Koha Tutorial Videos

Deep Dive: Analytical Cataloging

Analytical Cataloging

The one area that we will focus on is the "Easy Analytical" cataloging. This allows libraries to link records through a barcode and have a link accessible to access both records and their respective items.

Easy Analytic Setup

This feature links Children's records to Parent records with an item. There are two system preferences that are involved in this setup on your Koha system.

The system preference: EasyAnalyticalRecords, will need to be set to Display.

The system preference, UseControlNumber, will need to be set to Don't Use.

Once these system preferences have been configured, you can begin the process.

Linking Records

Once you have two bibs ready to be linked together, you will have the ability to do this through a barcode.


The parent record can have one or multiple items attached The child can have 1 or 0 items attached.


From the child record, click Edit and choose the option to Link to Host Item. Then you will be prompted for the barcode of the parent item.

What changed?

The marc record of the Child Record:
The field 773$0 will have the host bibnumber

The field 773$9 will have the host itemnumber

The field 773$o will now have the host barcode

The field 773$t will contain the host title

The field 773$w will contain the host controlnumber (if your parent has a control number)

There is now a linkage point in the full record display - where this can be clicked and be brought to the Parent Record from the Child record.

The tab "Analytics" when clicked will display a few more columns to the staff to show the details of the linkage. Here is a view of the Child record when "Analytics" is clicked:

There will be a column for Host Record information, a "Used In" column that will show how many analytics that this child is used in, and also the option to create more analytics.

From the Parent record, clicking "Analytics" will display the "Used In" column and also the ability to create another analytic.

Clicking the "Used in # Analytics", Koha will do an item number search of the item that has the analytics attached to it. This will bring all items that are attached to this "parent item number" to the child records.

Manually Linking

Instead of using the first process we outlined, a library can manually add the information of the parent record into the child record. This information would be filled in the Marc Fields, 773, as was outlined above.

The two important data pieces to add to the child record, would be the 773$t for Title, and the 773$0 for the biblionumber. This will create the link to the parent record and show the title that the link is for.

Below is how this would look in the staff client and the OPAC:
Using the Control Number:
Some libraries may opt to use the linkage to the records by the Control Number. This would involve turning the system preference, UseControlNumber, to use.

To link the records, the child record would need to be edited to include the Control Number from the parent record into the 773$w- the control number is found in the 001. The title should also be manually entered in this process as well for the Title to display in the "In".

There is future changes coming to the world of analytical cataloging with the bug 15851- which is coming to a Koha version soon!

Bug 15851