Bug 30154

Hi Noemie, you described it perfectly and I can confirm the behavior on the latest development version as well.

I believe this is due to the AuthorityControlledIndicators system preference. It's defined there, that the second indicator will be copied from the authority record.

If you haven't set any indicator in the authority, it will copy a 'space'. As the input is set to only allow you to enter one character, it looks like you can't enter anything.

For the other fields you tested the second indicator is not taken from the authority, so that would explain the difference.

But: Click into the field and then hit backspace/delete the space. Then you can add your indicator.

(In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #1)
> Hi Noemie, you described it perfectly and I can confirm the behavior on the
> latest development version as well.
> 
> I believe this is due to the AuthorityControlledIndicators system
> preference. It's defined there, that the second indicator will be copied
> from the authority record.
> 
> If you haven't set any indicator in the authority, it will copy a 'space'.
> As the input is set to only allow you to enter one character, it looks like
> you can't enter anything.
> 
> For the other fields you tested the second indicator is not taken from the
> authority, so that would explain the difference.
> 
> But: Click into the field and then hit backspace/delete the space. Then you
> can add your indicator.

I could only add that it is completely correct and wanted behavior.  Assuming that we are in MARC 21 domain, in case of the bibliographic field 830 the second indicator should be equal (and should be taken/copied) from the second indicator of the field 130 of the linked authority record (cf. https://www.loc.gov/marc/authority/ad130.html and https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd830.html). 

Therefor it should be enough to set correctly the 2nd indicator in the entry field (i.e. 130) of the authority record (checked in my test environment--works like it should).

BTW, please, pay attention that according to MARC 21 definition, the second indicator in the field 130 in the authority record should never be blank/empty.

To sum this up--IMHO, this is not a bug at all.

Thanks to both of you. It indeed seems to be a normal behaviour as the second indicator is copied from the authority record.

However, I understand the second indicator is not 'supposed' to be empty, but the library that submitted this problem to us seems to have quite a few Uniform title authories created without a second indicator. I assume that it isn't the only library where the Marc 21 standards are not fully respected or at least that sometimes an indicator can be forgotten. Therefore, this behavior still makes it hard to correct the indicator.

I know the 'right' way to correct the mistake would be to add the indicator in the authority record before adding the 830 in the record... but I'm thinking about situations where the person cataloguing wants to do it 'quickly' or for any other reason they decide not to correct the autority record.

Plus, now that I understand where this comes from, I can reecreate in any other field with the first or the second indicator. For exemple, in a 700 field with a person's name without a first indicator. 

I would really understand if we decide to not fix this as it is not a 'real' problem if Marc21 standards are respected, but I do think it would lack consistency if we consider that we can very well create the authority without completely respecting Marc21, since we can save it without putting an indicator in the first place.

Thank you for explaining the context.  Verifying the formal correctness of the MARC 21/UNIMARC records is quite a complex issue and--as far as I know--it is beyond of what Koha can do at the time (although it would be great if we could have some validation rules).  For now we are able to establish and control, quite precisely, the coherence between the authority data and bibliographic records. 

The library should be aware that with the standard AuthorityControlledIndicators values, even if a librarian places by hand a correct value of a controlled indicator in the biblio records, every modification of the linked authority record without the correct indicator will reset the indicator in the biblio records fields.  So, the library should either correct the authority records (which will also correct the indicators in the linked biblio records fields, which is great) or clear appropriate lines in the AuthorityControlledIndicators system preference in order to prevent this (very useful, and correct, and wanted) behavior of the controlled indicators "mini engine".

By default, you will find this entry for UNIMARC in your ControlledIndicators preference:

# UNIMARC: Always copy the indicators from the authority
unimarc, *, ind1:auth1, ind2:auth2

If you don't want this behaviour, a simple remedy is to comment that last line starting with unimarc.
I would not recommend doing so but it is possible to just ignore standards and the like ;)

I recommend closing this report. It is no bug.

The library did clear the appropriate line in AuthorityControlledIndicators and decided to put a default value of 0 for the second indicator of their 830 field. I believe they will correct the authority records as they see them. In the end, they do know that it would be prefereable to keep every line in AuthorityControlledIndicators and correct any empty indicator they would find in Uniform title authority.

I'm closing this report, thanks for taking the time.

Have a nice day everyone !