LibLime and Koha went on a bug-squashing rampage! The January 14 updates to Koha included patches to fix over 20 known bugs, as well as our new Holdability Enhancement. The updates were applied to our TEST server January 15 and the NExpress team has spent today reviewing, testing, and trying to understand all the changes.
UPDATE: Liz worked hard the morning of January 29 to incorporate the many changes and updates into our Catalog. We have discovered a few new features that are included below:
NEW – Patron Duplicate Checking – When adding a new patron, if the name and birthday EXACTLY match, the system will notify you that a “Duplicate suspected.” We learned through testing that the absence or presence of a middle initial will not generate this notification.
NEW – OPAC Search Results – I won’t bore you with a discussion of the system preferences of XSLTDetailsDisplay and XSLTResultsDisplay, but we do need to discuss the ramifications of turning these preferences ON in our OPAC. Under Availability for an item, the results are more accurate and show (in RED) the number of items that are checked out, lost OR “In Transit” However, this page also shows a Call Number that is pulled from the MARC record and is often in Library of Congress format, not Dewey Decimal. Do you feel the correct availability display outweighs the incorrect call number display? We HOPE that we can supress the Call Number very soon.
Bug 2747 - Staff Client to show correct Item Type information, pulled from the Item record, not the Bib record. The Holdings table now provides useful and correct Item type information. This will be very useful when Local Holds and Walk-In Item types are activated.
- Correct Item-level Item Types to show
Bug 2874: Allow overriding blocked renewals. This is a great new feature where we can now override renewal limits, once we grant this permission to the Circ, Tech and Director accounts. Simply select the Override Renewal Limit box to turn “Too Many Renewals” into a Check Box! You can use the calendar to set an extended due date, if you wish.
- New feature allows you to override renewal limits.
- Change ‘Too Many Renewals’ into a check box
OPAC changes related to Series and the MARC field 440. The OPAC now shows useful, hyperlinked Series statements AND shows Similar Items that have matching 440 Series titles.
- Series Statement from the Staff Client
- The Series statement is now a hyperlink.
- The OPAC pulls Similar Items for display from the 440 series statement.
Love Bugs 2747 and 2874 fixes! Thanks.