[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] sorting catalog search results

[Mike Rylander]

On 2/20/07, Mike Kastellec <mkastellec at athenslibrary.org> wrote:
> I'll second that as an excellent suggestion. Staff would also benefit
> from this feature, as we use the catalog even more than patrons and it's
> easy to forget to enter a sort criteria before searching.

Agreed, though this surely won't go into production code before v1.2
sometime this spring.

Sorting is already directly possible (though under-documented) in the
SlimPAC by using the sort and dir search modifiers:

http://gapines.org/opac/extras/opensearch/1.1/PINES/html-full/keyword/%22harry+potter%22+sort%3Aauthor+dir%3Aasc

or the searchSort and searchSortDir url params (which are nominally
exposed in the OpenSearch description document):

http://gapines.org/opac/extras/opensearch/1.1/PINES/html-full/keyword/%22harry+potter%22?searchSort=author&searchSortDir=asc

and a similar URL can currently be constructed for the main OPAC:

http://gapines.org/opac/en-US/skin/default/xml/rresult.xml?rt=keyword&tp=keyword&t=%22harry%20potter%22&l=1&d=0&s=author&sd=asc

Right now, the main OPAC doesn't have any way to specify this, and two
drop-downs for sort type and direction will take up a good bit of
screen space ... any suggestions as to where they should go?

-miker

>
> Mike
>
> John Kintree wrote:
> > When looking at the results from a catalog search at www.gapines.org, it would
> > be nice if there was a control that would allow the user to sort the results.
> > The control could allow the user to specify one of several means of sorting,
> > such as having the most recent publications at the top of the results.
> >
> > The type of target audience for this requested feature is patron, and would
> > probably benefit a considerable part of that audience.  An example use case
> > would be a subject search on something like "photovoltaics," when there are
> > several pages of results, and the patron is especially interested in the most
> > recent publications.
> >
> > Specifying sort criteria can be done in the Advanced Search page.  Placing
> > that feature at another point a patron might want to use it would make
> > gapines more user friendly.
> >
> > BTW, thanks, Bill, for adding the navigation bar to the bottom of the results.
> > Adding a control for sort criteria to the results page would probably only be
> > needed at the top of the page.
> > Regards,
> > John Kintree
> > http://home.swbell.net/jkintree/islt/
> >
> >
>


-- 
Mike Rylander
mrylander at gmail.com
GPLS -- PINES Development
Database Developer
http://open-ils.org