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

[Deanna Frazee]

Starting Tuesdays next month sounds good to me.  In the meantime, is
there anyone who is working on RDA/FRBR/FRAD and how prepared Evergreen
is to cope with these looming changes.  A friend of mine at Amigos is
gathering information on the subject and is trying to track down someone
who can talk with her about it.

Thanks,

Deanna Frazee
Killeen City Library System
(254) 501-8995
(254) 501-7704 (fax)
dfrazee at ci.killeen.tx.us


 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: open-ils-documentation-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
> [mailto:open-ils-documentation-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On
> Behalf Of Jason Etheridge
> Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 12:01 PM
> To: Public Open-ILS documentation discussion
> Subject: [OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] brain dump on Thursday session #3
> 
> 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
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