• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 20

Description:
Our previous ILS was stringent about validating patron and item barcodes, but I've never found that possibility in Aleph until going through the version 20 SP notes, I found that a validation program exists that might check to see whether our codabar barcodes were read correctly at circulation.

However, the tab_checksum program as well as the documentation seem to imply that the programs are designed for Great Britain or some other country.

Can our 13-digit codabar labels be checked and is there any more to the process than removing the ! sign from the appropriate lines in the tab_checksum table?

Sample item barcode : 0184704146929
Sample patron barcode : 1184701418346

Resolution:
The checksum codabar programs are not specific to Great Britain or any other country.

It seems that you can do:

CSV-SUBMIT-LOAN-ITEM-BARCODE checksum_valid_codabar
CSV-SUBMIT-LOAN-BOR-ID checksum_valid_codabar

(the preceding are the labels which the pc_cir_c0441 loan program is checking.)

and:

CSV-LOAN-ITEM-BARCODE checksum_valid_codabar
CSV-LOAN-BOR-ID checksum_valid_codabar

{these are the labels which the pc_cir_c0442 return program is checking (in doing loan-on-return)}.

Note:

I find that almost 40% of your 650,000 item records do not have codabar barcodes (beginning with '018470'):

abc50@ALEPH20> select count(*) from z30 where z30_barcode not like '018470%';
**** Hit return to continue ****

COUNT(*)
----------
250783

They have barcodes like "HADO-7692-00001" or "156632-1130".

The use of "CSV-Z30-BARCODE checksum_valid_codabar" would prevent the update of such items. But, since I think you would not be loaning these items, the "CSV-LOAN-ITEM-BARCODE checksum_valid_codabar" should be OK.

Since it seems that almost all the z308 patron barcode records are codabar:

abc50@ALEPH20> select count(*) from z308 where z308_rec_key like '01%';
**** Hit return to continue ****

COUNT(*)
----------
7052

abc50@ALEPH20> select count(*) from z308 where z308_rec_key like '0111%';
**** Hit return to continue ****

COUNT(*)
----------
7048

you *could* consider using "CSV-Z308-BOR-ID checksum_valid_codabar" for checking the patron barcode upon update/create.

Note: this library was *not* able to implement these checks because, as described in KB 16384-38962, the Ex Libris codabar program works only with 14-digit barcodes.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013