Monday Minutes: New Functionality with System Preference ItemCallNumber

UPDATE: In the video, I mistakenly attributed this patch to Katrin. It was actually written by our own sonic screwdriver Nick. Thanks, Nick, and sorry for the error! - Andrew

ItemCallNumber

The system preference, itemcallnumber, gives the library the ability to take the call number from the marc record and put it in the item. Prior to 20.05, Koha would accept one marc field and subfields in this system preference such as 082ab (Dewey Call Number) or 050ab (Library of Congress Call Number). Here is a link to the manual for more details.

Jessie and Kelly are joined by Andrew to discuss the new functionality coming with this system preference in Koha 20.05.

Here is a link to the bug [3426] submitted in 2009! The system preference, itemcallnumber, originally only allowed one Marc field to be entered for Koha use. However, librarians all agree that they would like Koha to look in other fields if the first Marc tag in the system preference is empty.

Now in Koha 20.05, a library can add multiple Marc fields into this system preference and Koha will look in those fields in order to find a call number to fill into the item record.

It is important to remember the structure of how these call numbers in this system preference matters! There is no space between the call numbers, just a comma.

Example: 082ab,050ab,080ab,090ab

In the example above, Koha will look at the 082ab for a call number, if no call number is found in this Marc tag, Koha will move on to the next in the list 050ab, and so on and so forth.

More 20.05

For our ByWater partners, we recently announced when we will begin our upgrades and also the date of our What's New 20.05 Upgrade Webinars.

20.05 Upgrade News and Upcoming Webinars

For more Koha 20.05 documentation, please see our 20.05 Upgrade Notes blog post:

Koha: 20.05 Upgrade Notes