've done both. I lean towards using constructing marc records as once the marc records are created satisfactorily, I have a format that is acceptable to other (true) library systems.

The marc import utility in openbiblio is generally well behaved although I'd suggest breaking the files into 1000 book blocks. You may need to change some max execution time parameter in PHP.INI (in windows) so the import doesn't time out.

Although at the moment I don't have all my own personal online resources available on the site, I have had well over 12000 records loaded in about 1/2 hour using marc.

Going directly through ODBC to open biblio will be faster ... but some interim files might be needed to map different records types to a bibid. As well it might be easier to populate multiple copies and bar code numbers etc that might already be identified your collection. (you may not want to relabel your books.)

feel free to contact z_beeblebox@hotmail.com, if you need more information/help.

I've done some minor tailoring of the system to support Canadian addresses and links to online resources but I'm neither a PHP developer or a librarian.

(We had considered resourcemate, but found it was inadequate for a number of reasons (like slow import of marc data (hours for less than 1000 records), non-standard implementation of marc, inadequate support for online resources, goofy gui, occasional corruption of data .......)

I have the kluged site for our library at http://yahooserious.no-ip.info/openbibio/ until some server changes are made on out churches website to support PHP & a version of post-nuke.

My dear friends, I am now using Open Biblio software for my library. I have book collection detailed data in excel file (over 5,000). Please anybody can help me how import these data to open biblio.

In general: save the Excel file as plain text and use a method to import this in the OpenBiblio database. The easy way for your spreadsheet: H.-J. Tappe has written a patch that adds CSV import to OpenBiblio. When installed it can be found in the navigation area after accessing the Cataloging tab. In operation it is similar to MARC upload. There are additional features like adding copy information. So I think it can handle the detail in your file. You have to save the Excel file as a plain text file, tab separated and without any other delimiters. Follow the instructions on the CSV upload page for preparing the columns and the first row of the text file so that the script can process the data successfully. First you should test run the import to check for any errors. I've just made this patch available as a download that you can add easily to OpenBiblio version 0.7: Upload CSV - Migration helper