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[oss4lib-discuss] course/control - Reserves Management System (fwd)
by Pat Eyler 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

an interesting bit for academic libraries ... would it be better to work with a project like this or to build our own interface using the virtual bookshelf concept? -pate Pat Eyler Kaitiaki/manager migrant Linux sys admin the Koha project ruby, shell, and perl geek http://www.koha.org http://pate.eylerfamily.org ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 17:12:08 -0400 From: Ross Singer <rfsinge(a)emory.edu> To: oss4lib-discuss(a)lists.sourceforge.net, web4lib(a)sunsite.berkeley.edu Subject: [oss4lib-discuss] course/control - Reserves Management System [Pardon the crossposting] course/control, a PHP and PostgreSQL based reserves management system, is available for download at http://coursecontrol.sourceforge.net. Created by Emory University General Libraries, course/control is designed to give instructors as much control over their class reserves as they or the reserves department want. It allows instructors to: Create classes Place reserves in any order Set Activation Dates to hide items until specific dates Add files to their course reserves Reactivate reserves from previously taught classes Request items from the catalog via z39.50 Add comments/annotations to particular reserve items In combination with Hylafax, fax items to the server and automatically convert the document to pdf Library staff also have the ability to do this, plus process requests for new reserve items. Through the public interface, Reserves Direct, students set up profiles of their current schedule, which allows them to see only what they're supposed to see. Reserves Direct also allows the user to hide items from their class listing to reduce visual clutter for courses with many items on reserves. Handling both electronic and "traditional" (physical) reserves, course/control is intended to be a free, opensource alternative to the myriad commercial reserves management offerings on the market. Ross Singer Application Developer Emory University General Libraries ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf _______________________________________________ oss4lib-discuss(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oss4lib-discuss see also http://www.oss4lib.org/

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questions about koha (from a library)
by Nicholas S. Rosasco 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

Pat and I exchanged emails on this, and for the sake of everyone's sanity I'll be putting the questions up on the Wiki ... rather than trying to keep track of versions passed around etc etc. http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/wiki/index.php?page=KohaProject Look at QuestionsPosed Nick

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questions about koha (from a library)
by Pat Eyler 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

There's a largish library that is thinking about using Koha. They've come up with a long list of questions that they'd like answered, and I'd like to get some other peoples feedback before I start answering. Please have a look at these, and reply to those that you feel comfortable talking about. thanks, -pate ----------------------Questions---------------------------- 1 -- Which operating system, or choice of systems, does the proposed library automation system run on? 2 -- Is system administration done with command lines or a graphical module? We should see it. 3 -- What is the backup utility? Does it use tapes? 4 -- Does the system have its own file and disk maintenance procedures? If so, how are they performed? 5 -- What administrative functions or upgrades require the system to be off-line, and for how long? 6 -- Is there a backup module for circulation in case the system is down? 7 -- Describe the way customer support works, what it covers, and hours of service. 8 -- What is the indexing capability for the catalog? How many indexes can we have? Can they be customized? 9 -- Describe the capacity for integrating selfcheck machines with the system. Is it SIP1/SIP2/NCIP compliant? 10 -- What report writing capability does the system have? 11 -- What "canned" reports are available? 12 -- Is there an API available? Can we develop applications that can directly access the database? 13 -- Is there a function for electronic ordering, such as from Baker and Taylor? Does B&T support your ordering module? 14 -- What flexibility is there for customizing the catalog? Can the catalog engine search external databases? 15 -- Is the system client-server or web based? 16 -- What is the capacity for e-mail functions, including e-mail notices? 17 -- Can the system integrate library fines with external payment interfaces (library cards, etc.)? 18 -- Which RFID vendors have successfully integrated with your system? 19 -- Can receipt printers work with the system? 20 -- Have you converted DRA Classic sites in the past? Describe your conversion process. What data can you *not* convert? 21 -- Can your system work with Epixtech's URSA module for inter-library loan? 22 -- Do you provide an integrated point of sale module? 23 -- What functions can our public do from home via our catalog -- pay fines? renew items? place requests? renew cards? 24 -- Does the catalog have multi-lingual support? 25 -- What are the options, or lack of, regarding database privacy (reading records of the public, retrospective history, etc.)? 26 -- Is there support for access via hand-helds? 27 -- What is the database platform? Proprietary? Oracle? Informix? SQL? Something else? 28 -- Can customized fields be added to either item or patron records? 29 -- What flexibility is there for searching item and patron records? Can additional item and patron fields be made searchable? 30 -- Can the system store content (not just indexing) for digital materials, photographs, e-books, digital audio? 31 -- Can staff get real-time statistics on demand? 32 -- Is there any way for users to get automatic bibliographies on request? 33 -- Is there any capacity for debit interfaces with functions such as printing? 34 -- What kind of hardware do you recommend? Does your configuration include RAID? 35 -- What database redundancy is built into the system, in case a disk is lost or corrupted? 36 -- What kind of support do you have for bookmobile operation, eg. a cache of the whole database changed every day? 37 -- Is there support for cover pages, excerpts, etc., such as we can purchase from Syndetic? 38 -- Can the public place requests for titles which are on order? 39 -- Is there integrated selector management -- that is, when you select a title from a database such as OCLC, can it be loaded into the system and ordered? 40 -- How is access managed to OCLC? 41 -- How are long overdue items managed -- patron notices, credit bureau reports, masking from the database, etc.? Does the capacity exist to transfer these items into an auxiliary database? 42 -- Explain the hierarchical nature of database locations (system, agencies, departments, or whatever). 43 -- How are item statuses used? Can they be converted from DRA Classic to the new system? 44 -- What is the procedure for processing lost items? 45 -- What kind of transaction statistics are kept for items? For patrons? 46 -- How does licensing work? How are fees determined? 47 -- Can the system handle consortia? How does this affect licensing fees? 48 -- What can be controlled by the systems calendar (eg. days when items are not due, fines not charged, etc.)? 49 -- What kind of patron delinquency statuses are available? Can patron statuses be converted from DRA Classic? 50 -- Does the catalog allow searching by item (not bibliographic) call numbers? 51 -- What is the hierarchy of the bibliographic database (bibliographic records, call number records, item records)? 52 -- What is the system of classifications for materials (material codes)? Can selfcheck checkouts be limited to specified item classifications? 53 -- Can the system allow automatic charges to patron records as certain classes of items are checked out? Can this feature be used with the selfcheck? 54 -- Is it possible to set up multiple databases within the system? 55 -- Is there a text catalog that can be used for modem access (for people who are not yet on the Internet)? 56 -- Does the system allow tracking between patron categories and item categories for circulation statistics? 57 -- Can fine records for patrons be converted to your system from DRA Classic? Pat Eyler Kaitiaki/manager migrant Linux sys admin the Koha project ruby, shell, and perl geek http://www.koha.org http://pate.eylerfamily.org

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Re: [Koha] Installation questions from another Linux/Koha newbie (fwd)
by Pat Eyler 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

heh, it works better to spell the name of the mailinglist correctly when forwarding an email to it ... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 12:18:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Pat Eyler <pate(a)eylerfamily.org> To: Owen Leonard <oleonard(a)athenscounty.lib.oh.us> Cc: koha(a)lists.katipo.co.nz, koh-devel(a)eylerfamily.org Subject: Re: [Koha] Installation questions from another Linux/Koha newbie On Mon, 7 Oct 2002, Owen Leonard wrote: > In preparation for our move to Koha, I've got a brand new installation of > RedHat 7.3 on my desktop. I installed 1.3.0 using the install-script, and got > Apache set up fine. Something's not working right, though--several of the > pages come up 'Internal Server Error' (book and member searches, for > instance). > > What's the best way to diagnose problems like this? Did I skip some > configuration somewhere along the way? Or am I asking for trouble trying to > get 1.3.0 to work? > Hi Owen, The best way to look into problems like this is to start out in the error_log for apache to see what apache thinks is wrong. It sounds like you may have missed a step along the way, but that's hard to tell. You may want to avoid the 1.3.0 series for a bit longer yet (wait for 1.3.2 I'd guess -- Paul?). It's really geared at developers at this point. The good news is that the user visible (and installer bits) are going to be substantially the same as the 1.2.X versions, so the experience you gain in setting up and demoing things will carry over. Also, I've CC:d the koha-devel list on this. When troubleshooting problems, it often a good idea to try involving them. Another good approach is to jump onto the #koha channel at irc.katipo.co.nz and see if anyone is there who can help. thanks, -pate > -- Owen > > ---- > Web Site Developer > Athens County Library Services > http://www.athenscounty.lib.oh.us > _______________________________________________ > Koha mailing list > Koha(a)lists.katipo.co.nz > http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha > _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha(a)lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha

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RE: [Koha-devel] Re: [Koha] latest on PostgreSQL
by Anthony W. Youngman 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

One (to me extremely annoying) nitpick. Using SQL does NOT make it db-independent. It merely makes it rdb-independent ... I had an offline discussion with Pat about MaVerick, which is not a relational database but is probably more suited to Koha than SQL. Unfortunately, the hassle of switching (plus the fact MaVerick is immature) probably means an attempt at changing isn't worth it. btw, Andrew, please can you get rid of that damn flag ... :-) Cheers, Wol (if you're interested, www.maverick-dbms.org) -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Arensburger [mailto:arensb+koha-devel@ooblick.com] Sent: 07 October 2002 13:49 To: Ervin Peters Cc: Richard Davis; koha(a)lists.katipo.co.nz; koha-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] Re: [Koha] latest on PostgreSQL On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 10:48:39AM +0200, Ervin Peters wrote: > But i think we should better discuss either to get it db- independent by > using only Ansi SQL or to specify the dbs in koha.conf, like 'dbs = > [mysql|pgsql|oracle|sap|ansiSQL]' The current version in CVS already allows you to do this: use the (undocumented) "db_scheme" configuration option in /etc/koha.conf: db_scheme = Pg This transmission is intended for the named recipient only. It may contain private and confidential information. If this has come to you in error you must not act on anything disclosed in it, nor must you copy it, modify it, disseminate it in any way, or show it to anyone. Please e-mail the sender to inform us of the transmission error or telephone ECA International immediately and delete the e-mail from your information system. Telephone numbers for ECA International offices are: Sydney +61 (0)2 9911 7799, Hong Kong + 852 2121 2388, London +44 (0)20 7351 5000 and New York +1 212 582 2333.

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Re: [Koha] latest on PostgreSQL
by Ervin Peters 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

Hallo ! I'm not really involved in Koha developing yet, but I downloaded Koha 1.2.2 in August and got it run on postgres to about 90%. I've done this to get familiar with Perl, dbs + www and so on... There are many things to do to get the whole System work on postgres, or better: work Database independent. The basic SQL Database Script contains MySQL specific SQL, but can be easily converted to pgsql by mysql2pgsql. The updatedb and the web scripts are more problematic, since they embed many mysql specific. I went through that script, convert on the fly the sql terms an typed it in pgsql. You could say, I updated the db by hand. The next problems are the 'replace into' statments found in many scripts, they must be changed into if 'select [pkey] from ...' then 'update ...' else 'insert into ...' construction like it is done in some module functions. If I would find the time, I'd like to specify it more detailled, later on. But i think we should better discuss either to get it db- independent by using only Ansi SQL or to specify the dbs in koha.conf, like 'dbs = [mysql|pgsql|oracle|sap|ansiSQL]' Then any code can contain 'optimizations' for dbs by check the configuration: if dbs==mysql then 'replace into..' else if 'select ...from...' then 'update ...' else 'insert...' Another possibility would be to move all dbs code in one modul and change this modul by selecting the dbs... ervin Weimar, Germany --On Montag, 7. Oktober 2002 16:04 +1300 Richard Davis <RichardD(a)pcanz.org.nz> wrote: > I read in the archives of June/July that some work was being done of > making koha work with postgres. What progress has been made? > > > > Richard Davis > Communications Advisor and Webmaster > Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand > PO Box 9049, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand > Direct: +64 4 381 8285 Mobile: 027 404 8656 > Phone: +64 4 801 6000 Fax: +64 4 801 6001 > http://www.presbyterian.org.nz/ > _______________________________________________ > Koha mailing list > Koha(a)lists.katipo.co.nz > http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha -- Ervin Peters 99423 Weimar

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search.pl from intranet
by paul POULAIN 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

Hi finlay, I'm working on catalogue search to add a link on the search page to see full-MARC biblio. On the version i've (cvs from main branch), when i search i see a list of biblios showing the results : Results with dewey <http://koha.dev/cgi-bin/koha/search.pl?template=cmsdsearchresults.tmpl&star…>| Results with biblionumber <http://koha.dev/cgi-bin/koha/search.pl?template=searchresults.tmpl&startfro…> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title Author Item Count Biblionumber Prokofiev's Peter and the wolf Morris, Johnny 1 6712 Popcorn at the palace McCully, Emily Arnold 1 28689 The Pandora option Rathbone, Julian 1 28801 Blossom like the rose Lofts, Norah 1 29648 Prague and the best of the Czech Republic Mastrini, John 1 31922 The Everest Hotel Sealy, Allan 1 19067 Neither here nor there Bryson, Bill 2 27587 Bishop Selwyn in New Zealand, 1841-68 1 4863 The fighting Temeraire 1 17050 The searching spirit Adamson, Joy 1 4628 Previous Records <http://koha.dev/cgi-bin/koha/search.pl?template=&startfrom=0> Next Records <http://koha.dev/cgi-bin/koha/search.pl?template=&startfrom=10> Results 1 through 10 of 14612 records. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ But if I clic on a link (next, previous...), i get nothing usefull (an empty liste usually). And where should I clic to see the detail of a title ? I think either i'm doing something wrong, or there is a problem... what do you think ? Note : i've modified a few things not working because of hard-coded url in templates. -- Paul

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about "Replaced several prepare()/execute()/finish() sequences with do()."
by paul POULAIN 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

Just 1 remark about few of your CVS commits : we have decided to use prepare("update xx where yy=?"); execute($yy_value); If there are prepare("update xx where yy=$yy_value") execute(); then it's because nobody moved this query to ? syntax. Thus, - $query = "insert into biblio set - biblionumber = $bibnum, - title = $biblio->{'title'}, - author = $biblio->{'author'}, - copyrightdate = $biblio->{'copyright'}, - serial = $series, - seriestitle = $biblio->{'seriestitle'}, - notes = $biblio->{'notes'}, - abstract = $biblio->{'abstract'}"; ! $sth = $dbh->prepare($query); ! $sth->execute; should be $query = "insert into biblio set biblionumber = ? title = ? author = ? copyrightdate = ? serial = ? seriestitle = ? notes = ? abstract = ?"; $sth = $dbh->prepare($query); $sth->execute($bibnum,$biblio->{'title'},...); and not ! $dbh->do(<<EOT); ! INSERT INTO biblio ! SET biblionumber = $bibnum, ! title = $biblio->{'title'}, ! author = $biblio->{'author'}, ! copyrightdate = $biblio->{'copyright'}, ! serial = $series, ! seriestitle = $biblio->{'seriestitle'}, ! notes = $biblio->{'notes'}, ! abstract = $biblio->{'abstract'} ! EOT -- Paul

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we've got a winner :-) => IMPORTANT
by paul POULAIN 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

I hope everybody has been VERY CAREFUL on C4::context.pm that Andrew posted yesterday... It's really a GREAT SCRIPT : * well documented * nice and clean perl * very useful. * extendable as we want and need. I think everybody should follow andrew paths... For the coming scripts, i STRONGLY recommend to use C4::context.pm and forget anything else... About parameters : ------------------------- I think we're on a dangerous way... some parameters are in /etc/koha.conf, some are in systempreferences table. I think, and chris too, that we should use koha.conf ONLY for DB parameters, and systempreferences for everything else. Example : it's bad, i think, to have theme in systempref and theme-path in koha.conf. Does anyone have an objection ? -- Paul

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Search UI
by Andrew Arensburger 06 Oct '02

06 Oct '02

There's been some talk here about improving the searching code. It seems to me that a lot can be done by improving the user interface. Currently, the internal and OPAC search pages have three types of searches, but this isn't obvious. There's the search by bar code, which returns information about a specific item. There's the "fuzzy" search by author, title, etc. which searches for a combination of criteria. There's the subject search, which searches for known subjects, not books. On the internal search page, the barcode search is visually distinct from the other searches, so it's intuitively obvious that they're two different types of searches and should return different results. On the OPAC page, however, all of the fields are grouped together, giving the impression that it's just one tyep of search. If you see Author: _________________ Title: _________________ [Search] you naturally assume that you can fill in "Asimov" and "Astronomy", and get books with "Asimov" as the author AND "astronomy" in the title. Therefore, you conclude, if you see Author: _________________ Title: _________________ Subject: _________________ [Search] you can fill in "Asimov" as the author and "astronomy" as the subject, and get all the books written by Asimov on the subject of astronomy. This isn't what the page does: it ignores the author entirely, and displays a list of subjects that have the word "astronomy" in them. Likewise, it doesn't make sense to combine the barcode with anything else, such as an author. The barcode uniquely identifies a book, so either the author will match and return the same result as the barcode alone, or it won't and the search will return nothing. Finally, there's only one "OK Start Search" button on the page, which reinforces the impression that everything is part of one big search. This is true, actually: there's only one <form> block on the search page, and the code in C4/Search.pm jumps through all sorts of hoops to see which fields were specified and which ones weren't, and try to guess from that what kind of search the user wants to perform. IMHO it'd be better to start by changing the page layout: Keywords: ________________ Author: ________________ Title: ________________ (*) Normal ( ) Exact Series: ________________ (*) Normal ( ) Exact Illustrator: _____________ Subject: ________________ Item type: [Choose an item type] [Search] -------- Subject: ________________ [Search] -------- Barcode: ________________ [Search] (And maybe drop the Dewey search. I don't know.) For the first search, all of the terms would be combined: the search would return all books that match all of the criteria. The second search would return a list of subjects, the way it's currently done. The third search would find a specific book, as you'd expect. This layout seems more intuitive to me. (The in-store search thingy at Borders has a different interface: a pull-down selection box allows you to choose whether you want to search by author, title, or keyword. But I think the above is better, since it allows you to narrow the search by providing more terms.) The underlying HTML would then contain three <form> blocks. Each one could then include a field like <input type="hidden" name="type" value="by-barcode"> which would take the guesswork out of the code that actually performs the search and make it easier to Do The Right Thing. Thoughts? Opinions? Dissent? -- Andrew Arensburger This message *does* represent the arensb(a)ooblick.com views of ooblick.com A running program is the moment of truth. All else is either prophecy or nostalgia.

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