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CATALOGING
One of the most important things a librarian does is manage the metadata describing the library's
resources. Put more simply, it is essential that a library maintain good catalogue records describing
the items held by the library, so they can be found and retreived as needed. This involves modifying
records created by other librarians to match a specific library's needs, or sometimes creating new
records.
This section assumes that the reader is familiar with cataloging theory and practice, and describes
only the mechanics of adding, editing, and deleting bibliographic records in Koha

Adding biblio
Adding a new MARC record to the Koha database involves the "Add biblio" function. While there are
several ways to access this function, the easiest is directly from the Koha home page, by highlighting
"Catalogue" and "Add biblio"

Figure 1 : Accessing 'Add biblio'

Figure 2 : Add Biblio

This screen provides you with an opportunity to search your existing catalogue records and any
records in your MARC reservoir before you add a new record. The purpose of this initial search is to
avoid instances of duplicate records. For example, if you wanted to catalogue a book entitled Local
government code, you would enter that title in the "Title" search field and might get a result like this:

Figure 3 : Add biblio search result

If you do a search first, you may find records that match your search term. If so, you must decide if
one of these records is one you want to use, or do you need to create a new record. Note that the
search looks not only in your active catalogue, but also in the reservoir of any other catalogue records
you may have accumulated
If you decide to use an existing record, you can either edit the record to add new information,
duplicate the record to create a new record based on the old record, or add an entirely new record to
the catalogue. This decision will determine whether you click on "Edit," "Duplicate," or "Add New
Biblio." (And again, be sure you choose a biblio framework from the pull-down menu next to the
"Add New Biblio" button.)

Figure 4 : Create empty biblio

Figure 5 : Add Biblio cataloging screen

If you are editing a record or working with a duplicate record, some of the fields on this page will
already have data in them. The MARC record may be subdivided across as many as ten different
screens, which can be accessed by clicking on the tabs (numbered beginning with "0") along the left
side of the page. If you are adding a new record, most fields will be blank, unless your Biblio
Framework specifically has some controlled values built into it (as is the case with MARC tag 040 in
the figure).

Plugins
Koha has some built in plugins denoted by an ellipsis (...) at the end of the field

Figure 6 : Plugins

Some of these will automatically enter the data just by clicking in the text field (000,001,005,008)
others require that you click on the '...' , (you could also edit the default value of Leader(000) and 008
by clicking on the ellipses

Figure 7 : Leader (000)

Figure 8 : Tag 008

Adding additional fields

There are some tag names that are followed by a plus sign ("+"); these tags may be repeated by
clicking on the "+" and type the number of tags you want to repeat then enter.

Figure 9 : Adding Additional Fields

When clicking plus (+) it will automatically duplicate the data in the field into a new field
By default subfields will appear in alphabetical order. You can move these fields to the right
order by clicking the ^ to the left of the subfield
When you have entered the values you want in all the fields you want (on all the tabs), click on "Add
bibliographic record and go to items" to save the general bibliographic record and proceed to the
screen for adding item information. Since adding items is the same no matter whether or not you are
using MARC records, we will look at that process after the section about adding bibliographic records
to a non-MARC catalogue.

Editing a records
Editing a record is mostly the same as adding a record except that you will find that your fields will
only display the subfields that you entered data in. When adding a new record you will see this for a
650 field.

When editing you will only see

Figure 10 : Editing record

Deleting records
Search first the record you want to delete then click Delete from the record menu, a dialog will pop-up
to confirm you really want to delete the record

Adding and Deleting Items

After saving a MARC record, you are presented with a screen to add item details (or, 852 local
holdings). This is where you define the location of the item (home branch), the barcode,
itemcallnumber, etc. Click add item to add.

Figure 11: Add item

Figure 12 : Edit / Delete item

To delete an item click on the trash icon

To edit an item click on the folder

icon