That's a good idea, and it's sort of where I was planning to start. But I hadn't thought to share the specs/tests more widely. 

If I haven't seen someone else put something out there first, I'll share when I have a chance to put that together and have our serials cataloger check my work. I taught MARC cataloging for YEARS, but it was bib-record focused, and holdings records still make my head spin. 

-Kristina

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bill
> Dueber
> Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2018 4:30 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] MARC Holdings
> 
> I've never actually worked with the raw holdings records, and because I
> assume everyone is just like me, I imagine other's haven't, either. I now
> working with the summary holdings information as a text string is a nightmare.
> 
> Maybe you could throw up some "given this, it should produce that" data
> somewhere for folks to look at? If nothing else, it'll force you to start a test
> suite :-)
> 
> On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 4:25 PM, Spurgin, Kristina M. <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> > The MARC libraries cited make it easy to work with MARC in general,
> > but unfortunately the Perl and Ruby versions don't come with any help
> > for the "interesting" problem of transforming Holdings 853s and 863s
> > into human-readablesummary holdings statements (like you'd record in
> > the 866 or 867). (I haven't worked with PyMARC).
> >
> > We had the same sort of need you describe years ago and came up with
> > some Perl code that clunkily (and in some cases not quite 100%
> > accurately) does this. It's not publicly available to point to, but I
> > could send the relevant part of that code if you are interested.
> >
> > There has been mild grumbling (from those who pay attention to our
> > serials
> > display) about the not-great way this works, and we are working on a
> > new discovery interface, so it's on my list to improve the summary
> > holdings generation from 853s/863s.
> >
> > I did some searching for code to do this, but didn't find anything in
> > my first attempt. If you find something useful that someone else has
> > for this, please do share!
> >
> > I've been thinking through a good approach, but don't have anything
> > implemented yet.
> >
> > best,
> > Kristina
> >
> > -=-
> > Kristina M. Spurgin -- Library Data Strategist
> >      E-Resources & Serials Management, Davis Library
> >                       University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
> >              CB#3938, Davis Library -- Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890
> >                            919-962-3825 -- [log in to unmask]
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> > > Of Andromeda Yelton
> > > Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2018 4:01 PM
> > > To: [log in to unmask]
> > > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] MARC Holdings
> > >
> > > Note that if perl isn't your thing there are MARC libraries in
> > > several
> > languages
> > > - python and ruby at least, probably others I don't remember off the
> > > top
> > of my
> > > head (since I work in python and ruby, no shade to other people's
> > languages
> > > :). https://github.com/edsu/pymarc ,
> > > https://github.com/ruby-marc/ruby-
> > > marc .
> > >
> > > On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 12:50 PM, Julie Cole <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hello all,
> > > > I'm pretty new to the world of library systems and this is my
> > > > first
> > post.
> > > >
> > > > Anyone have any experience parsing MARC Holding records (853 and
> > > > 863) into a more readable 866 or 867 format?
> > > > We are wanting to export our holdings from our ILS into our
> > > > Discovery Layer and trying to save some of the money that the ILS
> > > > vendor would charge us to create the records.
> > > >
> > > > The parsing doesn't look fun, so I was hoping someone has some
> > > > code to use as a starting point.
> > > > Also, I'm not sure how clean our data in 853 and 863 is so any
> > > > scripts or advice on gotchas when cleaning that up would be
> appreciated.
> > > > We have about 60,000 holding records.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Julie.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Julie Cole
> > > > Library Systems Administrator
> > > > Langara College Library
> > > > Vancouver, BC
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Andromeda Yelton
> > > Senior Software Engineer, MIT Libraries: https://libraries.mit.edu/
> > President,
> > > Library & Information Technology Association: http://www.lita.org
> > > http://andromedayelton.com @ThatAndromeda
> > > <http://twitter.com/ThatAndromeda>
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Bill Dueber
> Library Systems Programmer
> University of Michigan Library