[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] brain dump on Thursday session #3

[Jason Etheridge]

This session was interesting, since we're using demo.gapines.org
temporarily to shake out bugs in the rel_1_2 branch of Evergreen, and
while we were waiting for everyone to connect, I hit one such bug and
ran away to my local dev server, which I forgot I had intentionally
broken the day before trying to duplicate someone's problem on
OPEN-ILS-DEV.  So, I was like what the heck, let's show folks how to
install/upgrade/downgrade Evergreen since it's quick to do if you have
all the pre-requisites.  But my system is really borked, and this
isn't my area of expertise, so I soon went to back to demo with my
tail between my legs and carried on.

We talked a bit about circulation behavior, how the circ scripts can
basically consider any piece of data in the system (or potentially,
outside of the system) when determining checkout permissibility,
durations, fine levels, etc., though we make some data more convenient
to access than others in that environment (for example, we really
don't want folks basing behavior off of fields meant for statistical
reporting).  Some of this uber-flexibility will be tamed (will get a
GUI) with the almost-finished in-database circ behavior feature, but
we'll always have the circ scripts as a fall-through escape hatch for
folks who want to base circulation behavior off phases of the moon,
etc.

This topic came up as a followup to something I said in Session #2,
about how folks tend to lean on Circ Modifiers (or Item Types/Groups
in other systems), because it's what they're used to, but it would be
better to base behavior off of other things like metadata for the
title, and relative attributes on items for loan duration, fine level,
etc., because then things would be less overloaded and more
orthogonal, and Circ Modifiers could be reserved to signal exceptional
behavior.  What I forgot to mention, is that you could create
templates for the Item Attribute Editor that will set all these
separate fields for you, and give those templates names that you might
otherwise be tempted to use as a Circ Modifier.  So for example,
instead of having a Circ Modifier called "dvd-long", you could have a
template called "DVD - Long Duration" that sets the Loan Duration to
Long, the Fine Level to High, maybe sets the Age Based Hold Protection
field, and a custom Stat Cat called Item Type to "DVD".  This makes it
a little more obvious at a glance what is happening, and separates
statistical fields from behavior-affecting fields.

We took a close look at almost every widget/control in the Check Out
and Check In interfaces, and revisited the Receipt Template Editor,
and we talked about how holds and transits and how they're configured
to work out of the box.  There was terminology used like hold
targeting, hold re-targeting, hold capturing, opportunistic hold
capturing, hold selection focus, hold selection range, hold freezing,
hold thawing, etc.

Did I forget anything?  If you have questions on anything we've
covered so far (or have yet to cover, but you're dying to know), feel
free to ask!  I think we should focus on cataloging next Thursday, and
if we have time, we could dip into reporting, what do you think?

I'm going to hold off on Tuesday sessions until next month.

Thanks folks

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Community Support and Advocacy
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
 | phone: 1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email: jason at esilibrary.com
 | web: http://www.esilibrary.com