[OPEN-ILS-DEV] What are authorities sorted in the cataloging "manage authorities" view?

[Dan Scott]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 05:16:43PM -0400, Yamil Suarez wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> My catalogers are confused by how authorities are sorted in the
> cataloging "manage authorities" view. I wanted to understand the
> approach being taken by the current code, versus what the catalogers
> are expecting.

The code in authority_tag_sf_browse() in OpenILS/Application/SuperCat.pm
is sorting purely by the value of the subfield that was being searched;
other subfields currently play no actual role in the sorting. (That is,
if the code hasn't changed significantly over the past couple of years).

In addition, the examples you gave are great, but they're missing the
4xx / 5xx fields which can also play a role in the sorting, as you might
get a match for a 4xx "see from" or 5xx "see also" field, per
http://www.loc.gov/marc/authority/ad400.html.

For example, if you searched for "Singh, Bhagat", you might be surprised
to see "Bhagata Si" appearing apparently out of order. However, the idea
was that if you displayed the pertinent fields for the hit, you would
see that it was a "see from" reference and you would select the
authorized result. Obviously there's lots of improvement that could go
into the UI for this...