[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Time zones

[James Fournie]

Hi there,

I just wanted to explore something that came up in a previous post by
Yamil from the Berklee School of Music.  I'm wondering first, if there
are any other sites with existing ir potential time-zone related
issues aside from SITKA which has sites in Pacific and Mountain time,
complicated by the fact that some celebrate daylight savings and
others do not.

Secondly, I'm wondering what would be involved in making Evergreen
more compatible with consortia crossing multiple time zones.  We have
several sites who have minor annoyances due to a typically 1-hour time
difference, and I'm wondering what we could do to make their
experience better.  I think due dates are probably the most important
factor in this regard.   One issue we've noticed is that if items are
checked out, the due date is generated in the server's time, but then
when they are displayed in the OPAC, the OPAC converts them to the
local time zone -- hence Jan 5 23:59 becomes Jan 6th 12:59.  While
technically accurate, this is not intuitive for patrons.  I've created
a workaround by just skipping the dojo function which localizes the
time, but that's obviously a hack and not a good solution.  I'm not
sure what the best way to begin making the system more time-zone
friendly would be -- for example, is the best approach to rely on
client-end time zones, or if it would be better to have an org unit
setting for cases when a client end time zone is not available?

Anyway, just hashing out some thoughts, I'd like to dig deeper and
maybe find out where the dates are going to be a problem and what
dates can just be converted to the local time zone, but I was hoping
someone else might have some thoughts.

~James Fournie
BC SITKA