Monday Minutes: Fast Add Cataloging

by Kelly McElligott on Jan 15, 2024

In this week's Monday Minutes, Kelly and Jessie discuss Fast Add Cataloging! Within Fast Add Cataloging, where to use it, find it, and also how to customize the process! Stay tuned, we are going back to the basics with Monday Minutes, it is going to be a fun ride!

Fast Add Cataloging

Within the Cataloging Module, an option to utilize the Fast Add option appears. Fast Add cataloging is useful in a few ways, many libraries, use Fast Add for their ILL process. Academic Libraries may use Fast Add when adding in faculty-owned material for course reserves. Sometimes a book will come to the circulation desk to be checked out, and it doesn't exist in the system- Fast Add is the way to go with quickly getting a record into the system and checking it out to the patron in just a few steps.

When using the Fast Add cataloging feature, the cataloging record will probably be limited in the fields necessary to save the record into the system. These fields that appear in Fast Add are driven by the Fast Add framework built into the Koha System.

Editing Frameworks

To customize the MARC fields, MARC subfields, and the structure of the Fast Add Framework, edits can be made in the MARC Frameworks. MARC frameworks can be found in the Administration Module, under the Cataloging Heading.

Find the Framework to edit, and choose the "MARC structure" option under Actions.

To alter the visibility of a MARC field or even MARC subfield, choose "edit subfield" under actions.

Each subfield will have its tab, and settings can be edited here for visibility.

In the case of the 260 during the video, we chose to hide all of the subfields in the 260 so we unchecked the option for the Staff Interface and the Editor.

We also wanted to move the 9xx fields onto the same page as all the other fields needed to fill out in this framework, so we edited the 942 fields and chose to make this field to be "Managed in" to zero.

Note:

We discussed a few options libraries have to customize their Fast Add framework. A great blog post that dives into adding default values such as the Item Type (942$c) can be found here:

Monday Minutes: Adding Default Values in a Framework

Fast Add From Circulation

A fast add record can be created during a circulation transaction. If a book is scanned to be checked out to a patron, but it is not found in the system by the barcode on the book, Koha will give the staff an option to create a fast add record at that moment in time. This streamlines the process to allow staff to easily create the title and continue with the checkout.

Note:

To create a Fast Add record, the staff member does need Fast Add Cataloging Permissions found in the Cataloging section within Staff Permissions.

Additional Resources

Check out the Koha Manual for more helpful steps about:

Fast Add Cataloging

Frameworks