And another option for arranging our collection in Koha 3.0

After corresponding with a handful of really clever, and questioning librarians I think there may be another, better way to organise our collection in Koha 3.0 which will meet all of my needs with regards to making a really helpful OPAC!

Item Types
9 Item Types only, based on loan lengths and rental charges, making for easy creation of the circulation rules table. The codes do make sense for us, but double dutch for everyone else, so I showed what they represent too:

• REF : not for issue
• CIRC : 3 week issue, no rental
• TB : 3 week issue, $5 rental
• P : 2 week issue, no rental
• BPF : 2 week issue, $2 rental
• CDPP : 1 week issue, no rental
• BPN : 1 week issue, $3 rental
• DVD : 1 week issue, $2.50 rental
• PP : 1 week issue, $1 rental

CCodes
We could then have 13 Collection Codes based on main shelving areas or collections. For us these will be:

• Adult Nonfiction
• Large Print
• Adult Fiction
• Children's Nonfiction
• Children's Fiction
• Children's Picturebook
• Teen books
• CDs
• DVDs
• File Packets
• Magazines
• Audio Books
• Videos

Shelved at
Then we will use the 'Shelved at' field to denote sub-collection. For us, examples are:

• General Nonfiction
• The Natural World,
• Health
• Local History
• Local History Reference,
• Paperback Romances,
• First Chapter Books,
• Rental Teen DVD,
• Free Audio Book on CD,
• Rental Audio Book on Tape,
• Children's Video
• etc

Call Number
The call number field would display the filing position on the shelf. Sometimes the dewey number and filing letters, othertimes the genre (where we shelf by genre), othertimes just a filing letter. Examples for our collection are:

• 636.8 BONE
• GABA
• Romance COOK
  

I think this looks very do-able - in fact I am really excited at how useful this could be for the library patron who finds an item in the catalogue and wants to know exactly whereabouts to find it.

So, still a few issues to clarify;

1. Can we assign icons to CCodes?
2. Can we get decent sized icons displaying in the OPAC to reflect or denote format at a glance, not just the ugly wee 16pt ones at present?
3. Can the CCodes 'description', 'shelved at' and 'call number' fields all be made to display in the OPAC search results? and
4. Can we set the advanced search options to CCodes?

But if all those can be done, I think its looking really positive!

Thanks you so much everyone who helped discuss the options through; I feel that a number of us have developed a better understanding of the issues involved, in working through this process. I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this latest version!