I noticed that some of my messages were still perceived as spam. Well, I suppose it is one of the ills of having the same e-mail address for almost 20 years. As my previous message received no comments, I re-submit it somewhat edited, hoping to find out if what I'm after is already supported, or if I need to create an enhancement suggestion/request:
I want to comment on a number of issues that I've encountered as it regards call numbers in koha, hoping that they may be of interest to other users as well. Q1) I wonder if there is a way to have complex expressions in the itemcallnumber system preference? For example, I would prefer having call numbers formatted as "999.99 Aut YYYY" where 999.99 are the first five digits of DDC code properly formatted, Aut are the first three characters of the soundex of main Author name and YYYY is the copyright year. Does koha provide for such functionality? While I can update the items table once, using something like the following query, this is not reflected nor in the search results of existing biblios, nor in newly created item records' call numbers. UPDATE items it LEFT JOIN biblioitems on (it.biblioitemnumber=biblioitems.biblioitemnumber) LEFT JOIN biblio on (biblioitems.biblionumber=biblio.biblionumber) SET it.itemcallnumber = CONCAT ( LEFT(LTRIM(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(LTRIM(it.itemcallnumber), '''', '' ), ' ', '' ), '/', '' ), '_', '' ), '.', '' )), 3), '.', SUBSTRING(LTRIM(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(LTRIM(it.itemcallnum ber), '''', '' ), ' ', '' ), '/', '' ), '_', '' ), '.', '' )), 4, 2), ' ', LEFT(LTRIM(RTRIM(SOUNDEX(biblio.author))), 3), ' ', CONVERT(biblio.copyrightdate, CHAR(4)) ) ; I know that the statement above needs to be improved in order to properly handle nulls, it was created only as a proof of concept, and I'm not familiar with the MySQL dialect. Q2) How may I modify itemcallnumber system preference so that it would use the 092ab entry if filled, otherwise use 082ab? Q3) I have kept the "082ab" default value (in MARC21) and the items' call numbers have been created accordingly. If I go and modify by hand an item's "Full call number" to the desired value, for example "949 Par 2005" in place of "949", the change is reflected in SQL reports containing items.itemcallnumber. However, when I perform an Advanced search, and select sorting by Call Number, the items' modified call numbers are not used. As I am in ver.3.08.16.000, I understand that item information (including call numbers) are supposed to be no longer stored in biblios, but only in items. Indeed, a report with "select * from biblio;" shows no call number information. Furthermore, in a "select * from biblioitems;" cn_class, cn_item, cn_suffix, cn_sort appear to be empty, except for the sole biblio having 942hm filled. Therefore, my question is: in Advanced search, sorting by Call Number means what exactly; Thank you for your time and patience! Kind Regards, Manos _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
