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Why enter records into your database when you can have someone else do it for you? Or at least, why not borrow records from other sources and import them into your database? It’s quite easy to do, saving time and improving accuracy. One approach to this is:

  1. Use a service such as Bookwhere, Biblios.net or PubMed to search for records in numerous online databases, for materials such as books, journals, articles, videos, maps ­- anything that might have been catalogued by someone somewhere may be found (see our blog post on Biblios.net).
  2. Save records in MARC XML format (though any XML format can be used).
  3. In Genie (part of the Inmagic Library Suite), use the included Bookwhere XSLT to convert selected MARC tags to Genie fields and import records. (XSLT is short for Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation, and is a language used to transform XML data into other formats).
  4. In Inmagic DB/Text, customize an XSLT to map MARC XML or any other XML data source to your data structure and import records.
  5. After importing records, you would of course further customize them to suit your database.

If you use Genie, it includes an XSLT (Bookwhere.xsl in the Genie ImporterFiles folder) that maps MARC XML fields into Genie fields. You can customize this XSLT further for your cataloging needs. For example, some MARC tag to Genie field mappings we have added include:

 

MARC TagsGenie Field
090 or 050CatCallNumber
520CatAbstract

856 subfield u

CatURL

856 subfield y

CarURLNotes

246, 247, 730, 740, 770, 772, 776, 780, 785, 787

CatAlternateTitle

Leader position 6 or 7

CatRecordType

Here's an example of the above Leader mapping added to the Genie Bookwhere.xsl transformation:

<xsl:template name="RecordType2" match="marc:leader">

<xsl:choose>

<xsl:when test="substring(marc:leader, 8, 1 )='s'">

'CatRecordType' Periodical

</xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="substring(marc:leader, 7, 1 )='a'">

'CatRecordType' Book

</xsl:when>

<xsl:when test="substring(marc:leader, 7, 1 )='g'">

'CatRecordType' Videorecording

</xsl:when>

</xsl:choose>

</xsl:template>

Virtually any XML file can be imported into a textbase using an XSL. The beauty of XSLT is that data cleanup can be done as part of the process. For example, ALL CAPS can be converted to Title case, fields can be separated or joined, dates can be transformed to other formats, and much more.

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