Monday Minutes: Protecting MARC Fields

by Kelly McElligott on May 16, 2022

In this week's Monday Minutes, Kelly, Jessie, and Andrew show a new feature coming in 21.11 which will allow catalogers to protect specific MARC fields while editing and overlaying. This is a more complex feature and will be a longer video.

MARC Overlay Rules

A new option within the Administration Module, MARC overlay rules. This will allow a library to preserve or save specific fields during cataloging or importing.

There are a few columns within these rules.

The columns, module, filter, and tag are used to define when our rules will be applied.
The columns, preset, added, appended, removed, and deleted are used to define what our rules are going to do:

Starting at the column, Preset, the dropdown gives us some options to protect, overwrite, add new, add and append and protect from deletion. Choosing one of these presets, Koha will fill out the other columns, added, appended, removed, and deleted. There is one option in the Preset dropdown, Custom, which can allow users to create their own options for the other columns.

Each column, added, appended, removed, and deleted has little "info" options that if you hover over the "i" circle, Koha will explain a bit about each of these options. Here is a brief explanation of each of these options:

Add - Adding data into the record. Add an entirely new MARC tag that didn't exist.

Append- Adding a new MARC tag but where another MARC tag already existed.

Remove- Taking away a tag, where there will be still one remaining.

Delete- Taking away the last tag and there will not be another tag.

The other columns will tell Koha when to apply these rules.

Module- source, user category, and user name.

Filter- wildcard *, batch record modification, staff client marc editor, staged MARC import, z39.50.

Tag- Enter the MARC tag to which this rule will be applied.

Example Rules

An example rule could be set to Source. When adding the module Source, you can say that this rule will only apply to the "Batch Record Modification" tool, and when using this tool, the 942 fields are protected. This could also be a rule that uses the * wildcard, because most libraries would like to see this MARC tag never deleted regardless of the cataloging process.

Which Rule Takes Priority

If there are multiple rules that could potentially be applied to a record, Koha will determine the priority of the rules.

Koha will look at the rules and group them up by Module and Filter. Koha will then look at each rule group, and ask are there any rules that are not using a Wildcard. Preference would go to a non-wildcard rule first.

Next, Koha will rank the hierarchy by module, so the username rule will take precedence over a rule that is applying to a Patron Category and Source. The patron Category will be next in the ranking and then the source would be last.

Permissions

Permission has been created specifically for this feature. It can be found under the Admin section "Managing the MARC overlay rules".

Want More 21.11?

See our Master 21.11 Document for all the fun coming!

Koha 21.11: Upgrade Hub