[Koha-bugs] [Bug 25395] Enumchron needs to sort numerically

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.koha-community.org]

https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=25395

--- Comment #3 from Myka Kennedy Stephens <mkstephens at lancasterseminary.edu> ---
(In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #2)
> Sorry, missed you had already mentioned serials on first glance!

It's okay, Katrin! I filed this bug because there are some problems that the
solution for bug 13420 did not address. Namely, that enumchron still sorts
alphabetically (I'm guessing this is what is happening) when the
serial.publisheddate does not exist. Items will only have a value for
serial.publisheddate if they have been derived through the serials receiving
process. Serial items that are brought over from a migration or added through
other manner of acquisition, and also multi-volume sets that extend beyond nine
volumes are not going to have a serial.publisheddate value and are not going to
sort correctly without extra measures taken in the cataloging process.

How we address it in our library's catalog is by adding an extra 0 to the
beginning of the volume number so that they sort in the correct order. An item
with enumchron=v.09 will appear before an item with enumchron=v.10. This was a
lot of work to add these 0's when we migrated to Koha. What will be truly
annoying is when a serial makes the shift from volume 99 to volume 100. In such
an event, we'd be faced with going back and adding an additional 0 to every
item's enumchron for that serial!

Yes, I see that a sophisticated algorithm is likely going to be needed. I also
thought about the possibility of splitting enumchron into two fields: one for
enumeration and one for chronology so that a similar solution that was used for
bug 13420 could be tried. The problem with that is that every Koha library
would likely be facing a data clean-up project to split the data from the
enumchron into the two fields.

There's likely no easy answer. Yet, we should not lose sight of the problem.

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