NExpress Shared Catalog

We recently had a number (60) of patches, bug fixes and new features added to our TEST catalog.

These are the updates we tested today and felt were the most important to share.  These will remain in TEST for awhile before being moved to the LIVE catalog.

Comments are WELCOME – really, you all are the Front Line and can give valuable feedback about these new features and improvements!

• Bug 2691 – Call number splits in labels.  For those of you who use the label maker in Koha, please do some further tests in TEST (green background) to see if this ‘fix’ works for you.  Related: Bug 2984 – Ability to Generate Labels for Batch in CSV format, for editing in Excel.  How many of you use a Word mail-merge for labels?  This should help you out.
• Bug 2854 – Ability to search for partial barcodes, using “fuzzy logic” with the “%” character.  If you want to find an item based on a partial barcode, you can search using the first part of the barcode and the % character, for example 00030090080%.  This works in both the Cataloging search box and the regular search box.
  Word of WARNING:  Use this this care, or you could accidently try to pull up your ENTIRE collection (and time out the catalog, like I just did).  I would use this feature if you know all but the last 2 or 3 digits of the barcode series you are cataloging with.
  • Scenario:  Say Kathleen at Bonner Spring needs to find something she cataloged last week and knows from the sheet of barcodes sitting on her desk that she’s in the series 00030090080XX.
    She can search for “00030090080%”:
    
    The Results – 98 items recently cataloged at Bonner Springs…with the item Kathleen is looking for (click to zoom):
    
• Bug 2991 – Select and Place Multiple Items Titles ON HOLD at One Time!!  Three different scenarios:
  Patrons logged into the OPAC can select multiple items and place them on hold, select multiple items and put them in a Cart and then put things from the Cart on hold OR they can select multiple items and put them in a List and then put things from the List on hold.
  Let me demonstrate with some trashy romance I so adore:
  1. I did a search for ‘Quinn, Julia’ in the OPAC after logging in.  I arranged the results in date order, newest to oldest.
  2. I selected several titles from the Search Results and can Place them on Hold using the greenish Place Hold button:
     
  3. OR, you can select several items and Add them to a Cart:
     
     and then a Pop-up for Your Cart will appear where you select the items you want to Place on Hold:
     
     and then verify or change the Pickup Location and Confirm the Holds:
     
  4. OR, you can Create a List and add items to it from multiple searches and search terms and then place any or all of the items in your public or private list on Hold:
     
     then after the List has been created and Stuff has been added to it, Open it:
     
     After opening your List, select the items you want to Place on Hold and go through the confirmation process illustrated above:
     
• Keyboard Users:  Several changes were made to ‘improve keyboard access‘ by improving how tabbing works in Koha.  This might make creating and editing patrons faster and more efficient, because you can Tab instead of using your mouse.  Test it and let us know!
• Improved Quick Search options in the OPAC – OK, this might be old news, but you can do a ‘quick search’ by ISBN and Call Number, along with Title, Author, Subject and Series:
  
• Bug 2126 – Fine balance errors fixed – Sometimes a patron with fines of $0.00 got a note of “fines are owed.” The problem was caused by how the program was round-off balances (remember in the movie Office Space where they write a program to gather (steal) all of those partial pennies? Same thing here, without the theft).
• Item Call Numbers displayed in OPAC search results next to owning library – Good?  Feedback wanted.  Until we can suppress the Library of Congress Call number from displaying,  we thought it would be good for the patrons to see the local call number next to their library’s name:
  
  We are going to create a mock up of how this information might be displayed better…maybe with more space or |’s or ::’s between the libraries.
• Patron Details screen changes – now calculates Totals for both Charges and Replacement Costs…
  
  …not just Replacement Costs:
  
• Bug 2870 – IMPORTANT change to Guarantor Fields in Child patron records and auto-population.
  Basically, do this:
  1. Create the Child Patron (From the Adult, select “Add a Child” or from Patrons, select “New > Child Patron”.
  2. Add the Name and Birthday.
  3. Set the Guarantor using “Set to Patron” feature.
  4. Add the barcode (and whatever else is REQUIRED). (Bare minimum)
  5. SAVE THE RECORD
  6. Go back and EDIT THE RECORD > Voila, the Adult’s contact information should appear in the child’s record.
  7. Make any edits or changes needed – for example, put in the child’s personal email address replace the parent’s ‘email (home)’ with the Child/Teen’s email address if they want notifications or change the phone number.
  8. RE-SAVE the RECORD to make sure all of that hard work is SAVED.
  • WARNING:  Anything you type in a field that is auto-populated when the Child is SET to the Adult will be overwritten by the Adult’s data when you FIRST SAVE the record.  If you Save the Record and THEN edit it, the changes will ‘stick.’
  • TEST IT > you’ll see what we’re talking about.
• Bug 2908 – Send List by E-mail (Updated in January)  In the OPAC, patrons can e-mail Carts and Public and Private Lists to themselves.  Add that to the new ‘multiple  holds’ feature and I think patrons will be Happy!

- Sharon