[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Questions about serials

[Dan Wells]

Hello Kathy,

-- 
*********************************************************************************
Daniel Wells, Library Programmer Analyst dbw2 at calvin.edu
Hekman Library at Calvin College
616.526.7133


>>> On 5/17/2012 at 10:44 AM, Kathy Lussier <klussier at masslnc.org> wrote:

> 
> 1. After setting up a subscription, creating a caption/prediction, 
> pattern, etc., we've noticed that when return to the OPAC view of the 
> record, select Actions for this Record < MFHD Holdings < Edit MFHD 
> record, there is now a MFHD record that appears to be editable (see 
> attached screenshot.)
> 
...
> 
> My question is whether I am suppose to be able to edit this 
> automatically-generated MFHD statement. If so, I can file a bug report, 
> but I just didn't know what the intended behavior is here.

Lebbeous is correct, you are not supposed to be able to edit the generated data directly, so the bug here is that the menu entry is added.  This same bug was found and fixed at one point (in JSPAC at least), and should be fairly simple to fix again.

> 
> 2. My understanding is that special issues can only be created via the 
> alternate serials control view. Is that still the case?
> 

Special issues are still problematic for a number of reasons.  Creating them manually is cumbersome and error prone, especially if you have a lot of distributions and streams, and they frequently cause havoc when generating summaries.  The ability to create them was removed from the Serial Control View sometime during 2.0 alpha with the intention of making sure they worked properly top-to-bottom before including them, but we are going on two years of "intending", so maybe pulling what we had at that time (despite its "danger") was a little optimistic.

At any rate, we are surviving at my library with a workaround.  It doesn't solve the bigger underlying issues, but it is pretty easy and helps ensure good data, so I recommend it at this point regardless of which interface you are using.  Here are the steps:

1. Make sure you have at least *2* unreceived issuances generated which are chronologically after your special issue.
2. Carefully hijack your *last* predicted issuance, editing it to reflect the special issue data, paying particular attention to the date published.
3. (optional) Edit the 'Date expected' on the individual items attached to the issuance (which generally only matters if you are not receiving it right away).  If you use the Serial Control "Items" tab, you can edit them all at once.

That's it.  All of your distributions/streams are populated and everything is linked together properly.  The prediction code always predicts from the last issuance based on *date published*, so as long as you follow these steps, the issuance you hijacked will be recreated the next time you predict issues, because your current "last" issuance was (and will be) the one right before it.  Hopefully this makes at least some sense!

> 
> 4. This last question will probably turn into a bug report, but I just 
> want to understand the expected behavior before filing the bug. We have 
> libraries that prefer using something like "most recent 5 years" as the 
> textual holdings statement. I've been playing with the summary method 
> and have found that I can successfully do so by setting the summary 
> method to "Use record entry only."
> 
> However, I found that the remaining three options ("add to record 
> entry", "merge with record entry" and "do not use record entry") 
> generate the same display in tpac. It displays the holdings statement 
> automatically generated by Evergreen followed by the record entry. I'm 
> assuming that "do not use record entry" should not be displaying the 
> record entry at all. What is "merge with record entry" supposed to do?
> 

To add to what Lebbeous said, in cases where the generated holdings are a direct continuation of the MFHD holdings, the "merge" setting is meant to detect that and therefore not display the break (that is, to use simple number ranges for example purposes, you should see "1-5" instead of "1-3,4-5").

Thanks for the questions and the (coming) bug reports!
Dan