Syr-Update for May 5, 2009
Graham Fawcett
I've been making a bunch of small changes to Syrup over the past week,
and thought I would catch everyone up to speed on some of the new
features.
* I've added more 'Cancel/go back' links, hopefully in all the places
you all noticed they were missing. :-)
* When you browse for courses, only courses which you may enter will
be listed. (Previously, the results included all course sites,
including ones you couldn't access).
* I've enabled the option to let a course-site be 'world-visible':
that is, no login is required to enter the course site. I'm still
not sure this is a good idea, though, so caveat emptor.
* Resequencing items didn't work in Internet Explorer. This is now
fixed. Thanks Karen for reporting this.
* You can now self-register into an 'open course'. Previously, you
could browse for courses which were 'Open to all Reserves patrons'
or 'Open to the world' but you could not actually join them. This
meant that you would have to browse for those sites again the next
time you wanted to visit them. Now, you can self-join any open
course site, adding it to your My Courses list.
* The 'Add Physical Item' link is now named 'Add Physical or
Catalogued Electronic Item'. I know it's a crappy name. Our
catalogues include electronic resources, not just physical
things. If a search-result is for an electronic item, it will be
added to the course site as a "URL item" not a "Physical item". Of
course URL items are immediately available to students (subject to
resolver/proxy constraints).
To determine whether a MARC record is for an electronic item, I'm
using what I think is an Evergreen-specific predicate: if the record
has an 856$9 attribute, then the 856$u attribute is the URL for the
item. This could be adjusted for other institutions of course; we
just need a good, local this-is-an-electronic-resource test.
Please try this out and give feedback. I think it's a really cool
feature, and I hope you do too.
* I also improved the Unicode support in our Z39.50 record
viewer. (Our demo server is currently pointing at the Windsor/Leddy
catalogue, which is very ASCII; but trust me, Unicode works quite
well.)
The demo server is still at
http://kessler1.medialab.uwindsor.ca/reserves/
Note that the Z39.50 target for the demo is concat.ca, using the
Windsor/Leddy sub-catalogue.
Best,
Graham
Karen Foster
Hi Graham ~ thanks, this is great. I've been waiting for the 'Add
Physical or Catalogued Electronic Item' function to be up-and-running
before I show SYRUP to a broader group here.
So, that's what I started looking at today.
I want to add 'Freakonomics' to a course. When I search it through
SYRUP I see:
1–2 of 2 results.
but can only see 1 record (for the 1st ed.). How do I get the 2nd
record to show up on the screen.
When I search concat.ca I see Leddy also has the Rev. and expanded ed.
karen
Karen Foster
Collection Applications Support Specialist
Library and Learning Technologies
McMaster University Library
Hamilton, Ont. Canada
fos...@mcmaster.ca
(905) 525-9140 x21311
Graham Fawcett
I'm really glad you're trying this out!
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Karen Foster <fos...@mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>
> Hi Graham ~ thanks, this is great. I've been waiting for the 'Add
> Physical or Catalogued Electronic Item' function to be up-and-running
> before I show SYRUP to a broader group here.
> So, that's what I started looking at today.
>
> I want to add 'Freakonomics' to a course. When I search it through
> SYRUP I see:
> 1–2 of 2 results.
>
> but can only see 1 record (for the 1st ed.). How do I get the 2nd
> record to show up on the screen.
Right. I believe that's a bug in the Z39.50 implementation on the
Evergreen side. I remember discussing this with Dan Scott, and he was
aware of the issue. I'm not sure what the solution will be; I'll bring
it up again with Dan once the Evergreen installation stabilizes.
> When I search concat.ca I see Leddy also has the Rev. and expanded ed.
Yes. I suspect that is the second record, the one we can't see due to the bug.
You can paste the concat.ca title-detail URL into the search-box to
display the rogue item:
...but that's cheating. (A note on that: the URL that works is a
'www.concat.ca' not a 'windsor.concat.ca' URL. I need to force Syrup
to accept any *.concat.ca URL. But for now, it's "www.concat.ca" that
works.)
You may also notice some timeout errors when talking with the Z39.50
target. I will make a friendlier timeout-error page; the current one
is rather nasty.
Thanks,
Graham
Karen Foster
using what I think is an Evergreen-specific predicate: if the
record
has an 856$9 attribute, then the 856$u attribute is the URL for the
item. This could be adjusted for other institutions of course; we
just need a good, local this-is-an-electronic-resource test.
resource test' for us. I'm not seeing it in a sampling of Leddy
records either. I don't think 856 $9 is a real marc subfield. Just FYI
- what would work for us is a check for tag 007 position 1 = c +
position 2 = r.
karen
On May 6, 10:43 am, Graham Fawcett <graham.fawc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Karen,
>
> I'm really glad you're trying this out!
>
>
> > Hi Graham ~ thanks, this is great. I've been waiting for the 'Add
> > Physical or Catalogued Electronic Item' function to be up-and-running
> > before I show SYRUP to a broader group here.
> > So, that's what I started looking at today.
>
> > I want to add 'Freakonomics' to a course. When I search it through
> > SYRUP I see:
> > 1–2 of 2 results.
>
> > but can only see 1 record (for the 1st ed.). How do I get the 2nd
> > record to show up on the screen.
>
> Right. I believe that's a bug in the Z39.50 implementation on the
> Evergreen side. I remember discussing this with Dan Scott, and he was
> aware of the issue. I'm not sure what the solution will be; I'll bring
> it up again with Dan once the Evergreen installation stabilizes.
>
> > When I search concat.ca I see Leddy also has the Rev. and expanded ed.
>
> Yes. I suspect that is the second record, the one we can't see due to the bug.
>
> You can paste the concat.ca title-detail URL into the search-box to
> display the rogue item:
>
Karen Foster
>
> I'm really glad you're trying this out!
>
>
> > Hi Graham ~ thanks, this is great. I've been waiting for the 'Add
> > Physical or Catalogued Electronic Item' function to be up-and-running
> > before I show SYRUP to a broader group here.
> > So, that's what I started looking at today.
>
> > I want to add 'Freakonomics' to a course. When I search it through
> > SYRUP I see:
> > 1–2 of 2 results.
>
> > but can only see 1 record (for the 1st ed.). How do I get the 2nd
> > record to show up on the screen.
>
> Right. I believe that's a bug in the Z39.50 implementation on the
> Evergreen side. I remember discussing this with Dan Scott, and he was
> aware of the issue. I'm not sure what the solution will be; I'll bring
> it up again with Dan once the Evergreen installation stabilizes.
>
> > When I search concat.ca I see Leddy also has the Rev. and expanded ed.
>
> Yes. I suspect that is the second record, the one we can't see due to the bug.
The numbers represent metarecord grouping. If you go into the
advanced
search screen, you'll see "Group formats and editions" is turned on by
default. As the option label suggests, it collects DVDs, books, and
different editions of works together into a single search result at
the initial search results page. When you click on a grouped search
result, it then breaks the formats and editions into a second
disambiguation page.
Is this why I'm only getting the one Freakonomics record through
SYRUP?
just wondering, karen
> http://www.concat.ca/opac/en-CA/skin/uwin/xml/rdetail.xml?r=2117685&t...
Dan Scott
>> > When I search concat.ca I see Leddy also has the Rev. and expanded ed.
>>
>> Yes. I suspect that is the second record, the one we can't see due to the bug.
>
> From conifer-discuss:
> The numbers represent metarecord grouping. If you go into the
> advanced
> search screen, you'll see "Group formats and editions" is turned on by
> default. As the option label suggests, it collects DVDs, books, and
> different editions of works together into a single search result at
> the initial search results page. When you click on a grouped search
> result, it then breaks the formats and editions into a second
> disambiguation page.
>
> Is this why I'm only getting the one Freakonomics record through
> SYRUP?
No, this is the off-by-one error in the Z39.50 server. You can't
retrieve the last record in a Z39.50 result set.
--
Dan Scott
Laurentian University
Dan Scott
>
> Thanks Graham ~ just another little FYI thing - re:
> To determine whether a MARC record is for an electronic item, I'm
> using what I think is an Evergreen-specific predicate: if the
> record
> has an 856$9 attribute, then the 856$u attribute is the URL for the
> item. This could be adjusted for other institutions of course; we
> just need a good, local this-is-an-electronic-resource test.
>
> 856$9 ? that certainly wouldn't be the best 'this-is-an-electronic-
> resource test' for us. I'm not seeing it in a sampling of Leddy
> records either. I don't think 856 $9 is a real marc subfield. Just FYI
> - what would work for us is a check for tag 007 position 1 = c +
> position 2 = r.
856$9 will be the best test for proxied electronic resources if you
run Evergreen.
Graham Fawcett
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Dan Scott <den...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is this why I'm only getting the one Freakonomics record through
>> SYRUP?
>
> No, this is the off-by-one error in the Z39.50 server. You can't
> retrieve the last record in a Z39.50 result set.
While on the topic, it looks like there's a simple fix for this in
Z3950.pm, line 360: just remove the " - 1". If there is a corner-case
where an overflow is possible, the try/catch block in the loop ought
to handle it.
I'm a Perl novice, though, so I could be wrong.
Best,
Graham
Dan Scott
Would that it were that simple :)
Z3950.pm is used only for emulating Z39.50 searches within the staff
client Z39.50 client; the Z39.50 server is actually simple2zoom
running on top of the Evergreen SRU service. The SRU service seems to
return the last result just fine, so right now our thinking is that
the bug lies in simple2zoom.
Graham Fawcett
I knew it couldn't possibly be that simple, but I couldn't resist asking. :-)
Maybe you could have SRU return N+1 results for all queries. Double up
the last one. ;-)
Best,
Graham
Dan Scott
Ooh, that's right up my quick'n'dirty alley. I just might do that
horrible thing, to make ISBN / ISSN searches work loads better.
You're evil, Mr. Fawcett... evil, and I like it.
Karen Foster
URLs as copies thing?
kf
>
> --
> Dan Scott
> Laurentian University
>
> >
Dan Scott
>
> On Thu, 7 May 2009 12:00:13 -0400
> Dan Scott <den...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 2009/5/6 Karen Foster <fos...@mcmaster.ca>:
>> >
>> > Thanks Graham ~ just another little FYI thing - re:
>> > To determine whether a MARC record is for an electronic item, I'm
>> > using what I think is an Evergreen-specific predicate: if the
>> > record
>> > has an 856$9 attribute, then the 856$u attribute is the URL for
>> the
>> > item. This could be adjusted for other institutions of course; we
>> > just need a good, local this-is-an-electronic-resource test.
>> >
>> > 856$9 ? that certainly wouldn't be the best 'this-is-an-electronic-
>> > resource test' for us. I'm not seeing it in a sampling of Leddy
>> > records either. I don't think 856 $9 is a real marc subfield. Just
>> FYI
>> > - what would work for us is a check for tag 007 position 1 = c +
>> > position 2 = r.
>>
>> 856$9 will be the best test for proxied electronic resources if you
>> run Evergreen.
>
> Ah Ha! it's an Evergreen specific subfield? Is it part of the treat
> URLs as copies thing?
Indeed it is (a "yes" to both questions).