[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Serials in alpha4

[Dan Wells]

Hello Kathy,

(Well, I see Lebbeous already provided a good answer, but since I already wrote this, here is another take on it).

Streams are certainly not the most obvious concept in the serials model.  The name is meant to imply a stream of issues, so if a distribution expects to receive 3 copies of a journal, you need three streams.  That is why you need at least one stream in order to make predictions; you are in fact populating the streams with future copies.  Sometimes I find it helpful to think of them as 'sets' or 'sequences'.  If you have three streams, you will end up with three independent sets of the journal.

Hope this helps,
Dan


>>> On 11/17/2010 at 12:59 PM, "Kathy Lussier" <klussier at masslnc.org> wrote:
> Hi Joke,
> 
> I had many of the same questions you raised in this e-mail, and I was glad
> to see Lebbeous' answers. 
> 
> You mentioned receiving an error when you tried to generate predictions,
> which reminded me of a question I had when trying the alternate serials
> view. I don't know if it was the same error, but when I first started
> looking at the alternate serials view and tried to generate a prediction, I
> received an error message that said "Invalid parameters were encountered in
> a method. There are no streams to direct items. Can't predict." I then went
> to my distributions tab and noticed that I had 0 streams for the
> distribution. Once I created a stream, I was able to generate predictions.
> 
> However, I'm not quite sure what a stream is. Is a stream just used for
> routing serials or is there another purpose? If a stream is primarily used
> for routing, is it a requirement that you set up routing for a serial before
> you can generate predictions? We have libraries that do not need to route
> serials. 
> 
> Thanks!
> Kathy
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Kathy Lussier
> Project Coordinator
> Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
> (508) 756-0172
> (508) 755-3721 (fax)
> klussier at masslnc.org 
> IM: kmlussier (AOL & Yahoo)
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>  
>  
>  
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org 
>> [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] 
>> On Behalf Of Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley
>> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 12:11 PM
>> To: Evergreen Discussion Group
>> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Serials in alpha4
>> 
>> On 11/17/2010 11:23 AM, Joke Zwaan wrote:
>> > Dear Kathy,
>> >
>> > As Repke already mentioned in his mail of Nov 5th 2010, 
>> here at the IISH  we also have been busy with the serials in 
>> 2.0Alpha4.
>> > With the little 'walk through' from Lebbeous, using the 
>> Alternate Serials Control, we made a start with the patterns 
>> and issuances, but when we try 'generate predictions' we get 
>> an error message. We will keep on testing of course, but we 
>> also hope that you, or somebody else from the community, can help us.
>> > Here are a few examples of the things we don't know how to 
>> deal with :
>> 
>> Perhaps I can help with these.
>> 
>> > 1.	In  the popup screen New Subscription is a field 
>> Expected date offset : what date is required here (interval, 
>> start subscription ?)
>> 
>> You can leave this field blank, but if you want to use it, it 
>> takes an interval, and the intent is to specify the 
>> difference between issues' 
>> nominal publishing date and the date on which you actually 
>> expect to receive copies.
>> 
>> If something is published weekly on Mondays, but you 
>> typically receive your copies the preceding Friday, you might 
>> enter "-3 days" (without the quotation marks).
>> 
>> > 2.	Popup screen Issuance, New Issuance, the 'label' field: 
>> is that a call number ; and the 'date published' field: what 
>> kind of date does the system wants (date start subscription, 
>> date published number??)
>> 
>> The date published field under issuance should get the date 
>> on which the issuance you're editing was published (not the 
>> whole subscription's start date).  If you're providing one 
>> "manual" issue before predicting more issue automatically, 
>> you want this to be the date of the last issue you have 
>> _before_ you want prediction to start.
>> 
>> So if you have a weekly periodical and you want predictions 
>> to be generated starting on Sep 1, you would enter the 
>> publication date (and holding code information) for your 
>> August 25 issue.
>> 
>> > 3. The pattern you make gets a number. Is it possible to 
>> use that pattern (through the number) for another periodical, 
>> and if so where can we find the patterns  we already made in 
>> the system?
>> >
>> 
>> At this time you can only use the patterns you created for 
>> that specific subscription.  This *may* change, but that 
>> might take some design changes to the internals.  As a 
>> workaround to "re-use" patterns, you can copy and paste to 
>> and from the "pattern code" field in the "Caption and 
>> Pattern" tab.  That way at least you don't have to go through 
>> the wizard again every time.
>> 
>> Hope this helps!
>> 
>> Regards,
>> --
>> Lebbeous
>>