[OPEN-ILS-DEV] OPAC search filters

[Duimovich, George]

The current OPAC search filters map back to MARC codes - all well and fine, especially for technical staff

Problems I'm trying to address:

1. Relatively small footprint to incorporate OPAC features, due to our "common look & feel" requirements (aka "restrictions") - http://catalogue.nrcan.gc.ca

2. Usability issues re: OPAC filters for patron searching.

On no. 2, one issue is the friendliness of MARC labels like "Two-dimensional nonprojectable graphic" etc. No problem there, we can change/update the labels that map to the MARC codes pretty easily, thereby making the filters better customized for our particular user base. And we can also remove filter values that may not apply to our setting (e.g. we don't do audiobooks - yet). No problems with that issue.

For basic interfaces, however, it's not uncommon to streamline drop down filter lists for usability, sometimes combining "apples & oranges" (from our MARC perspective) in the same filter because our users can be confused by distinctions we make between "Item Form" versus "Item Type" versus "Bibliographic Level" and so on. I just don't see our users being well served by exposing certain distinctions we make which they report as being confusing. (e.g.  "Book" is in Item Type but "Journal" or "Serial" is not and most users would expect them to be on the same filter list). 

An example of this is here: http://www.worldcat.org/advancedsearch. View source and you can see that the "All Formats" filter intermixes "Document Type" (dt) & "Material Type" (mt) index values in a single "All Fomats" filter.  

What I'd like to do is something similar but note that the Type Filter  Leader/06 - code a - is not granular enough to limit to CNR examples (Periodicals, journals, etc.) because it also applies to BKS examples too (Books, etc.). So it looks to me as if I'd need to intermix Type and Bibliographic Level filters in the same filter list to add "Serials" (or "Journals" etc). Correct?  

Any suggested way to accomplish this (i.e.. arbitrary co-mingling of filter values into a single filter listing)? I took a quick look at the code and think we could possibly use alternate html/css packaging to create a filter, but curious if anybody has done this or has suggestions for accomplishing this.

Thanks

George Duimovich
NRCan Library / Bibliothèque de RNCan


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