Dear Murali Greetings from the GIPE Library! With reference to your query "Porting of data from MS Excel/MS Access", please find below the details. Yes, there is a provision in Koha to import the data. The data can be either in MS Excel or MS Access. The Excel / MS Access data can be ported in Koha using a utility called MarcEdit. The utility is available on the net. While creating the worksheet in Excel ensure that most important data fields like Date of Accession, Accession Number, Author(s), Title, Subtitle, Edition, Publisher, Place of Publication, Year of Publication, Notes, Class Number / Call Number, Supplier, Invoice/Bill, Invoice Date, Type of Document (Book, CD, DVD), Type of Material (Reference/Circulation), etc are entered in separate fields. As excel or access does not support the repeatable fields, please create as many as author fields as you require. In author field please entre the data in the order Last Name, First Name and Middle Name. Ensure to insert a comma after Surname. I have name few fields only. If you wish / require, please add as many fields as you want. MARC21 / Koha will support all the fields that you entre. If you find any difficulty in creating the marc file for Koha or ISO file for any other software, do get back to me. To start with, those who have not started the library automation and have not thought of buying / installing any software also can go for this kind of Excel / Ms Access Data entry. Regards Dr Nanaji Shewale Librarian Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics B M C C Road, Deccan Gymkhana Pune 411004 (India) T: 91 20 25679940 (Direct) T: 91 20 25654288, 25650287 Ext 401 http://www.gipe.ac.in Message: 1 Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:25:25 +0530 From: muruli acharya <muruli.acharya@gmail.com> To: LIS-Forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: [LIS-Forum] Porting of data from MS Excel/MS Access Message-ID: <CANRfK6yz3Cxrf7w=yVhhW9Z8tqRRidimpji7eeJrZ5Z3pF17mQ@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Dear Professionals, I request you to provide me with the information regarding the following doubts I have with the automation process of my library: 1. I am at the initial stage of my library automation process. As I have not obtained any library softwares as of now, may I create a bibliographic database in an MS Excel or MS Access? 2. In later stages will I be able to port the same data into any library software? To enable the system to make it happen, do I need any supporting softwares in addition? If yes, what are they? 3. If the database can be ported to the software, what are the main information I may need to capture in my excel worksheet like Author, Title etc...? Please flow your thoughts to help me with this issue. thanks and regards -- Muruli Librarian, Power System Training Institute (PSTI), National Power Training Institute (NPTI), Bangalore, India -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.