Importing/uploading of MARC records
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1DCPlibrarian
Hello,
I'm new to LT and am in the process of starting up a small high school library. My issue is that I'm lost when it comes to the importing/uploading of MARC records into LT. Our vendor is providing the MARC records in FIL format, but we apparently don't have an application that allows for downloading/reading/saving records using that format. Has anyone encountered this issue or have any suggestions for working around it?
I do not have a tech services background, so I might be missing something that should be obvious.
Thanks in advance for any guidance/suggestions.
I'm new to LT and am in the process of starting up a small high school library. My issue is that I'm lost when it comes to the importing/uploading of MARC records into LT. Our vendor is providing the MARC records in FIL format, but we apparently don't have an application that allows for downloading/reading/saving records using that format. Has anyone encountered this issue or have any suggestions for working around it?
I do not have a tech services background, so I might be missing something that should be obvious.
Thanks in advance for any guidance/suggestions.
2bnielsen
Hi. I haven't tried the import MARC function, so others here may have better advice.
First step must be to see what you get from your vendor.
Can you download your MARC records in FIL format? I.e. can you get anything from your vendor? (As a rule of thumb the file should have a size in kilobytes comparable to the number of books).
Once you have an exported file, you can check its contents using a simple webinterface like this:
http://marcpm.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/converter.cgi
(I've been using this to check the MARC export from LibraryThing.)
If things are working well, expect to see something like this:
000 04629 2200217 i 4500
001 18282612
003 MePoLT
005 20190123160236.0
020 $a0201067374
040 $aMePoLT$cMePoLT$erda
090 4 $aQA76 .S3588
092 4 $a001.6/4
100 1 $aSchneider, Ben Ross.
245 10 $aTravels in computerland : or, Incompatabilities and interfaces.
264 1 $aReading, Mass.$b Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1974 vii, 244 p. ; 21 cm.
300 $avii; 244 p.
520 $aTravels in computerland : or, Incompatabilities and interfaces : a full and true account of the implementation of the _London stage_ information bank by Ben Ross Schneider (1974)
...
You should be able to recognize lines starting with 100 as author names and those starting with 245 as titles.
I hope the above made sense and was helpful.
First step must be to see what you get from your vendor.
Can you download your MARC records in FIL format? I.e. can you get anything from your vendor? (As a rule of thumb the file should have a size in kilobytes comparable to the number of books).
Once you have an exported file, you can check its contents using a simple webinterface like this:
http://marcpm.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/converter.cgi
(I've been using this to check the MARC export from LibraryThing.)
If things are working well, expect to see something like this:
000 04629 2200217 i 4500
001 18282612
003 MePoLT
005 20190123160236.0
020 $a0201067374
040 $aMePoLT$cMePoLT$erda
090 4 $aQA76 .S3588
092 4 $a001.6/4
100 1 $aSchneider, Ben Ross.
245 10 $aTravels in computerland : or, Incompatabilities and interfaces.
264 1 $aReading, Mass.$b Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1974 vii, 244 p. ; 21 cm.
300 $avii; 244 p.
520 $aTravels in computerland : or, Incompatabilities and interfaces : a full and true account of the implementation of the _London stage_ information bank by Ben Ross Schneider (1974)
...
You should be able to recognize lines starting with 100 as author names and those starting with 245 as titles.
I hope the above made sense and was helpful.
3DCPlibrarian
Thanks for the info! I was able to find an application that would allow me to open/save and import/upload the .fil file received from the vendor. I did a test import/upload to LT and it appeared to work.
