[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Shelving location searches in upcoming releases

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi Sara,

I was a little busy yesterday and only had time to send out an e-mail 
about the copy location code that has been submitted, however I do want 
to take some time to address your initial comments.

> I have heard that the staff client search screens are going away / no 
> longer being developed and that collective energies are being put into 
> developing the public side search access.

I don't know the circumstances under which this information was conveyed 
nor do I know the details of your Evergreen implementation. However, 
after re-reading your e-mail this morning, I'm guessing that you are 
probably on an Evergreen instance where the template toolkit catalog is 
being used as the public catalog while the older, javascript catalog is 
still being used in the staff client.

I thought it might be useful if I gave some background into the reasons 
behind the change. The move to template toolkit was made to improve 
catalog performance as well as to make it easier for sites to customize 
the catalog. I don't know about you, but, when we were on the javascript 
catalog, we saw many of our searches resulting in blank white screens 
that needed to be reloaded. That problem has gone away in the template 
toolkit catalog, and we've seen better performance in the catalog than 
we did with the javascript catalog. I personally also find that the 
interface is much friendlier in the template toolkit catalog, but I 
guess that's a matter of opinion.

There was never an intent to make the template toolkit catalog a public 
catalog with the javascript catalog being a staff client catalog, though 
some sites may have chosen to implement it that way during the 
transition to template toolkit.  Many features more heavily used by 
staff were carried over from the javascript catalog to the template 
toolkit catalog, including the numeric search and the MARC expert 
search. In fact, there are some new features that staff might find 
useful, like the recent search history that is only available in the 
staff client.

Indeed, there are some features that did not make it from the javascript 
catalog to the template toolkit catalog. We've been keeping a list at 
http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dev:opac:template-toolkit:plan 
with corresponding Launchpad bug entries for each of the features. The 
features weren't intentionally omitted in an effort to make the catalog 
friendlier to the public. Instead, it's really a result of the fact that 
the developers were building a new catalog from the ground up, and it 
takes time to build in all of the features we want to carry over from 
the previous catalog.

If there are other features from the javascript catalog that people are 
sorely missing, I recommend that you add your voice by posting comments 
on the corresponding Launchpad bug entries or clicking the "affects me 
too" link.

> This is also critical for retrieving statistical information.

I would not recommend using the catalog as a reporting tool. Once you 
hit a certain number of results, the results retrieved count will be an 
estimate, much in the same way that Google estimates the total number of 
search results. Your best bet is to use the staff client reporting tool 
to retrieve statistical information on copy locations.

Feel free to let us know if you have any other questions or concerns! I 
think it's important that we have an open discussion about these issues 
so that we can continue to tweak and improve the catalog.

Kathy


Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier

On 8/15/2013 12:05 PM, J. Paulk wrote:
> I have heard that the staff client search screens are going away / no 
> longer being developed and that collective energies are being put into 
> developing the public side search access.  Please, please, please to 
> any developers and designers out there.   We CONSTANTLY use the search 
> limit of shelving location as a way of fine tuning searches.  This is 
> also critical for retrieving statistical information.    Can ya'll 
> PLEASE include shelving location as a filter in whatever searching 
> models are used or being thought about.
>
> would be much appreciated.
>
> J. Sara Paulk, Regional Director
> Wythe-Grayson Regional Library 

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