The below was on the general Koha list yesterday. I thought it was interesting enough to forward to this list (hope you agree). You may know that the work on Elastic Search is being funded by EBSCO, its a nice boost to the project: https://www.ebsco.com/news-center/press-releases/koha-receives-massive-suppo... Bob Birchall Calyx -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [Koha] Question about author sorting Date: Wed, 13 May 2015 08:09:54 +0200 From: Sebastian Hierl <s.hierl@aarome.org> To: Robin Sheat <robin@catalyst.net.nz> CC: koha <koha@lists.katipo.co.nz> Hi, Robin: This seems logical enough and the simple fact to be able to browse alphabetically will be a huge improvement to Koha. Thus, thank you. Regarding the functionality, it should be as Katrin describes and sort on the first author, even when sorting Z-A. This is less common in the humanities, but in the sciences the order of the authors matters. Bibliographically speaking, publications are listed under the first author. In sum, the sort should consider the first author only -- and a keyword search will permit to find authors who are second, third and beyond. -Sebastian -- Sebastian Hierl, Ph.D. Drue Heinz Librarian, Arthur & Janet C. Ross Library American Academy in Rome Via Angelo Masina 5 00153 Rome Italy T: +39 06 5846 417 F: +39 06 5810 788 On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 6:13 AM, Robin Sheat <robin@catalyst.net.nz> wrote:
As some of you know, I'm in the process of implementing Elasticsearch support into Koha. Katrin pointed out that there's a bit of an irregularity with the author sorting, but I'm not sure if it's wrong as such. So I'm after a bit of input into what actual people would expect or would like.
Imagine you have a book, with multiple authors:
Title of Book Andrews, A ; Matthews, M ; Zimmermann, Z
You do a search for "title", sorted by author A->Z, and get results, with "Title of Book" at the top due to "Andrews, A."
You then sort it by author Z->A, and get "Title of Book" at the top again, due to "Zimmerman, Z."
There is clearly logic behind it doing this, but is it the right thing to do? If not, what do you think an appropriate alternative would be?
-- Robin Sheat Catalyst IT Ltd. ✆ +64 4 803 2204 GPG: 5FA7 4B49 1E4D CAA4 4C38 8505 77F5 B724 F871 3BDF