Koha Question of the Week: How to Import a File of Records into Koha?

by Kelly McElligott on Oct 7, 2022

Each Friday, we will bring you a new Koha Question of the Week. We will select real questions that we receive and share the answers with you!

Question: How to Import a File of Records into Koha?

Answer: If your library receives a file of MARC records from a vendor and would like to import them into Koha, this is a simple process done through Koha's Tools.

Note: The file of MARC records should be a file with the file extension of .mrc

Under the Tools Module, you will want to choose, 'Stage Marc Records for Import' .

From this page, you will choose the file of records from your desktop to import into Koha.

The next page has a lot of options on how you would like Koha to process this file.

Setting up Profiles so Koha can automatically apply the options could be a good path to explore if this is a common import process and you want to streamline this process:

Create Matching Profiles When Importing Records

Settings

Settings:

Comments: This section will allow you to make a note about this file, which can be seen from the imported set of files.

Record Type: bibliographic or authority- what is in the file?

Character Encoding: UTF-8 is set by default, and is generally the correct choice. However, if you find that you are importing records with incorrect diacritics- this encoding may need to be set to MARC8.

Format: MARC/MARCXML. Again, this generally will be MARC, but if this file is in XML format, this should be adjusted.

MARC Modification Templates

This option will allow a library to apply a template to make changes to the MARC records during the import. You can learn more about MARC modification templates here:

Monday Minutes: Marc Modification Templates

Look for existing records in catalog?

This section is how Koha will know if it is to look for matches in this new import to records already in your system. And if it does find matches, what should it do?

Some Record Matching Rules come by default in Koha, however, a library can add its own record-matching rules.

See this section of the manual for more details.

Check for embedded item record data?

This section allows you to choose whether or not to import the item data (found in field 952) in the MARC records (if the file you’re loading is a bibliographic file).

Additional Resources

Here is a YouTube Tutorial on this entire process.

Self Paced Learning in Koha: Cataloging

How to Prevent Diacritics from Happening in Koha