Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Mobile Version of the Evergreen OPAC

[Dan Scott]

Hi Amy:

One of the nice things about the TPAC is that it has exactly the same HTML
in mobile as in the desktop version.

The only difference is in the CSS, which changes how things are displayed
(and in the case of status, whether it is displayed), by checking the
screen width.

In this case, if you remove the following lines from style.css, the status
will be displayed on a mobile screen:

.result_holdings_table td:nth-child(4) {
display: none;
}

On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 4:19 PM Amy Terlaga  wrote:

> Hi all--
>
> Does anyone know if there is any development work afoot for the mobile
> version of the OPAC?   The reason I ask - one of our library directors
> would love to see status on the search results page,  instead of having to
> click into each record.
>
> Thanks,
> Amy
> --
> +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
> Amy Terlaga
> Director of Member Services
> Bibliomation, Inc.
> 24 Wooster Avenue
> Waterbury, CT  06708
> (203)577-4070 x101
> terl...@biblio.org
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Anyone willing to answer some general questions about Evergreen ILS?

[Dan Scott]

I'm willing to provide answers. It might make sense to just post your
questions to the mailing list, that way the people who are most familiar
with particular aspects of Evergreen can answer those questions--for
example, there might be libraries that use the built-in self-check
functionality who can answer questions about that, while some of the
developers can provide detailed answers about API compatibility, etc

On Sun, Feb 17, 2019 at 9:59 AM Nita Dickerson 
wrote:

> Hello,
> I am an MLIS student at San Jose State University.  This term I am
> taking an Intro to Library Automation Systems class.  One of my assignments
> asks me to do an evaluation of a vendor, I chose Evergreen.
> Your "Frequently Anticipated Questions" page gives some good
> information but wondering if there is someone I can talk with to fill in
> some of the blanks.
>
> Thanks for responding,
> Nita Dickerson
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Chrome OS in consortia?

[Dan Scott]

Our university library has been using Chromebooks for its quick lookup
catalogue stations for several years now.

They're cheap, easy to use, and easy to centrally administer. You can set
them up so that they automatically begin a new session after a certain
period of time, protecting those who forget to close their session.

We haven't deployed Chromebooks for use as primary workstations--in a
university environment there is still a fair bit of specialized software we
need to provide--but we do loan Chromebooks (and only Chromebooks) to
patrons. And again, compared to trying to keep Windows machines up to date,
it's been a breeze. And they meet the vast majority of the needs of our
users: searching databases, streaming video, sending email.

On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 9:34 AM John Merriam  wrote:

> Hello.  This isn't really Evergreen related but we are evaluating Chrome
> OS (Chrome books/boxes) as an alternative option to offer to our
> libraries due to the issues Microsoft has created in Windows 10 (mostly
> surrounding the mandatory feature updates).
>
> Does anyone have experience deploying Chrome OS in a consortium or large
> library system?
>
> If so, what issues have you run into?
>
> If we decide to move forward with a Chrome OS option we would likely be
> recommending it only for patron facing machines.  We assume Chrome OS
> probably wouldn't be a good fit for staff machines.
>
> Thank you!
>
> --
>
> John Merriam
> Evergreen Systems Specialist
> Bibliomation, Inc.
> 24 Wooster Ave.
> Waterbury, CT 06708
> 203-577-4070 x108
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Course Reserves

[Dan Scott]

At Laurentian, we're using https://github.com/dbs/course-reserves (which
you can see in action at https://biblio.laurentian.ca/reserves/ ) which we
developed and released under the very permissive 3-clause BSD license.

It's based on the PHP app that Kevin Beswick created for us 7 years ago
that simply associates a bookbag with a course. A few years ago, Victoria
Lacroix rewrote the app in Python (using Flask and a PostgreSQL backend),
made it connect to our LDAP system for authentication, and enabled full
multilingual support. There's an admin interface at
https://biblio.laurentian.ca/reserves/en/admin/ that allows authenticated
users to add & edit reserves (just course code, prof name, and bookbag ID),
or delete reserves.

We have our technicians change the call number to a 2 or 3 digit number to
make it easy to ask for an item, and change the location to "Reserve Desk".

It would be pretty easy to swap out the LDAP authentication backend with
built-in or other standard authentication systems; probably a bit harder to
hook it into Evergreen.



On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 11:07 AM, Yamil Suarez  wrote:

>
> At Berklee we created a custom written PHP/MySQl/Apache course reserve
> platform that would connect to our older Horizon ILS and it used barcodes
> extensively. When we migrated to Evergreen in 2012 we were able to tweak
> the code to connect to the Evergreen DB. Also, since the barcodes did not
> change we were able to more easily continue using the tool. Though now the
> code is old and could use security patches and new features.
>
> Sadly the code was not written by me, and don't think it is in a state
> that could be shared easily with others to quickly rebuild it for their own
> use. Though I can share the link, and if I get permission, the code or
> screenshots to use as inspiration.
>
> Later,
> Yamil
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
>
> Yamil Suarez, MCS
> Associate Director of Library Systems & Web Development
>
> Stan Getz Library
> Berklee College of Music
> 1140 Boylston St
> 
> Boston, MA 02215
> 
>
> ysua...@berklee.edu
> 617-747-2617
>
> pronouns: he/his/him
>
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 12:53 PM, Jane Sandberg 
> wrote:
>
>> At LBCC, we use the same 9XX process as Sage, but we don't have a
>> search widget.  We would be pretty interested in being able to Browse
>> by Instructor or Course.  Our students tend to be able to find their
>> course or instructor on a list more successfully than trying to
>> remember the official name of the course or instructor. :-)
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 9:41 AM, Beth Longwell  wrote:
>> > In the Sage Library System we have indexed a couple 9xx fields in the
>> bib
>> > record to represent course number and course professor. We then made a
>> > search widget that colleges can put on their web site to search course
>> > reserves. We also made a menu option for searching course reserves on
>> the
>> > college's custom TPAC page.
>> >
>> > Beth Longwell
>> > Systems Manager
>> > Sage Library System
>> >
>> > On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 10:09 AM, Elizabeth Thomsen 
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> At the Student Success Interest Group meeting at the recent Evergreen
>> >> Conference, there was a discussion on how academic libraries are
>> handling
>> >> course reserves, and Course Reserves came up high on the priority list
>> on
>> >> this  Report from the Future of Evergreen: Brainstorming and
>> Strategizing
>> >> Session.
>> >>
>> >> We're adding this topic to the agenda for the Student Success Working
>> >> Group meeting coming up on Monday, and it would be helpful if academic
>> >> libraries could describe how they are currently handling course
>> reserves.
>> >> Are you using the Syrup system?  What do you like about it, and what
>> would
>> >> you like to see improved?  Or are you using bookbags or buckets or a
>> >> homegrown solution for managing lists for each course?  Or maybe course
>> >> reserves are all electronic resources at your institution?
>> >>
>> >> Please share your thoughts and experiences here on the list!  Thanks!
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Elizabeth B. Thomsen
>> >> Member Services Manager
>> >> NOBLE: North of Boston Library Exchange
>> >> Danvers, Mass.
>> >> www.noblenet.org
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jane Sandberg
>> Electronic Resources Librarian
>> Linn-Benton Community College
>> sand...@linnbenton.edu / 541-917-4655
>> Pronouns: she/her/hers
>>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] HTML entities in MARC Record editor

[Dan Scott]

Ah, of course you're right that the & will get escaped as & in the
MARCXML in biblio.record_entry.marc. But then when it's displayed in the
catalogue or if you load it back up in the editor, you should just see "&"
again.

However, I just tested putting "This & that" into a 520 field in our
2.12 system and noticed that the displayed data is "This & that" -- meaning
it is *not* getting escaped. Which is a Very Bad Thing. (Bug forthcoming).

As for your free Overdrive records, yes, I regularly spend time fixing mass
corruption of records that are sourced from OCLC, where someone has
almost-but-not-quite managed to flesh out the table of contents & summary
fields correctly. There is some pretty heinous data out there :)

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 3:29 PM, Josh Stompro 
wrote:

> Hello Dan,
>
>
>
> We are still on 2.10 using the XUL client, so maybe the 520 display
> anomaly has been fixed in a later version.  I’ll make a note to check back
> once we are on a more modern version.
>
>
>
> Would it be accurate to say that characters like & in the marc editor are
> encoded as html entities in the biblio.record_entry.marc since they are
> stored as marc xml?
>
>
>
> The record that I was looking at was one of the free overdrive records,
> which are very very very rough, so it wouldn’t surprise me that they are
> grabbing the 520 from a web page and not being very careful with encoding.
> I just looked for occurrences of ‘&amp’ and there are only 344 of them
> and all but 3 are from the free overdrive records.  There are also quite a
> few instances(6000) of — (em dash), again they are all the free
> overdrive records.  I guess we get what we pay for.
>
>
>
> I’m tempted to just use regexp_replace against biblio.record_entry to try
> and clean these up, like the example here: https://wiki.evergreen-ils.
> org/doku.php?id=scratchpad:random_magic_spells#how_to_
> prune_a_tag_under_the_hood
>
>
>
> Josh Stompro - LARL IT Director
>
>
>
> *From:* Open-ils-general [mailto:open-ils-general-
> boun...@list.georgialibraries.org] *On Behalf Of *Dan Scott
> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 20, 2018 4:23 PM
> *To:* Evergreen Discussion Group  georgialibraries.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] HTML entities in MARC Record editor
>
>
>
> Hi Josh:
>
> Quick question: XUL or web staff client? And version?
>
>
>
> In theory, what you see is what you should get - MARC has no idea what
> HTML entities are, so "&" in the editor should be displayed as "&"
> (properly escaped, of course) in the catalogue.
>
> If you see & in the biblio.record_entry.marc, it may be the result
> of corrupted catalogue enrichment efforts (e.g. grabbing the summary for a
> book from a website via a script with a bug), and thus should just be
> corrected directly to "&". Unless it's a deliberately torturous book title
> like "Escaping  & other Secure Web Practices" :)
>
> If & in the MARC shows up as just & in the 520 catalogue output, it
> sounds like there might be a bug for us to track down...
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dan
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 9:50 PM, Josh Stompro 
> wrote:
>
> Hello, could someone give me some pointers in regards to html entities in
> marc data?  Sometimes I see & used in 490a data and displayed as &
> in the evergreen marc editor, and in the catalog it is displayed as &
> and not as &.
>
>
>
> We also see things like a 520 that contains & but it does get
> displayed as & in the catalog?
>
>
>
> And when I look at the biblio.record_entry.marc It looks like & in the
> editor gets encoded as &, so is this a double encoding error?
> Should I ever see html entities when looking at marc data in the editor?
>
>
>
> If those should be cleaned up, anyone have any magic spells/queries for
> doing so?
>
> Thanks
>
> Josh
>
>
>
> Lake Agassiz Regional Library - Moorhead MN larl.org
>
> Josh Stompro | Office 218.233.3757 EXT-139 <(218)%20233-3757>
>
> LARL IT Director | Cell 218.790.2110 <(218)%20790-2110>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] HTML entities in MARC Record editor

[Dan Scott]

Hi Josh:

Quick question: XUL or web staff client? And version?

In theory, what you see is what you should get - MARC has no idea what HTML
entities are, so "&" in the editor should be displayed as "&"
(properly escaped, of course) in the catalogue.

If you see & in the biblio.record_entry.marc, it may be the result
of corrupted catalogue enrichment efforts (e.g. grabbing the summary for a
book from a website via a script with a bug), and thus should just be
corrected directly to "&". Unless it's a deliberately torturous book title
like "Escaping  & other Secure Web Practices" :)

If & in the MARC shows up as just & in the 520 catalogue output, it
sounds like there might be a bug for us to track down...

Thanks,
Dan

On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 9:50 PM, Josh Stompro 
wrote:

> Hello, could someone give me some pointers in regards to html entities in
> marc data?  Sometimes I see & used in 490a data and displayed as &
> in the evergreen marc editor, and in the catalog it is displayed as &
> and not as &.
>
>
>
> We also see things like a 520 that contains & but it does get
> displayed as & in the catalog?
>
>
>
> And when I look at the biblio.record_entry.marc It looks like & in the
> editor gets encoded as &, so is this a double encoding error?
> Should I ever see html entities when looking at marc data in the editor?
>
>
>
> If those should be cleaned up, anyone have any magic spells/queries for
> doing so?
>
> Thanks
>
> Josh
>
>
>
> Lake Agassiz Regional Library - Moorhead MN larl.org
>
> Josh Stompro | Office 218.233.3757 EXT-139 <(218)%20233-3757>
>
> LARL IT Director | Cell 218.790.2110 <(218)%20790-2110>
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Web Client on IOS

[Dan Scott]

I'll add this to the bug, but the underlying reason is that on iOS all
browsers are forced to use the Safari browser's engine; this means that any
of the standards-based enhancements that Firefox and Chrome bring to other
platforms, such as Service Workers (used in the Web Staff Client for
offline transaction support etc), won't work on iOS until Apple updates
Safari to support those standards as well.

In short: to make the web staff client work on iOS in even a limited
fashion, the Evergreen developers will have to add Safari to the supported
web browser list. Requiring developers to have an iOS device to even start
debugging this particular issue is a barrier for some of us.

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 10:19 AM, Tim Spindler  wrote:

> FYI, I just opened a bug on this.
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1746020
>
> On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 10:08 AM, Jason Stephenson 
> wrote:
>
>> On 01/29/2018 09:18 AM, scott.tho...@sparkpa.org wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> >Has anyone had any luck getting the Web Client to work on an iOS
>> > device? I tried both the Firefox and Chrome apps. The menus appear, but
>> > no login is generated. Any insights would be appreciated.
>>
>> The short answer is no. It's not working on an iPhone here.
>>
>> When you go to the login page, it is pretty much blank. No box to enter
>> credentials. This is happening with Evergreen 3.0.3.
>>
>> I recommend opening a bug on Launchpad.
>>
>> Jason
>>
>> >
>> > Thank you,
>> > Scott
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Scott Thomas
>> >
>> > Executive Director
>> >
>> > *PaILS / SPARK*
>> >
>> > (717) 873-9461
>> >
>> > scott.tho...@sparkpa.org 
>> >
>> > Stay informed! Join the SPARK-User Email List:
>> >
>> > https://mail.palibrary.org/mailman/listinfo/spark-users
>> >
>> > Description: Description: Training | SPARK – Pennsylvania's Statewide
>> > Library System 
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Tim Spindler
> tjspind...@gmail.com
>
> *P**   Go Green - **Save a tree! Please don't print this e-mail unless
> it's really necessary.*
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Holds in the public catalog

[Dan Scott]

Hi Jennifer:

I think so. The intention of the ctx.holds_block.enabled setting is to only
enable the "Place Hold" button for a given record if none of the items
associated with that record are available (usually because they are all
checked out, or on order).

This is how many academic libraries (such as ours) operate, which is why
Art Rhyno at Conifer invested the effort in developing the setting (and
others improved it after). It's not perfect, but it mostly works.

Per the 5.5 year-old(!) commit message:

commit 8151ed9d949a6613c1bf40d605c59f2d07efd06c
Author: Art Rhyno 
Date:   Fri Jul 27 11:39:14 2012 -0400

Block "Place Hold" link in TPAC if item is available

Suppress the display of the "Place Hold" link based on whether an item
is available. This is set as a preference in config.tt2. Some sites
may want the ability to place holds regardless of availability.

Signed-off-by: Art Rhyno 
Signed-off-by: Dan Scott 

On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 4:12 PM, Walz, Jennifer  wrote:

> Dan,
>
>
>
> Is this the real fix? The link will then go away on every screen?
>
>
>
> That would be wonderful!
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> Jennifer
>
>
>
> *From:* Open-ils-general [mailto:open-ils-general-
> boun...@list.georgialibraries.org] *On Behalf Of *Dan Scott
> *Sent:* Wednesday, January 10, 2018 2:09 PM
> *To:* Evergreen Discussion Group
> *Subject:* Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Holds in the public catalog
>
>
>
> I think you want to try "ctx.holds_block.enabled = 'true';" in config.tt2
> in your public catalogue configuration file.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 12:31 PM, Walz, Jennifer 
> wrote:
>
> All –
>
>
>
>   IS there a way to prevent the “place a hold” link from showing up in the
> public catalog, everywhere??   We want it so ONLY show up on items that
> fill our hold requirement – those items that are checked out or NOT
> available.
>
>
>
>   We have set the proper condition in the Library Settings to not have
> holds for available items, but the link still shows up in the public
> catalog for EVERYTHING.   Can it be made to go away?  What are the steps to
> make this happen?
>
>
>
>   Right now it is so confusing to our users and they keep trying to “place
> a hold” on items that will never be holdable.It is extremely annoying.
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> Jennifer
>
> --
> Jennifer Walz, MLS - Head of ILS confusion
> Kinlaw Library -  *Asbury University*
> One Macklem Drive, Wilmore, KY 40390
> 859-858-3511 ext. 2269 <(859)%20858-3511>
> jlw...@asbury.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Holds in the public catalog

[Dan Scott]

I think you want to try "ctx.holds_block.enabled = 'true';" in config.tt2
in your public catalogue configuration file.

On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 12:31 PM, Walz, Jennifer  wrote:

> All –
>
>
>
>   IS there a way to prevent the “place a hold” link from showing up in the
> public catalog, everywhere??   We want it so ONLY show up on items that
> fill our hold requirement – those items that are checked out or NOT
> available.
>
>
>
>   We have set the proper condition in the Library Settings to not have
> holds for available items, but the link still shows up in the public
> catalog for EVERYTHING.   Can it be made to go away?  What are the steps to
> make this happen?
>
>
>
>   Right now it is so confusing to our users and they keep trying to “place
> a hold” on items that will never be holdable.It is extremely annoying.
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> Jennifer
>
> --
> Jennifer Walz, MLS - Head of ILS confusion
> Kinlaw Library -  *Asbury University*
> One Macklem Drive, Wilmore, KY 40390
> 859-858-3511 ext. 2269 <(859)%20858-3511>
> jlw...@asbury.edu
>
>
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Some help setting up.

[Dan Scott]

Bit of a wild guess, but Apache needs to be started or restarted *after*
the opensrf services.

On Nov 6, 2017 2:38 AM, "Chazya Sinkamba" 
wrote:

Hello,

So I set up an evergreen server following the instructions here:
http://docs.evergreen-ils.org/2.11/ some months back and loaded sample data
(concerto). I got back to work on it today, and when I use the search by
database ID option, I get the internal server error on my screen. I have
confirmed the ID does exist in the database. Anyone else ever experienced
this, or has a remedy for it? The 3 lines below appeared in the logs at the
time I was searching:



Nov  6 08:52:15 ubuntu-evergreen root: 10.5.1.84 - - [06/Nov/2017:08:50:05
+0200] "GET 
/eg/opac/results?blimit=10;qtype=title;locg=1;fi%3Ahas_browse_entry=631%2C31
HTTP/1.1" 500 982

Nov  6 08:53:10 ubuntu-evergreen apache2[13620]: [perl:warn] [pid 13620]
[client 10.5.1.84:62785] egweb: template error: undef error - Can't use an
undefined value as an ARRAY reference at /usr/local/share/perl/5.22.1/
OpenILS/WWW/EGCatLoader/Util.pm line 102.\n

Nov  6 08:53:10 ubuntu-evergreen root: 10.5.1.84 - - [06/Nov/2017:08:52:09
+0200] "GET /eg/opac/record/100 HTTP/1.1" 500 2552



Searching the catalog won’t work either as when I click on a title, the
page takes an unbelievable amount of time to load, then brings up the
search screen as in the attached screenshot.

Some help will be appreciated.

Regards







*Chazya Sinkamba, **Dip AME, BIT(c)*

Programmer Associate

 [image: Description: Description: Description: C:\Program Files\Common
Files\Microsoft Shared\Stationery\header.png]

chazya.sinkamba[at]northrise.net | m: +260 964 350 487 | p: +260 212 622
195 | f: +260 212 622 198



*www.northriseuniversity.com* * | *
*www.northrise.org* [image: Description:
cid:image002.gif@01D0A90D.9BC8C700]
  [image:
Description: cid:image003.gif@01D0A90D.9BC8C700]
  [image: Description:
cid:image004.jpg@01D0A90D.9BC8C700] 

*Main Campus: 30029 Kitwe-Ndola Dual Carriage Highway • P.O. Box 240271 •
Ndola • Zambia*

*Town Campus: Buteko Avenue • Caravelle House • P.O. Box 240271 • Ndola •
Zambia*

*Solwezi Campus: Mary Begg Kansanshi Mine Clinic • Mushitala • **P.O. Box
110274 **• Solwezi • Zambia*

This message is confidential. It may also be privileged or otherwise
protected by work product immunity or other legal rules. If you have
received it by mistake, please let us know by e-mail reply and delete it
from your system; you may not copy this message or disclose its contents to
anyone. The integrity and security of this message cannot be guaranteed on
the Internet.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] OpenSRF 2.5.1 released

[Dan Scott]

Awesome, thanks!

On Sep 12, 2017 9:04 AM, "Galen Charlton"  wrote:

> Hi Dan,
>
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 8:44 AM, Dan Scott  wrote:
> > Does upgrading OpenSRF from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1 just require a restart of
> > Evergreen to pick up the changes via the shared libraries, or is a
> recompile
> > of Evergreen required as well?
>
> Restarting Evergreen services should be sufficient.
>
> Regards,
>
> Galen
> --
> Galen Charlton
> Infrastructure and Added Services Manager
> Equinox Open Library Initiative
> phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
> email:  g...@equinoxinitiative.org
> web:  https://equinoxInitiative.org
> direct: +1 770-709-5581
> cell:   +1 404-984-4366
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] OpenSRF 2.5.1 released

[Dan Scott]

Does upgrading OpenSRF from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1 just require a restart of
Evergreen to pick up the changes via the shared libraries, or is a
recompile of Evergreen required as well?

On Sep 11, 2017 5:30 PM, "Galen Charlton"  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> OpenSRF 2.5.1 is now available. 2.5.1 is a major bugfix release that
> resolves a problem wherein messages could sometimes get dropped.  All
> users of 2.5.0, including folks testing the Evergreen 3.0 beta
> release, are advised to upgrade to 2.5.1 as soon as possible.
>
> For additional information, please see the full release announcement at
>
> https://evergreen-ils.org/opensrf-2-5-1-released/
>
> Regards,
>
> Galen
> --
> Galen Charlton
> Infrastructure and Added Services Manager
> Equinox Open Library Initiative
> phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
> email:  g...@equinoxinitiative.org
> web:  https://equinoxInitiative.org
> direct: +1 770-709-5581
> cell:   +1 404-984-4366
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Z39.50 import in 2.12.4 throws errors

[Dan Scott]

Hi Linda:

I have also added this comment to bug $ 1713324 - after our upgrade to
2.12.4 from 2.10, which included a reinstall on Ubuntu 16.04 and a new
ejabberd configuration, we had failures when retrieving Z39.50 searches
with lots of records in the result set.

It looks like that problem was due to bug# 1709710
 "Default ejabberd max_stanza_size
can be exceeded when chunking (MARC)XML-heavy responses". Can you check on
your max_stanza_size and see if increasing that helps resolve the problems
you're seeing? That will help confirm that bug.

On Sun, Aug 27, 2017 at 9:09 AM, Linda Jansova  wrote:

> An update on my previous post:
>
> It may be a different issue as we have tested Z39.50 search behavior in
> multiple Evergreen versions - full description has been reported as a
> separate bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1713324. The last
> version where the queries have been okay seems to be 2.12.1 (tested at
> http://demo.evergreencatalog.com/eg/staff/, i.e. via web client).
>
> To conduct the tests we have been using stock Library of Congress Z39.50
> server settings.
>
> Maybe some of the changes introduced in 2.12.2 are the reason for this?
> Such as a fix that allows boolean fields to be recognized in queries to the
> Z39.50 server?
>
> The error appears when the result set is a bit large, it looks like a
> timeout issue.
>
> Linda
> On 08/18/2017 08:57 AM, Linda Jansova wrote:
>
> I have discovered that it is probably an older issue that still persists:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1271559... Has anybody come up
> with a working solution to this?
>
> Linda
>
> On 08/18/2017 08:02 AM, Linda Jansova wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> We are on 2.12.4 and have been experiencing errors when trying to import
> records using various fields such as title or author. From the osrfsys.log
> it is clear that the records are actually found but they fail to come up on
> the (either desktop or web client) screen.
>
> The error looks like this:
>
> Network or server failure.  Please check your Internet connection to
> 212.osvobozena-knihovna.cz and choose Retry Network.  If you need to
> enter Offline Mode, choose Ignore Errors in this and subsequent dialogs.
> If you believe this error is due to a bug in Evergreen and not network
> problems, please contact your help desk or friendly Evergreen
> administrators, and give them this information:
> method=open-ils.search.z3950.search_class
> params=["f7f979fe1172f27a598fd8d03feb530d",{"service_array":["NKC"],"
> username_array":[""],"password_array":[""],"limit":
> 10,"offset":0,"search":{"author":"truhlik"},"service":[
> "NKC"],"username":[""],"password":[""]}]
> THROWN:
> null
> STATUS:
>
> We are sure that there is no network failure (and we have been
> experiencing these issues from two separate Evergreen installations).
>
> Any ideas what may be wrong?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Linda
>
>
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Spine & pocket labels - Evergreen 2.11

[Dan Scott]

Hi Dan!

There are "Spine and pocket label font" settings in the Library Settings
Editor that _should_ enable you to set the policies for your library's
labels, per http://docs.evergreen-ils.org/2.11/_settings_overview.html, and
which will also hopefully be carried over into the implementation in the
Web Staff Client.

Hope this helps,
(yet another) Dan

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 1:31 PM, Daniel Solove  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> We are going live on Evergreen 2.11 this coming October.  I've been able
> to test print spine & pocket labels with our existing Zebra TLP 2844-Z on a
> 2.11 test server.  I had to make some adjustments in the spine labels
> settings under Action for selected item, print spine label, and also in the
> Print Settings Editor.
>
> The labels now look good except the only font that prints is a default
> Courier type font.  I only see the option to change the font size and not
> the font itself.  I'm using Windows 10.  Do I need to do something with the
> Alternate Print Strategy w/ Javascript option to accomplish this or
> something else that would let me change the font?
>
> Thanks,
> Dan
>
>
> --
>
> *​Daniel Solove
> Head of Acquisitions, Library Systems, & Technology
> Bethlehem Area Public Library*
> 11 W. Church St.
> Bethlehem, PA 18018610-867-3761, x216 <(610)%20867-3761>
> Fax – 610-867-2767 <(610)%20867-2767>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Linking from OCLC WorldCat to Evergreen

[Dan Scott]

Ah, I should also say, under the OCLC number options, we have:

"Add leading zeros to the OCLC Number search term": Yes
"Add the following custom prefix to all OCLC numbers": ocolc%20

This is based on how we've normalized the OCLC numbers in our system
(2.10), which I _think_ is the stock Evergreen configuration. Your mileage
may vary, though!

On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 10:41 AM, Dan Scott  wrote:

> Hi Irene:
>
> Here's what we use (taken from our FirstSearch configuration information,
> as login changes to the WorldCat Registry late last year seem to have
> removed my ability to access the info that way...)
>
> ISBN: https://example.org/eg/opac/results?qtype=identifier%7Cisbn&query=
> ISSN: https://example.org/eg/opac/results?qtype=identifier%7Cissn&query=
> OCLC number: https://example.org/eg/opac/results?qtype=identifier%
> 7Cscn&query=
>
> Replace example.org with your hostname, of course. You can also add put
> "loc=123&" in front of qtype if you want to restrict the searches to a
> particular system or branch in your consortium, if the hostname isn't set
> to do that automatically for you.
>
> Hope this helps!
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 9:44 AM, Patrick, Irene 
> wrote:
>
>> We have just migrated to Evergreen.  I am investigating how to set up
>> linking from OCLC to our new Evergreen catalog.  Has anyone done this?  Can
>> you tell me what the Evergreen links for ISBN, ISSN, and OCLC number should
>> look like?
>>
>>
>>
>> Also, in Worldcat Registry, the only option for Evergreen under “Library
>> System Used” is “Evergreen-Pines.”  Should we choose that option even if we
>> are not a Pines library, or should we choose “Other” instead?
>>
>>
>>
>> If anyone has already set this up, I would appreciate some guidance.
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>>
>> *Irene Patrick*
>> Library & Information Management Systems Librarian
>> Government & Heritage Library
>>
>> State Library of North Carolina
>>
>> North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
>>
>>
>>
>> (919) 807-7413   office
>>
>> (919) 733-1843   fax
>> irene.patr...@ncdcr.gov
>>
>>
>> 109 East Jones St.
>>
>> 4640 Mail Service Center
>> Raleigh, NC 27699-4600
>>
>> [image: cid:image004.png@01D0C310.30B97D20]
>> 
>> ___
>> *Opinions expressed in this message may not represent the policy of my
>> agency.  E-mail correspondence *
>> *to and from this address may be subject to the North Carolina Public
>> Records Law "NCGS.Ch.132" and *
>> *may be disclosed to third parties by an authorized state official.*
>>
>> *___*
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Linking from OCLC WorldCat to Evergreen

[Dan Scott]

Hi Irene:

Here's what we use (taken from our FirstSearch configuration information,
as login changes to the WorldCat Registry late last year seem to have
removed my ability to access the info that way...)

ISBN: https://example.org/eg/opac/results?qtype=identifier%7Cisbn&query=
ISSN: https://example.org/eg/opac/results?qtype=identifier%7Cissn&query=
OCLC number:
https://example.org/eg/opac/results?qtype=identifier%7Cscn&query=

Replace example.org with your hostname, of course. You can also add put
"loc=123&" in front of qtype if you want to restrict the searches to a
particular system or branch in your consortium, if the hostname isn't set
to do that automatically for you.

Hope this helps!


On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 9:44 AM, Patrick, Irene 
wrote:

> We have just migrated to Evergreen.  I am investigating how to set up
> linking from OCLC to our new Evergreen catalog.  Has anyone done this?  Can
> you tell me what the Evergreen links for ISBN, ISSN, and OCLC number should
> look like?
>
>
>
> Also, in Worldcat Registry, the only option for Evergreen under “Library
> System Used” is “Evergreen-Pines.”  Should we choose that option even if we
> are not a Pines library, or should we choose “Other” instead?
>
>
>
> If anyone has already set this up, I would appreciate some guidance.
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> *Irene Patrick*
> Library & Information Management Systems Librarian
> Government & Heritage Library
>
> State Library of North Carolina
>
> North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources
>
>
>
> (919) 807-7413   office
>
> (919) 733-1843   fax
> irene.patr...@ncdcr.gov
>
>
> 109 East Jones St.
>
> 4640 Mail Service Center
> Raleigh, NC 27699-4600
>
> [image: cid:image004.png@01D0C310.30B97D20]
> 
> ___
> *Opinions expressed in this message may not represent the policy of my
> agency.  E-mail correspondence *
> *to and from this address may be subject to the North Carolina Public
> Records Law "NCGS.Ch.132" and *
> *may be disclosed to third parties by an authorized state official.*
>
> *___*
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Book Jacket Images in TPAC

[Dan Scott]

OpenLibrary here.

If we had more person-hours, I'd love to have our staff scanning covers for
new books (which are the biggest source of blanks in OpenLibrary) so that
everyone would benefit, but then we'd likely need to double-catalogue the
books (once in Evergreen, once in OpenLibrary). Ah well.

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Brent Mills 
wrote:

> Sage uses Content Cafe, too.
>
> -Brent
>
> On 1/6/16 8:18 AM, Gagnon, Ron wrote:
>
> NOBLE uses Content Cafe, purchased through EBSCO.
> Ron
>
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 11:15 AM, 
> scott.tho...@sparkpa.org  wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>   I was wondering what sources other EG libraries are using for the book
>> jacket images in the TPAC. We are not 100% happy with the service we are
>> currently using and are investigating option.
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Scott
>>
>> Scott Thomas
>> Executive Director
>> Pennsylvania Integrated Library System
>> 717-873-9461
>> scott.tho...@sparkpa.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Ronald A. Gagnon
> Executive Director
> North Of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE)
> Danvers, Massachusetts  01923
> 978-777-8844
> www.noblenet.org
>
>
> --
> Brent Mills
> Systems Librarian | Sage Library System
> email: br...@hoodriverlibrary.org
> tickets: sagelib.org/support
> desk/mobile : 541.387.5063 / 
> 541.610.8384
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] FW: Evergreen Acquistions vs some other method

[Dan Scott]

We use Evergreen Acquisitions. I'm not sure it's possible to use all of it,
there's a lot there. What we use is basic Fund management, POs, and
invoices so that selectors can track their budgets accurately over the
course of the year. We're not using EDI or MARC Order Records yet.

We treat everything the same, whether electronic or print. For electronic
resources (databases or journals), we have a regular MARC record with a $9
856 and add a copy that is not OPAC-visible to serve as the link between
the PO, the invoice, and the item in the catalogue.

I run a bit of SQL to populate publicly visible bookbags with the most
recent orders for each fund so that we can advertise our most recent orders
for a given subject easily.

At some point we'll mix in MARC Order Records, but we want to ensure the
manual process is solid before we automate more.

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 1:01 PM, Sharon Douglas 
wrote:

>
>
> We’ve been struggling to get Evergreen Acquistions set up and working, and
> are gaining ground.
>
> But it’s time for us to evaluate the pro/con of even using an acquisition
> module, vs. using some other method.
>
>
>
> I’ve got 3 questions for everyone...
>
>
>
> 1)  Do you use Evergreen Acqisitions and if yes, do you use it all or
> only some portion of it.
>
>
>
> 2)  If you do not use Evergreen Acquistions, do you use some other
> Acquistion software and if yes, what is it.
>
>
>
> 3)  If you do not use any Acquisition software, what method do you
> use to keep track of funds/ encumbrances/ect.?
>
>
>
> I’m posting this same question to the Cataloging group.
>
>
>
>
>
> Sharon Douglas  -  Automation Coordinator - Lake Agassiz Regional Library
>
> 118 5th St S  - Moorhead MN 56561  -  218-233-3757 ext 138  -
> www.larl.org
>
> The mission of LARL is to enrich lives and strengthen communities
>
> LARL values intellectual freedom, equal access to information, respect,
>
> tolerance, fun and welcoming atmosphere, excellent customer service,
>
> and a current community driven collection.
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Proposal for release manager

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 3:38 PM, Rogan Hamby 
wrote:

> From my stand point in looking forward to rolling out the web based staff
> client at service locations I like this plan quite a bit.  I also want to
> see finding ways to make SIP more secure since (tragically) I don't think
> vendors will be moving away from it anytime soon and I agree that tunneling
> it is probably the most practical approach at this time.
>

Major +1 to including docs for SSH tunneling for SIP, potentially LDAP too
where for some reason TLS isn't supported (we've done both). For those who
might want some docs to start with now, check out
https://coffeecode.net/archives/219-Setting-up-secure-self-check-connections-using-SIP-tunneled-through-SSH.html
is CC-BY-SA, but given that it's 5+ years old, probably needs to be
updated, and maybe using stunnel or other alternatives would be a lot
easier :)

As far as the rest of Galen's proposals go, they all sound sensible to me.
Even with the time travel!

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Adding BookCovers to Evergreen ILS

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 12:49 PM, Geoff Sams  wrote:

> We have some folks who I’ve encouraged to start doing this within our
> consortium, to great effect.  It’s also been helpful with that handful of
> incorrect images here and there.
>

Awesome! As an OpenLibrary user, I thank you and your consortium!

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Adding BookCovers to Evergreen ILS

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 5:59 AM, Jayaraj JR  wrote:

> We are currently on 2.8.1. We have observed that a lot of titles appear in
> the catalog without book jacket images. It is configured to use from
> OpenLibrary book covers. How can we add multiple service providers like
> Librarything for images in Evergreen ILS. Is there any way to add the book
> image manually if the service providers do not the item in their database
>

You can add the book image (and book entry, if necessary) to OpenLibrary
and make the database better for everyone! You can create a free account,
log in, and click "Add a cover image" on entries like
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL16042192W/Collaborative_communities to then
upload a cover image.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Duplicate entry in authors.tt2 (is this bug 958954?)

[Dan Scott]

It sounds like there are a few issues here, let me see if I can separate
them out:

a) bug: relator term $e is not being recognized as the relator, but is
included in the text display along with parenthetical notation for the
default relationship (e.g. 700 = (added author))
b) bug: multiple $4 relator codes are not displayed properly, where
"properly" might mean something like "$700 $a White, Jack $4 cre $4 dir"
should be displayed as "White, Jack (creator, director)"
c) bug: the default relationship of "added author" for 7xx fields when no
relator code or term is specified needs to reflect the underlying item type
(e.g. for a musical recording, should display something like "Added artist")
d) discussion issue: when both $e relator terms and $4 relator codes are
included in the same field, it's not clear what to display
e) (unknown if this is an issue, but "probably") $e relator terms and $4
relator codes may or may not be indexed as expected

For my part on (d), I'm still firmly of the belief that $4 relator code
should take precedence; it's value can easily be translated in the display
(and is, for French) and can be used for linked data (like pointing to
http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/dtc), whereas the $e relator terms
are effectively uncontrolled text fields that make both translation and
linked data much, much more difficult.

Dan

On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 8:56 AM, Hardy, Elaine 
wrote:

> +1
>
>
>
>
>
> *Elaine*
>
>
>
> J. Elaine Hardy
> PINES & Collaborative Projects Manager
> Georgia Public Library Service
> 1800 Century Place, Ste 150
> Atlanta, Ga. 30345-4304
>
>
>
> 404.235.7128
> 404.235.7201, fax
> eha...@georgialibraries.org
> www.georgialibraries.org
> www.georgialibraries.org/pines
>
>
>
> *From:* Open-ils-general [mailto:
> open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org] *On Behalf Of *Sarah
> Childs
> *Sent:* Thursday, May 28, 2015 4:51 PM
> *To:* Evergreen Discussion Group
> *Subject:* Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Duplicate entry in authors.tt2 (is this
> bug 958954?)
>
>
>
> A summary of what I propose:
>
> If no subfield e or 4, no term should be displayed.
>
> Display subfield e if present
>
> Display terms based on codes in subfield 4 if present
>
> If both subfield e or 4 are present, display one or the other. (Either is
> fine with me)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Resetting karma in IRC

[Dan Scott]

+1; also please store a copy of the sqlite database somewhere
(working/random.git?) in case some day we want to look back at how karma
ebbs and flows over the years

(after returning from a weekend vacation with no internet access. None! No
cold sweats even.)

On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 11:45 AM, Kathy Lussier 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Several of us at the conference have been discussing the idea of resetting
> karma in the #evergreen channel at the end of each annual conference. From
> what I understand, this is something that is done in the code4lib community
> and allows everyone to start with a clean slate each year after the
> conference.
>
> I like this idea because I think it provides it's a better motivator for
> new contributors to the community. As it is now, if somebody is just
> starting out and is making a lot of contributions that result in positive
> karma, it will take years before they catch up to the karma levels of those
> of us who have been around for a while. By resetting the karma points,
> anyone's given karma level will reflect the work they are doing now, not
> the work they did years ago.
>
> I would like to suggest that we reset the karma points in the #evergreen
> channel by the end of next week (to give adequate time for any dissension).
> For future conferences, I would like to suggest that the karma points are
> reset on the Monday after the conference ends.
>
> Let me know what you think!
> Kathy
>
>
> --
> Kathy Lussier
> Project Coordinator
> Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
> (508) 343-0128
> kluss...@masslnc.org
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Authority records

[Dan Scott]

Hi Eva:

On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 2:42 PM, Cerninakova Eva  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
> We are currently trying to implement Czech National authorities into
> Evergreen and  have some question concerning authority records  (and may be
> contribution to the debate on authorities during Evergreen conference in
> Hood River) .
>
> 1) Does Evergreen support Z39.50 update function? Libraries in the Czech
> Republic are involved in creation of  authority records s and  the issue of
> Z39.50 update  is crucial  because tool providing update of records of the
> Czech national  authorities by cooperating libraries  is based on Z39.50
> update function.
>

No, Evergreen does not support any Z39.50 update functions at this time,
and as far as I know there are no plans to support update via Z39.50.


> 2) Is it possible to replace Evergreen system authority number in field
> 001 with Czech National authority control number? According to the  Czech
> national cataloging practice in the authority record the field 001 is used
> for Czech national authority control number. It is of course possible to
> use field 016 (National Bibliographic Agency Control Number), but as the
> cooperation is based on „living“ update via Z39.50, moving authority
> control number  might be   complication and potential barrier to
> cooperation.
>

If you disable the "maintain control numbers" global flag, then this might
be possible; testing required. Note that that would also affect how control
numbers are maintained for bibliographic records.

If you have administrator access, then you should be able to find this
setting in the staff client under Admin -> Server Admin -> Global Flags. If
not, but you have SQL access to the database, it would be "UPDATE
config.global_flag SET enabled = FALSE WHERE name =
'cat.maintain_control_numbers';"

A simplistic approach to preventing control number maintenance for only
authority records would be to modify the public.maintain_control_numbers()
database function to check for an authority-record specific flag (something
like 'cat.maintain_authority_control_numbers') and have that override the
general global flag.

Dan

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Format of $0 identifiers for authority control

[Dan Scott]

Hi Jane:

On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 4:59 PM, Jane Sandberg 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> When I authorize a heading in the cataloging interface, it adds a $0
> subfield in the form (LINN)190374, in which LINN is the name of my
> consortium, and 190374 is an identifier taken from the authority
> record's 001 field.  This links it to an authority record that we have
> imported from DLC.
>
> While this works fine for maintaining consistency within our
> consortium, it means that all our $0 fields are specific to us.  As
> library linked data conversations become ever more prominent, it seems
> like it would be very nice to add $0 subfields that mean something to
> people and machines outside our consortium.
>
> Maybe something like (LoC)n 2009034376, where it is clear that the
> authority data are coming from DLC, and with a searchable identifier
> that is taken from the 010$a.  Or even something like
> (uri)http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2009034376, which is what
> folks at George Washington University are doing [1].
>
> So has anybody else fiddled around with IDs in authority records?  Is
> there any way to change the org unit that is listed in parentheses, or
> to have multiple ones depending on the thesaurus or control set?
>
> Thanks so much for your help!  Happy weekend!
>
>-Jane
>
>
> [1] http://bit.ly/1NR0rVa
>
>
Way back when I was initially fleshing out some of the stubs of authority
control support [1], my goal had been to support local authorities, with
the idea being that $0 (LINN)190374 would link to a publicly visible
authority record, which would in turn link to the LoC authority record. My
work was driven by an archives that was a source of authority records, so
local authority records were important.

I didn't get to the local authority linking to an external authorty,
obviously. We're currently not creating those links in the public
catalogue, and the only publicly visible authority records are currently
via supercat, which creates output like this:
https://laurentian.concat.ca/opac/extras/supercat/retrieve/marcxml/authority/607378

We could build a TPAC wrapper that displays authority records and embeds
linked data that points to external authorities (RDFa would be how I would
do it). So there would be one layer of indirection, which is reasonable in
the linked data world. I think it would take a lot more work to enable the
use and display of external authorities directly in bib records in
Evergreen, while still allowing the creation of local authorities.

You might want to add in some of your ideas to the relatively current
authorities wiki page [2]--it's a good resource, if you're not already
aware of that page.

Dan

1. http://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=dev:proposal:authorities
2. http://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=authorities

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen and Zotero - encoding problems

[Dan Scott]

So I have a short-term fix that sites can apply documented in the bug at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1442276 - but it's not something
that I think is the right long-term fix.

Still, seems worthwhile to point it out so that sites that want to make
their Zotero users (and other users of SuperCat feeds) happy can do so
until we figure out how to fix the problem properly.

Dan

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 5:56 AM, Linda Jansova  wrote:

>  Thank you in advance, Dan!
>
> Linda
>
>
> On 04/08/2015 05:29 PM, Dan Scott wrote:
>
>  On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Linda Jansova  wrote:
>
>>  Hi,
>>
>> Our colleagues in Jabok Library would like to promote the usage of their
>> Evergreen OPAC as Zotero source data so that their patrons (and others of
>> course) would be able to import individual bibliographic records to Zotero
>> reference management system (https://www.zotero.org/).
>>
>> When used as a Mozilla Firefox plugin, it is clear that the data are
>> imported via unAPI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnAPI; unfortunately
>> the homepage at http://unapi.info/  does not seem to be working; a bit
>> of unAPI documentation is available at
>> http://code4lib.org/files/unapi_revision_1-14.html, though maybe it is
>> not the latest version).
>>
>> Everything seems to work fine with one exception and these are records
>> with non-ASCII characters such as letters with diacritics ("č" for
>> example). As Czech language uses plenty of these, this issue virtually
>> prevents us from using Evergreen as Zotero data source.
>>
>> However, I have had a look at other Evergreen catalogs (including the one
>> from Laurentian University) and it seems to me that the problem is also
>> present there, e.g.
>> https://laurentian.concat.ca/eg/opac/record/104728?query=francais;qtype=keyword;locg=105;detail_record_view=1
>> (Le francais renouvelé - the "é" character is wrongly interpreted as could
>> be seen at the attached picture).
>>
>> Both in Jabok library catalog and in the catalog at Laurentian I have
>> encountered the same problem when trying to print sample records with these
>> say "special" characters, e.g.
>> https://laurentian.concat.ca/eg/opac/record/print/104728?query=francais;qtype=keyword;locg=105;detail_record_view=1
>>
>> Firefox seems to interpret the character encoding as Unicode when viewing
>> the usual (not the print) version of the bib record but when one hits the
>> "Print" button and then - when the print version is displayed - checks the
>> encoding, Firefox interprets it as Western. Koha users have also been
>> trying to sort out a similar issue (
>> https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/39395/koha-translator-encoding-problem/)
>> - in their case the solution seems to be to modify opac-export.pl to
>> export as UTF8.
>>
>> Any ideas how to fix the issue in Evergreen? (Jabok uses Evergreen 2.6.4.)
>>
>> Thank you in advance for sharing any hints!
>>
>
>  Hi, that's an interesting problem. Zotero uses Evergreen's MODS output,
> and it seems that the problem crept into the conversions that use specific
> MODS versions; compare
>
>
> https://laurentian.concat.ca/opac/extras/supercat/retrieve/mods/record/28391
>
>  to
>
>
> https://laurentian.concat.ca/opac/extras/supercat/retrieve/mods3/record/28391
>
>  and you'll see that the first one works as expected, while the second
> one is corrupted.
>
>  This is an issue for us too, as you can imagine (we're a bilingual
> institution with an extensive French collection), so I'll be digging into
> this.  I recently fixed a similar problem with our Z39.50 server output, so
> hopefully it won't take too long.
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen and Zotero - encoding problems

[Dan Scott]

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Linda Jansova  wrote:

>  Hi,
>
> Our colleagues in Jabok Library would like to promote the usage of their
> Evergreen OPAC as Zotero source data so that their patrons (and others of
> course) would be able to import individual bibliographic records to Zotero
> reference management system (https://www.zotero.org/).
>
> When used as a Mozilla Firefox plugin, it is clear that the data are
> imported via unAPI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UnAPI; unfortunately the
> homepage at http://unapi.info/  does not seem to be working; a bit of
> unAPI documentation is available at
> http://code4lib.org/files/unapi_revision_1-14.html, though maybe it is
> not the latest version).
>
> Everything seems to work fine with one exception and these are records
> with non-ASCII characters such as letters with diacritics ("č" for
> example). As Czech language uses plenty of these, this issue virtually
> prevents us from using Evergreen as Zotero data source.
>
> However, I have had a look at other Evergreen catalogs (including the one
> from Laurentian University) and it seems to me that the problem is also
> present there, e.g.
> https://laurentian.concat.ca/eg/opac/record/104728?query=francais;qtype=keyword;locg=105;detail_record_view=1
> (Le francais renouvelé - the "é" character is wrongly interpreted as could
> be seen at the attached picture).
>
> Both in Jabok library catalog and in the catalog at Laurentian I have
> encountered the same problem when trying to print sample records with these
> say "special" characters, e.g.
> https://laurentian.concat.ca/eg/opac/record/print/104728?query=francais;qtype=keyword;locg=105;detail_record_view=1
>
> Firefox seems to interpret the character encoding as Unicode when viewing
> the usual (not the print) version of the bib record but when one hits the
> "Print" button and then - when the print version is displayed - checks the
> encoding, Firefox interprets it as Western. Koha users have also been
> trying to sort out a similar issue (
> https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/39395/koha-translator-encoding-problem/)
> - in their case the solution seems to be to modify opac-export.pl to
> export as UTF8.
>
> Any ideas how to fix the issue in Evergreen? (Jabok uses Evergreen 2.6.4.)
>
> Thank you in advance for sharing any hints!
>

Hi, that's an interesting problem. Zotero uses Evergreen's MODS output, and
it seems that the problem crept into the conversions that use specific MODS
versions; compare

https://laurentian.concat.ca/opac/extras/supercat/retrieve/mods/record/28391

to

https://laurentian.concat.ca/opac/extras/supercat/retrieve/mods3/record/28391

and you'll see that the first one works as expected, while the second one
is corrupted.

This is an issue for us too, as you can imagine (we're a bilingual
institution with an extensive French collection), so I'll be digging into
this.  I recently fixed a similar problem with our Z39.50 server output, so
hopefully it won't take too long.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] TPAC and bootstrap

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 12:24:38PM -0400, Michael Schell wrote:

Hi All,

With the move toward using the bootstrap framework for the web client I
was wondering if there have been discussions about integrating it into
the TPAC? This is something we have been working on at our library so I
thought I should mention it in case anyone wanted to use some of the
code. Here is a link to our test server if you want to take a look.
http://forterie.testenv.niagaraevergreen.ca/eg/opac/results?query=harry+potter&qtype=keyword&fi%3Aicon_format=&locg=108&sort=


It looks really pretty and is certainly a great start. We already use
Bootstrap in the web staff client, so that wouldn't be a new dependency
for the project.

It might be worthwhile mentioning what features aren't currently
supported; for example, it appears there's no subject display, browse by
title / author seems to be missing, the "select a library" widget
appears to be heavily simplified (maybe hard-coded?), there's no
auto-complete (I was hoping that you might have cracked a more
accessible alternative to the Dojo-based one!), no Google Books preview,
no added content other than covers, no MARC view (which many sites would
probably be fine doing without--heh), and (under the covers) it is
missing most of the schema.org metadata.

This isn't a criticism; I think it's extremely healthy to periodically
strip things back and assess what we really want to add back in. I just
don't want people to forget about some of the elements that we've felt
were pretty important to offer in the last few catalogue iterations.

Maybe you would like to say something about how far along you are in
your efforts and whether this reflects something close to the final
design goals or more like an iteration towards whatever the final design
might be. If you're willing to work with the community, then there's a
good chance that you'll still be able to achieve your final design
goals, but with the support of others who are able to add back in (in a
configurable fashion) the features that have been necessities for other
sites.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Importing authority record via Z39.50

[Dan Scott]

Hi Eva:

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 01:05:32PM +0100, Cerninakova Eva wrote:

Hi all,

I would like to ask you for comments or Ideas in following problem:

We are planing implementation of Czech nation authorities in our Evergreen
at the time. Considering various workflow scenarios we discovered that in
some cases the most convenient workflow  would be for us importing single
authority record via Z39.50.

Is there a way to save record imported to Evergreen via Z39.50 as authority
record?


Unfortunately, at this time Evergreen is not capable of importing
authority records via the existing "Import via Z39.50" interface; it was
built strictly for bibliographic records.

I think it's a worthy goal, though. A minimalist approach to making it
work would require something like adding a flag to the
config.z3950_source table to enable us to differentiate sources between
bibliographic and authority records. Then in the user interface we
would need a toggle that would know whether you were in authority or
bibliographic record mode, so that the appropriate sources, target
tables, and editor mode could be triggered.

A more forward-looking approach would include the possibility
of matching against SPARQL endpoints and the like for linked data
authority sources, as well as Z39.50, but that's probably *too* forward
looking right now :)

Dan

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] About Evergreen OPAC for Mobile Devices

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 2:00 PM, Tony Bandy  wrote:

>  Hi Dan, folks,
>
>
>
> Thanks for the note!  Currently we’re running 2.7.2 of Evergreen.  I know
> we have been working with the CSS to adjust colors, and the table for
> checked out items for this particular library, but I wasn’t sure if that
> would affect the whole display?  I have been using Quirk Tools Screenfly (
> http://quirktools.com/screenfly/) for testing parts of our TPAC.
>
>
>
> The mobile catalog, searching, viewing results, etc. all look pretty good,
> however, when  a user logs in to their account for this particular library
> and goes to look at their checked out items, the formatting gets a little
> “squashed”.  I just added this information on to the LP bug you had opened
> previously about mobile development.  I’ve attached a screenshot that shows
> this.  Anything above 600px looks ok (Other Example).  The screenshot
> (Example One) is from an iPhone 5s running Safari.
>
>
>
> Do you think it’s just a matter of us tweaking the code for this library a
> bit too much?
>

Yes, I'm sure that's the case. Check out the webby test server (which is
running pretty close to stock TPAC code); connection info is at
http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=evergreen-docs:webclient.
Currently there are two items checked out to the admin user and there is no
horizontal scrolling or squished display occurring using the Quirk Tools
Screenfly with iPhone 3/4, iPhone 5, Galaxy S2, or even the Blackberry 8300.


>   Maybe I could roll the changes back and then re-apply piece by piece to
> make sure it’s not something else?
>

It seems likely that the id "acct_checked_main_header" might have been
removed, or the structure of "table#acct_checked_main_header td" was
somehow disrupted; that would throw off the stock mobile CSS.

In general, this is a good reminder to check problems against a stock
version of Evergreen to ensure it's not a local issue before reporting them
as a bug (I need that reminder myself from time to time!)

Dan

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Search URL's for evergreen opac

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 4:05 PM, Walz, Jennifer  wrote:

>  All –
>
>
>
>I had asked previously for help with a search form / widget for our web
> page.  THANK YOU for the guidance.
>
>
>
>   Now we need to link our OCLC / Firstsearch interface.  They ask for
> search strings.   Is there a standard format for query strings?
>
> *ISBN Search Results URL:   *Enter the URL for the screen that displays
> the results of an ISBN search of your catalog.
>
>
>
> OCLC will do a search via the FirstSearch interface by ISBN, ISSN, and
> OCLC number.   What are the search strings for Evergreen that will make
> that work?   Our root URL is this:
> http://evergreen.asbury.edu/eg/opac/home/AU
>
>
The minimum you need is:

ISBN:
http://evergreen.asbury.edu/eg/opac/results?qtype=identifier|isbn&query=99
ISSN:
http://evergreen.asbury.edu/eg/opac/results?qtype=identifier|issn&query=-
OCLC number:
http://evergreen.asbury.edu/eg/opac/results?qtype=identifier|scn&query=99

(where "9" stands in for the actual number)

You can view our WorldCat Registry configuration page at
http://www.worldcat.org/registry/Opac/87164

Dan

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Insert relators in evergreen database

[Dan Scott]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1407507 may be what you're
looking for...
On 30 Jan 2015 13:29, "Erick AR"  wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> I am trying to do something but I'm stuck
> I want to add this list of relators to the evergreen database
>
> http://www.loc.gov/marc/relators/relacode.html
>
> But I can't find which schema I should  insert it,
> this is because in the tag 700 subfield 4 of a record of a book
> It can accept all the codes in the list, and when I see the record in
> the staff client it appears between parentheses like in the picture that I
> attached
> instead of the default "(added author)", but it doesn't accept all the
> codes, in the list
> so I want to know in where schema of the database are these records, I've
> been looking for them but I couldn't find them.
> thanks
>
>
> --
> Atentamente.
> *I.T.I. Erick Emir Alonso Román*
> Programmer/developer
> San Luis Potosi, Mexico
> erickemir1...@gmail.com
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Books on Reserve in Evergreen

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 12:13 PM, Janice Huber <
janice.hu...@asburyseminary.edu> wrote:

> Can anyone point me in the right direction to figure out how Evergreen
> handles books on Reserve?
> Meaning books placed on a reserve shelf for a professor, for a particular
> class, for that term to circulate for up to two hours at a time.
>
>
Hi Janice:

You might want to start with
https://coffeecode.net/archives/250-Current-state-of-academic-reserves-support-for-Evergreen.html
 - although it's a post from 2011, it's still reasonably accurate I think.

Dan

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Making patron data invisible for other libraries in consortium?

[Dan Scott]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 9:08 AM, skolk...@upcmail.cz 
wrote:

>   Hi,
>
> Here in the Czech Republic we are just considering a pilot project for a
> simple consortium of two libraries (so far, in our country there are only
> single plantings). However, the two libraries would be two separate legal
> entities and we need to ensure patron data privacy.
>
> At this moment it seems that the easiest way would be to make sure that
> the two libraries would not share their patrons (meaning that one library
> would not see the other library's patrons). Can Evergreen cope with this?
> And if so, how exactly?
>
> Or is it necessary to make such legal arrangements that would enable the
> two libraries share data about their patrons?
>
> Thank you in advance for sharing any ideas or links pointing to some hints
> regarding this issue!
>

There are some settings for "patron opt-in" in Evergreen that prevent easy
access to patron info from other libraries. The idea is that staff at
library 1 should not be able to search for a patron at library 2 by their
name or other attributes until that patron presents their barcode at
library 1 and agrees to share their information with library 1. We use this
approach in our consortium to minimize unnecessary exposure of patron data
at different branches.

There doesn't appear to be anything about the patron opt-in settings in the
official docs, but
http://docs.sitka.bclibraries.ca/Sitka/current/html/searching-patrons.html
has a screenshot showing what staff see when a user from a different
library presents their card at a library to which they have not yet opted
in to sharing their information.

That said, anyone with the ability to create reports can easily create a
report which extracts all user information for all libraries, and there are
some points where information leakage can occur (for example, I think you
can see borrowers from other libraries on an item's circulation history).
So it's not a completely airtight solution by any means, but it is suitable
for some setups.

Ultimately, however, if you don't want to share patron info at all across
libraries, the only way to do that is to have separate Evergreen instances.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen for Academics

[Dan Scott]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 10:11:50AM -0400, Kelly Drake wrote:

Dear Evergreen Community,


For the past year, Fenway Libraries Online (FLO), a consortium of 10
academic libraries in Boston, has been considering a migration to
Evergreen. Many members of the Evergreen community met and spoke with
members of FLO during this year’s annual conference in Boston. Thank you
for your time, patience and information. All your comments and suggestions
convinced us to continue pursuing a migration to Evergreen.


Our investigation also suggested that it would be helpful to build
an academic interest group within the larger Evergreen community.  This
group would be focused solely on academic issues as they relate to the ILS.
Several existing Evergreen libraries and consortia have already expressed
interest in the group and we have tentatively called it
"Academics for Evergreen".


To be most effective, Academics for Evergreen would be composed of any
individuals or institutions that have an interest in enhancing the
academic-related functions of Evergreen. Once formed, the group will
identify the academic-related functions that most need attention and work
to build knowledge, consensus, and resources to move moving these issues
forward.  So far we have identified a few of the possible issues, such as
streamlined creation and management of authority records, enhanced search
and browse by authority, support for multiple subject heading schema,
improved staff workflows and possible improvements to course reserves
integration. This list is by no means exhaustive and needs the
participation of the Evergreen community to improve and refine it.


Please respond and let us know if you are interested, have suggestions for
moving these issues forward, or if you have any questions.


Count me in as "interested"!

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] 2.5.2 Subject Browse Index

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 06:10:11PM +, Janet Schrader wrote:


I apologize if I'm misunderstanding this. Will the separators cause the subject in the 
browse list to behave the same way the headings do in our bib record display? I think 
subject headings in browse and in the bib record should be treated as a complete entity, 
not as separate topics. I looked at Bibliomation's index and if I click on "United 
States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Women" I get the 55 entries which is the number 
in parentheses after that link.

Currently in our bib record displays the subject headings have separators. So 
the subject heading looks like this:
United States>History>Civil War, 1861-1865>Women.
If I click on 'United States' the search is for just that part of the subject. If 
I click on 'History' the search is for 'United States>History'. If I want to 
search women in the Civil War I have to click on 'Women' to search the entire 
subject phrase.

The unfortunate scenario here is that clicking on the beginning of the subject phrase 
searches only 'United States' and the search times out so a patron gets "sorry no 
entries were found for 'United States'". Which separate term clicked on determines 
what gets searched. It is not very intuitive to know that you have to *start at the end* 
to make the search more specific.


Hmm. The current behaviour seems intuitive to me, but I think I had a
hand in designing and implementing it, so that's probably not surprising.
For what it's worth, Amazon seems to use exactly this scheme for
enabling users to broaden and narrow their searches in their
best seller ranking system once they've landed on an item (see
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00JKT6VVY for an example).

Do you have an alternative suggestion for representing subject headings
so that it is both possible and more intuitive to search for just
"United States > History > Civil War, 1861-1865" in your example, if a
user wanted to broaden their search from the initial record on which
they might have landed?

While I agree that it's unfortunate that broad search terms result in
search time outs, that's a different problem and it should not drive how
we represent subject headings.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] browser client update 2014-05-09 / UI lists for sprint 1; packaging, etc.

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 9:35 AM, Bill Erickson  wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I don't have any specific feedback requests this time, but feedback is of
> course always welcome / appreciated.
>
> http://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=dev:browser_staff:dev_notes

Feedback: this looks awesome, Bill. Your choices for the JavaScript
tools match everything that I've seen for best practices, and seeing
automated unit tests for the staff client coming together fills me
with great hope. You're putting together a nice, solid, user _and_
developer friendly foundation for the future.

Thanks!

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Call for vote: Release Manager 2.7

[Dan Scott]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:01:45PM -0400, Jeff Godin wrote:

Greetings!

I'd like to call for a vote on Ben Shum's proposal to be Release Manager
for Evergreen 2.7.

Ben's proposal can be found in the list archives:
http://georgialibraries.markmail.org/thread/b23u62e6rhebjkhk
or
http://libmail.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-general/2014-March/009738.html

Shall we accept Ben Shum's proposal to be Release Manager for Evergreen 2.7?


+1 - and many thanks to Ben for volunteering to shoulder this
responsibility!

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] spine label printers

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 9:28 AM, Elisabeth Keppler  wrote:
> Ours still look good, too.  We do cover them with Scotch 845 book tape which
> is UV-resistant, so that might help.

We found that the stock thermal labels, when exposed to sunlight or
fluorescent light (read: our entire library), faded quickly (under a
year), even with the tape on top (which I'm pretty sure I read
elsewhere can actually aggravate the problem).

http://download.dymo.com/dymo/user-guides/LabelWriter/LW450Series/UG/LabelWriter_UserGuide_en-US.pdf
says:

"""
Thermal paper labels, such as those printed by the LabelWriter
printer, are susceptible to fading in two ways:

• Exposure to direct sunlight, to fluorescent light for an extended
period of time, or to extreme heat will cause fading.
• Contact with plasticizers (for example, labels placed on plastic
ring binders) will cause fading.

In the original packaging, the shelf life for LabelWriter labels is 18
months. When labels are used
for short-term applications (envelopes, packages, and so on), fading
is not a problem. When labels
are used to label files in a file cabinet, fading is very gradual over
many years. Labels applied to the
edge of a notebook that is then placed on a shelf in the sun will show
signs of fading within a few
months.
"""

So we started using labels from http://durablelabelsondemand.com and
were happy with those; their thermal transfer mechanism results in a
much more robust label. At some point, however, a cost-cutting measure
came into place and we went back to the stock labels. (Insert
something about "replacing faded labels costing human time that could
be doing more valuable work" here).

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] browser staff feedback request / integration

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Apr 04, 2014 at 10:25:56AM -0400, McCanna, Terran wrote:

My preference would be to leave the existing client as is (with the exception 
of bug fixes, etc.), but to offer the browser-based modules as options once 
they become available. My reasons for this are:

1) It will allow for indepth use of the new module in a production environment 
to uncover any bugs or performance issues while still having a known entity as 
a backup. No amount of testing is going to uncover all of the odd little 
problems like working in a live environment will.

2) When moving back and forth between the two environments, staff will be more 
aware of the improved user interface and performance, and I believe they will 
be more eager to transition completely to the new environment.

3) The browser-based circulation module may offer some immediate relief to 
those frontline circ staff who are struggling with antiquated machines and slow 
networks.

4) The new modules can begin to be thoroughly tested on mobile devices that 
cannot run the current client.


+1 to what Terran says. Let's forgo the complications of trying to force
new-style development into an aging security / performance /
functionality-impaired container and instead focus on fleshing out the
browser-based modules on a workflow-by-workflow basis as much as
possible, so that some staff (as Terran says) can benefit ASAP and
help us find where we can optimize workflows or where we've missed yet
another piece of existing functionality that most sites don't use but
that is critical to another site's workflow.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Minutes of the resource allocator summit

[Dan Scott]

Hi, I unfortunately wasn't able to attend the Resource Allocator
Summit but wanted to reply to a few of the points in the minutes;
hopefully Ben & Kathy's report out to the community will be able to
address some of these questions.

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 9:44 AM, Galen Charlton  wrote:



> Equinox's idea lab a potential model?

Could more context be provided for this question? If the discussion
was about adopting the Equinox Idea Lab as-is, it quite bluntly seems
like a way of centralizing funding, communications, and control of
development within a single company, and I'm fundamentally wary of any
such centralization.

> - If there were "pre-conference" events added to the annual
> conference, should there be an additional charge for an added day
> - Tutorials--ways to use these to raise community funds?

The PostgreSQL project successfully uses this model for several of
their conferences; there are one or two days of pre-conferences, with
half-day or full-day tutorial sessions, and the funds from the
tutorials are split between the presenter(s) and the conference, with
the fund split ranging from 30/70 to 50/50. Per
http://www.pgcon.org/2014/registration.php the per-tutorial rate is
$60/half-day. (And if you want to learn more about PostgreSQL, I would
highly recommend attending PGCon!)

> Needs identified:
>
> -Volunteers
> -Time
> -Predictable Resourcing

What aspects of predictable resourcing were discussed? Financial
contributions to pooled funding? Sweat equity, such as organizations
pledging to devote 1 person-day of their own
developer/documentation/graphic design/other skilled resources per
week for a year to a common effort?

> -Projects meeting needs of members (control meme)

More info / examples of projects not meeting members' needs would be
appreciated so we can analyze the mistakes that were made and improve
our efforts in the future.

>
> Brilliant ideas identified:
>
> -coffee fund for developers (incentive)

Huh. Did the developers in the room confirm this would be more of an
incentive than recognition?

Thanks,
Dan

[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Time to upgrade demo.evergreencatalog.com to 2.6?

[Dan Scott]

Hi:

I see that http://demo.evergreencatalog.com is still running 2.5.0; now
that we're rapidly approaching 2.6 (fingers crossed), would it be possible
to upgrade it to 2.6?

I can only imagine that this would help documentation writers, testing,
training, and marketing efforts if we can link to examples of the new
features in action :)

Thanks,
Dan

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] "undo-ing" copy location edits

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 10:13 PM, Holly Brennan wrote:

>  We just started using a shelving location of ‘Display’ for items that
> have been pulled from their normal locations in order to be… you guessed
> it… on display. (Currently it’s **Fossils**)
>
>
>
> Using a copy bucket to change the locations is SO much easier than it was
> with our former ILS. We love that. So, of course, it made me greedy. What
> if it was just as easy to return items to their former locations?
>
>
>
> I thought, what if, when we’re done with the display, we could click a
> button to change the location of the items from ‘Display’ back to the 7 or
> so locations where the individual items regularly live. That would be cool.
> No, MAGIC.
>
>
>
> If we held onto the copy bucket with all these items, it seems possible
> (to me). The change could be a temporary location change. Something like,
> Please change to this new location, but remember your old one, because
> you’re going back there someday.
>
>
>
> Has anyone else dreamed of this? Any developers want to chime in whether
> it’s possible?
>

Yep, dreamed of it long ago for a slightly different context: putting items
on reserve (which could change their location and call number, too).

One possibility that now leaps to mind is to make use of the auditor tables
that track every change to a given copy and call number (and many other
entities in the database... at least until those auditor tables are
purged). We could whip up a batch action along the lines of "Reset copy
location to previous location" pretty easily, I think.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 3:19 PM, Scott Thomas  wrote:

> I am wonder if this type of functionality has ever been discussed for
> Evergreen: an item would be renewed automatically at the end of a loan
> period assuming there are no holds on the item or anything other issues
> with the patron or the item. The renewal would generate a circulation
> statistic. Patrons would be able to keep an item longer without having to
> take any action. We understand that fine revenues would take a hit. Does
> anyone know if something like this being worked on?
>

I tried to convince my library to adopt that policy, but they wouldn't go
for it (see: "fine revenues would take a hit"), so I never developed it.
But yes, the idea was to send a courtesy notice that included the "BTW,
we've renewed this automatically for you to save you from getting fined!"...

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Macros

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 7:27 AM, tmccanna wrote:

> Yes, we just tested the library URL linking at PINES and it works great!
> We'll be implementing it soon.
>

Good to hear! Thanks to MassLNC for sponsoring the development of the
feature :)

As a heads-up, in 2.6 we've added "Library info pages" that will look
roughly like http://stuff.coffeecode.net/schema.org/evergreen/library/BR4 ;
this is where the library links from the copy tables will lead by default,
but we have also added a library setting to force the link to go directly
to the external library URL, if you prefer.

The theoretical advantage to the internal library page is that all of the
data on that page is encoded using schema.org structured data, so that
search engines can potentially do intelligent things like tell a user "Oh,
you looked for *Dance of Dragons*, and you're in Rome, Georgia; there's a
copy available at the public library a few miles away from you: here are
the directions, and it's open until 9:00 PM tonight--or you can buy it from
our e-book store".

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen 2.6-alpha1 Available for Testing [RM2.6]

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 10:53 PM, Jeff Godin  wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 9:54 PM, Dan Scott  wrote:
>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Dan Wells  wrote:
>>
>>>  Hello all,
>>>
>>> The first packaged release of Evergreen 2.6, alpha1, is now available
>>> for download and testing.
>>>
>>
> Hooray! Thanks, Dan! I've grabbed Evergreen-ILS-2.6-alpha1.tar.gz and am
> about to give it a spin.
>
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 9:54 PM, Dan Scott  wrote:
>
>> I was going to pull together the release notes to help people know about
>> new features in 2.6 so far, but it looks like the only release notes entry
>> at this point is for the library information TPAC pages (
>> http://goo.gl/eKIBhn) :/
>>
>>>
> There's at least one other release notes entry (authored by Remington
> Steed), located at
> docs/RELEASE_NOTES_NEXT/Circulation/lost_min_max_item_pricing.txt (
> http://goo.gl/EXdi8d ). I know because I snuck it in before Dan cut the
> release earlier today. :-)
>

Ah, indeed - my local git repo dated back to 9:00 this morning. Thanks for
getting that in, and my apologies for overlooking it!



> I did a quick perusal of the output of "git log rel_2_5..master", and saw
> many bug fixes mixed with some new features that could benefit from release
> notes. Heck, I might even argue that some of the bug fixes could use
> release notes. Baby steps, perhaps.
>
> I also saw a large number of documentation additions and updates, which is
> really encouraging. Looks like credit here goes to Remington Steed,
> Angela Kilsdonk, Dan Scott (hi, Dan!), and Elliot Voris. Thanks, everybody!
>

+1


> I have found the release notes increasingly useful, and I think it's worth
> putting effort into creating them. Thanks for raising the issue / pointed
> reminder.
>
> For my part, I've yanked my own pullrequest tag on one new feature, and
> will craft a release notes entry before restoring the tag.
>
> -jeff
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen 2.6-alpha1 Available for Testing [RM2.6]

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 5:42 PM, Dan Wells  wrote:

>  Hello all,
>
> The first packaged release of Evergreen 2.6, alpha1, is now available for
> download and testing.
>
>
> *http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads/previews/Evergreen-ILS-2.6-alpha1.tar.gz*
>
> *http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads/previews/Evergreen-ILS-2.6-alpha1.tar.gz.md5*
>
> *http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads/previews/evergreen-client-2.6-alpha1_i686.tar.bz2*
> *http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads/previews/evergreen-client-**2.*
> *6-alpha1_i686.tar.bz2.md5*
> *http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads/previews/evergreen-client-**2.*
> *6-alpha1_x86_64.tar.bz2*
> *http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads/previews/evergreen-client-**2.*
> *6-alpha1_x86_64.tar.bz2.md5*
> *http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads/previews/evergreen-setup-**2.*
> *6-alpha1.exe*
> *http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads/previews/evergreen-setup-**2.*
> *6-alpha1.exe.md5*
> *http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads/previews/ChangeLog-2.5.**2**-**2.*
> *6-alpha1*
>
> We are still early in the release process, so these downloads are offered
> primarily as a convenience to would-be testers, and also as an opportunity
> to continue to refine the release process itself.
>
> I hope to send out a more complete update on the progress made in alpha1
> within the next day or two.
>
>

I was going to pull together the release notes to help people know about
new features in 2.6 so far, but it looks like the only release notes entry
at this point is for the library information TPAC pages (
http://goo.gl/eKIBhn) :/

>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Macros

[Dan Scott]

On 22 Jan 2014 19:51, "Michael Peters"  wrote:
>
> Buzzy,
>
>
>
> Holly’s suggestion is a great one, and makes for an easy workaround.
>
>
>
> For what it’s worth, library website URL isn’t stored anywhere in the
database, but perhaps it could be a good addition to actor.org_unit?

Actually, it's a library setting available as of 2.5:
http://docs.evergreen-ils.org/2.5/_opac_2.html - see the section about
linking library names to an external URL.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Updating the Roster of Evergreen Libraries

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Lazar, Alexey Vladimirovich <
alexey.la...@mnsu.edu> wrote:

> On 2013-12-20, at 13:32 , Erica Rohlfs  wrote:
>
> > Happy Holidays!
> >
> > I would like to begin updating the Roster of Evergreen Libraries on the
> Evergreen Wiki. It’s been on my to-do list for a few months now. My hope is
> to have it updated in time to, hopefully, help whoever volunteers to work
> on the Evergreen map.
>
> Happy holidays to you too, Erica.
>
> Thanks for taking up the work on this page. I just went in an updated our
> entries with newer Evergreen versions.
>
> Looking at the list, it seems like an awful lot of Evergreen libraries out
> there run on version 1.6, or 2.0 and various old OS and PostgreSQL
> versions. I think these are just outdated entries (I hope).
>
> Question: how important is it to have all the extra info, like Evergreen
> versions, OS, databases, etc, on this particular page? It is interesting
> information, but if it is not kept current, it is not very useful — just
> noise.
>
>
If we opt to keep Evergreen version information, we could keep that
relatively current by running the scripted equivalent of "curl -d
service=open-ils.search -d locale=en-US -d
method=opensrf.open-ils.system.ils_version
http://laurentian.concat.ca/osrf-gateway-v1"; against each public Evergreen
catalogue.

Anything that we can't automate will, I fear, fall out of date. But given
the public catalogue URL for each library, we can at the very least
automatically gather a) whether the public catalogue is still responding at
the listed URL and b) the Evergreen version. Maybe c) the server OS (based
on the Apache headers). And that much, I think, would be a win.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] It's Newsletter Time!

[Dan Scott]

Would it be worthwhile prodding each of the release managers for an update?
It would be nice to see something about 2.6 in the newsletter (roadmap,
timeline, release manager, process enhancements, etc), too, now that 2.5
has hit release candidate. The last dev meeting touched on some of this,
IIRC.

There have also been updates from the QA effort and some news from the
performance effort that would be worthwhile touching on.

http://planet.evergreen-ils.org/ links to a number of relevant blog posts,
I think!



On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Amy Terlaga  wrote:

> Hi all—
>
> ** **
>
> It’s time for your blurbs and write-ups!  What’s going on at your
> library?  Do you have any development underway?  Just brought up a new
> Evergreen feature?  Any other exciting Evergreen news you’d like to share?
> 
>
> ** **
>
> Please send your interesting tidbits my way by Friday October 18th –
> terl...@biblio.org.
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks to all contributors for your Evergreen news items!
>
> ** **
>
> Amy
>
> ** **
>
> +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
>
> Amy Terlaga
>
> Assistant Director, User Services
>
> Bibliomation, Inc.
>
> 24 Wooster Avenue
>
> Waterbury, CT  06708
>
> 203-577-4070 x101
>
> www.biblio.org
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>

[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen paid support services: Coffeecode Consulting

[Dan Scott]

Hello, I would like to maintain a listing on the "Evergreen Paid Support
Services" per the recently adopted Evergreen Oversight Board policy.

Name: Coffeecode Consulting

Contact person: Dan Scott

Contact email: d...@coffeecode.net

Web site: http://consulting.coffeecode.net (spectacularly barebones,
eh?)

Brief description of services: Coffeecode Consulting offers services
such as software development and customization; training; migration and
data munging; troubleshooting; and technical writing. Consulting
opportunities in the areas of catalogue enhancements for accessibility,
mobile responsiveness, and structured data (schema.org), or intersecting
with PostgreSQL or VuFind, are particularly welcome.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Bug bounties

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 05:35:04PM -0400, Rogan Hamby wrote:
> I haven't heard any dissents and at least two in favors of (you and I) so
> in the spirit of a meritocracy I would say Kathy that at the least if you
> want to come up with a model of how to handle it, go ahead and let's start
> poking at the details.
> 
> I won't derail things with my wishlist for accessibility.  :)
> 
> I agree that wishlist bugs shouldn't be on the list.

Okay, I'll offer a conditional dissent then. I worry that the
introduction of financial incentives will disrupt the contributor
ecology. As soon as money is in the picture, all sorts of interesting
side effects can occur.

For example, will this act as a disincentive for open communication
and collaboration about potential alternatives for fixing a bug (because
potential fixers jealously guard their approaches from one another)?
Will it reduce the interest of current developers in providing
assistance to new contributors? Will it introduce difficulties in trying
to divvy up credit for bug fixes? Do reviewers of bug fixes get any
share of the cash? Do reporters of bugs who provide reproducible test
cases get any share of the cash? Is there any requirement to providing
regression tests (to prevent the bug from ever rearing its head again)
as part of the bug fix? Will contributors of new functionality bury bugs
they know about in the interest of getting paid twice, once for the new
functionality, and then later for the bug fixes?

My conditional dissent would like some examples of projects where bug
bounties have actually worked. The examples that I've seen have focused
on reporting security vulnerabilities. If there are a few solid cases
out there that can serve as a model for us, then I would turn my dissent
into cautious assent.

It could be that I've just read one too many Dilbert cartoons...

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] OPAC Subfield suppression

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 03:20:31PM -0400, Donald Butterworth wrote:
> Oh blast! I meant to include that information. I'm sorry. We are on 2.3.2
> so that explains why it isn't working. Thanks for bearing with us as we
> wade deeper into the pool.

In the IRC channel, Ben Shum also noted that the 2.3.4 received a fix to
suppress $6 and $8 subfields. So there's that, at least. The commit is
at
http://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=Evergreen.git;a=commitdiff;h=f8e65c7070dd02bb71750f64e77297fabb80f141

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] OPAC Subfield suppression

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 01:31:13PM -0400, Donald Butterworth wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> We just downloaded a title in Chinese and the subfield $6 is displaying as
> text in the 245 field. Plus the linking 880 tags are not displaying at all.
> I don't suppose there's a check-box somewhere that will let me just hide a
> subfield, or display an invisible field, eh?  Does one have to dive into
> the depths of Evergreen code to fix this kind of thing?

We're missing important information here. First and foremost, what
version of Evergreen are you running? 880 support was added in the 2.4
release - http://docs.evergreen-ils.org/2.4/_new_features.html#_opac -
so if you're running a version prior to that, you would have to backport
it...  which would be a bit painful.

If you are running 2.4, then it would be useful to see the sample MARC
record so that we can test it out on a clean install.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] MARC templates to share?

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Tony Bandy  wrote:

> Thanks Dan, I saw the Conifer link that was mentioned here,
> http://www.open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=evergreen-admin:customization:cat,
> but it gave me a 404 and the page never loaded.I will head on over to
> the git.evergreen-ils.org site and take a look at those.
>
>
Wasn't aware of that page. It was still pointing at the Subversion
repository, which is long dead. I've updated
http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=evergreen-admin:customization:catto
point at the Conifer git repo as well as at MVLC's repo. Maybe that
will
help people who stumble across that wiki page in the future.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] MARC templates to share?

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Tony Bandy  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> We've been working on adding some MARC templates to our system and saw the
> link mentioned here in the documentation,
> http://docs.evergreen-ils.org/2.1/html/catalogingtemplates.html.
>
> Does anyone have any MARC templates they can share with us just to help us
> get started?
>

I trot out the Conifer MARC templates branch every time this question comes
up:

The branch is at
http://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=contrib/Conifer.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/feature/marctemplates_2_4but
then you have to drill down to the Open-ILS/src/templates/marc
directory to see the actual templates; currently, you can jump directly to
that directory in that branch via http://goo.gl/VHEKj

Of course, these are all specialized for various Conifer libraries, but
they should be a reasonable start...

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] SQL Query Performance

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 11:43:18AM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> 
> On 04/26/2013 11:17 AM, Galen Charlton wrote:
> >
> >Hi,
> >
> >On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Martha Driscoll  
> >wrote:
> >>In our database of 3,161,189 copies, cutting out the deleted copies
> >>eliminates only 904 copies.  Why does testing for deleted improve searching
> >>so significantly?
> >
> >The quick answer is that the asset.copy index on the barcode column
> >also includes a clause to limit the index to copies that aren't
> >deleted:
> 
> Actually,
> 
> The quick (and correct) answer is that asset.copy doesn't have an
> index that is on barcode. In fact the current index on
> asset.copy(barcode) is actually wrong.

Before declaring something "wrong" so confidently, you might want to
double-check your assumptions.
 
> "copy_barcode_key" UNIQUE, btree (barcode) WHERE deleted = false OR
> deleted IS FALSE
> 
> Although a valid index, the two conditions within the index are
> duplicative. It would be better to drop that index and just use:

And deliberately so, because at the time the index was adjusted to be
duplicative, PostgreSQL (8.4 IIRC?) was not smart enough to know that
"deleted = FALSE" was the same as "deleted IS FALSE"; and as we were
often writing ad hoc queries that used one or the other style, we were
missing the index and going into table scan mode. Which sucks for
performance.

Also, the reason that we want the "deleted = FALSE" condition is because
the vast majority of valid queries will be restricted to copies that
have not been deleted. And there are corner cases where two identical
barcodes can exist, except one was deleted, and the other was created
since then.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] EG2013 dinner for family attendees?

[Dan Scott]

Thanks James! The water transit sounds like a lot of fun, for sure.

I hope your spouse gets better soon!
On Apr 9, 2013 6:05 PM, "James Fournie"  wrote:

> Hey Dan,
>
> I don't have kids and my spouse is really ill, but just in case, I just
> thought I'd let you know the following are good things for kids to do:
>
> - the Vancouver Aquarium (in Stanley Park, take #19 bus westbound on
> Pender St. near the Delta)
> - Science World (big geodesic dome thingy full of science)
> - HR MacMillan Space Centre aka the Planetarium
> - Granville Island (there's a whole "kids market" building and probably
> other stuff I don't know about)
>
> For the last two, it's definitely fun to take the Aquabus or False Creek
> Ferry, you can catch them along the water on the southern shores of
> downtown, I think it's like $5 round trip.
>
> I don't have kids so I don't know the range of kid friendliness of
> restaurants, but here are places that I would classify as "definitely have
> booster chairs":
>
>  - Old Spaghetti Factory (on Water St. in Gastown)
>  - White Spot (somewhere on the spectrum of Swiss Chalet or Kelsey's, they
> have "Pirate Paks" which is like food in a boat)
>  - Red Robin (sit-down burgers, Robson @ Thurlow, I have never been)
>
> Have fun!
>
> ~J
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 7:13 AM, Dan Scott  wrote:
>
>> As I'm sitting in the airport with my spouse, my 6 year old, and my 4
>> year old, I was wondering if anyone else attending the conference with
>> children in tow would be interested in getting together for a dinner to
>> give the children a chance to meet and significant others a chance to
>> (potentially) coordinate some daytime plans...
>>
>> Perhaps Wednesday night? If interested, shoot me an email and I'll try to
>> work something out... This is probably something where the details are best
>> worked out off the list, to avoid annoying everyone :)
>>
>
>

[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] EG2013 dinner for family attendees?

[Dan Scott]

As I'm sitting in the airport with my spouse, my 6 year old, and my 4 year
old, I was wondering if anyone else attending the conference with children
in tow would be interested in getting together for a dinner to give the
children a chance to meet and significant others a chance to (potentially)
coordinate some daytime plans...

Perhaps Wednesday night? If interested, shoot me an email and I'll try to
work something out... This is probably something where the details are best
worked out off the list, to avoid annoying everyone :)

[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Heads-up: PostgreSQL security release coming on April 4, 2013

[Dan Scott]

As Evergreen is built with PostgreSQL at the core, the following
PostgreSQL news announcement should be of concern to Evergreen
administrators:

"""
Upcoming PostgreSQL Security Release: April 4, 2013
Posted on 2013-03-28

The PostgreSQL Global Development Group will be releasing a security
update for all supported versions on Thursday April 4th, 2013. This
release will include a fix for a high-exposure security vulnerability.
All users are strongly urged to apply the update as soon as it is
available.

We are providing this advance notice so that users may schedule an
update of their production systems on or shortly after April 4th.

As always, update releases only require installation of packages and a
database system restart. You do not need to dump/restore or use
pg_upgrade for this update release.
"""

Please be prepared to update to the security release. While a typical
Evergreen configuration does not expose PostgreSQL to public access, the
nature of this announcement is unusual for PostgreSQL and suggests that
the vulnerability may be particularly concerning.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Cucumber for QA

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 03:49:26PM -0800, James Fournie wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> One of the suggestions I made with regard to QA in the recent IRC
> meeting, was to look into Cucumber for testing.   I thought I'd follow
> up a bit.  Caveat that this is not a QA silver bullet, just exploring
> some thoughts on it and how it could be used.
> 
> Cucumber is a Ruby-based tool for testing, based around
> behaviour-driven-development principles.  A key part of Cucumber, is
> the Gherkin language is uses.  Gherkin is a business-facing language,
> meaning it's designed to be understandable by non-developers.


 
> As you can see, it's pretty simple to understand. My colleague Steven
> Chan in a Sitka team discussion noted that we do a lot of general
> testing in-house with each upgrade and it would be nice to capture
> that somehow.  I am sure that other Evergreen implementors have this
> knowledge drain as well and I think that Gherkin might be a way to
> capture some of that.
> 
> I've put together a basic Cucumber Ruby project for testing the TPAC
> mainly as a proof of concept.  Look in the 'features' dir at the
> 'feature' files for the Gherkin:
> 
> https://github.com/jamesrf/evergreen-ils-acceptance-test

This looks _awesome_, James. I've heard about Cucumber before but I
think my Perl/Python oriented brain basically ruled it out due to the
Ruby bit. But... that shouldn't matter for the purpose of testing. And
there is a _ton_ of what you've said that overlaps with the discussion
that was held during the hack-a-way. We had been struggling, a bit, with
how to capture the repeatable testing workflows and thinking about the
wiki as a repo, to start with, but there would be so much value to the
Cucumber approach.

An immediate win would be to extend your search examples to build on top
of the sample data we already have available to cover the kind of
searches that Thomas refactored with the QueryParser fix branch--to
ensure that we continue to get the results that we always wanted from
the previously working searches, and to ensure that we start getting the
results that we always wanted from the broken searches.

We need to move this beyond a proof of concept, this is a great concrete
way of moving the quality of Evergreen forward. Thank you for taking
things this far so far!

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Evergreen and QA

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 02:38:22PM -0500, W. Brad LaJeunesse wrote:
> Fellow Evergreeners:
> 
> At the "future of the staff client" developer meeting Quality Assurance
> (QA) came up repeatedly. This is a serious issue that affects every one of
> us. It obviously affects all users of Evergreen, whether staff or customer,
> but it also greatly affects Equinox in that bugs and other software defects
> increase our support load and also decreases overall satisfaction with the
> Evergreen product. It's an issue we've been deeply concerned about for some
> time.
> 
> A few years ago, there was a formal and concerted QA effort. GPLS was
> generous to fund it, and we were making good headway with nightly builds,
> tests, etc. However, with funding cuts and other issues becoming priority,
> QA has largely been ignored and we've all felt the result. As a community,
> we need to correct this.

Hmm, if you're talking about the work that Shawn Boyette was doing
in 2009, didn't Equinox basically destroy all evidence of his
work--wiping the continuous integration server he had set up, removing
the code that he had developed to run the contiunous integration server,
etc, in February 2010? Sadly, I think GPLS' generous funds weren't put
to the best use. We do still have the Perl module build work that Shawn
put into place for OpenSRF, thankfully, and some unit tests in OpenSRF
as a legacy of his work.

After Shawn was let go, I adopted the buildbot.net continuous
integration framework (same name as what Shawn had been working on but
an existing open source framework with a community) in January 2011, and
a few months later set up a server on a VM that Equinox generously
supplied. I also set up Evergreen to support Perl unit testing,
following Shawn's lead with OpenSRF.
(http://coffeecode.net/archives/244-Evergreens-continuous-integration-servers-past,-present,-and-future.html)

That buildbot ran for about a year, then the VM died for a few months
waiting on Equinox to bring it back to life. Galen resurrected it, and I
got the buildbot running again in April 2012, and it ran until somewhere
around December 2012, when apparently the VM died and was not
recoverable.

Equinox set up another new VM about a week ago to offer to the community
for a testing server, and I've once again started setting up the
continuous integration environment. The server is now alive and running
unit tests on every commit, but I still need to proxy port 8010 to make
it easily visible on the web.

So your assessment that "QA has largely been ignored" might be true from
one perspective, but I've been making noise about it (see, for example,
http://coffeecode.net/archives/228-Got-funds-for-enhancing-Evergreen-Looking-for-places-to-spend-it.html).
and working on improving it for a long time (but also perhaps largely
being ignored; Others in the community have contributed unit tests;
Kevin Beswick, for example, added some unit tests for C libraries, and
way back when David Fiander wrote unit tests for his MHFD Perl modules.
GPLS and UPEI have donated build slaves to the testing effort. We also
had a pretty serious discussion about testing and QA efforts at the
Hack-a-way. James Fournie's recent suggestion to adopt Cucumber (or
something like it) is another sign of QA not-being-ignored by the
broader community.

> Equinox would like to be part of the solution and we very much want to
> re-launch and lead the QA effort, but we need the community's help and
> support. We have a formative plan and we have resources we can devote, but
> we need funding to make it happen.
>
> We believe that a 3-month period is enough to get started and see if this
> effort is fruitful. We're looking for $30,000 to fund a 3-month effort. If
> we're successful, then we'll search for further funding to keep rolling.

I'll be frank, as I was in IRC a few days ago: my concern with Equinox
leading the QA effort is that, as far as I can tell, Equinox doesn't
really have QA expertise to offer. Galen gave a pretty convincing
lightning talk on pgTAP, but we (unfortunately) haven't adopted it.
Bill built the constrictor framework for stress-testing and performance,
but it's not been integrated into the Evergreen processes in any way.
And in the end, you can have all the best tools in the world, but if you
don't use them and you jam code without tests into a release branch
because you want to meet a deadline, then your QA is still going to
suffer.

Rather than relying on Equinox to bootstrap themselves into a position
of understanding how to implement QA (including not just tools but
process changes and development culture changes--a tall order for 3
months), why don't we approach a company that has demonstrated expertise
with QA and see how far $30K would go towards getting them to help us
make the technical and cultural changes to achieve QA success?

I'd suggest OmniTI as one such possible company (disclosure: I know some
good people who have worked there over the years). I bet if w

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Fwd: Question for List-Serve -- Thanks and New Question

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Feb 07, 2013 at 09:48:42AM -0500, Donald Butterworth wrote:
> Thanks everyone for the replies.   The “unapi” solution seems to do the
> trick.
> 
> 
> 
> More of an academic question now that I have a solution (had actually found
> the Examples link and worked through all the possibilities I could think of
> before asking my question…should have mentioned that I suppose but that
> aside)…
> 
> ** **
> 
> I have yet to find a catalog, and I have tried several, where marcxml-full
> works with the original example I posted, even though it is listed under
> supported formats for the catalog.Here is an example of my request in
> case I’m doing something wrong:

Sorry, I replied too hastily to your original example and failed to note
the /isbn/ usage in the URL. Haven't seen that used in the wild and
didn't have a chance to try it out before responding. So no, it doesn't
work, and I apologize.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Fwd: Question for List-Serve

[Dan Scott]

A technical response:

Substitute marcxml-full for mods in the URL.
On Feb 6, 2013 4:14 PM, "Donald Butterworth" <
don.butterwo...@asburyseminary.edu> wrote:

> Wise ones,
>
> We use a freeware product called JTacq to 
> enhance our tech services workflow. One of the many things it does is an
> electronic check of our holdings to verify if we already own a title. It
> does this by checking control numbers and the title index. It also
> retrieves copy level information such as statuses. This is the first time
> that the developer has tried to set it up on Evergreen and he has a
> question
>
> "Given that one can retrieve record information in XML format in the
> following fashion…
>
> ** **
>
> http://server/opac/extras/supercat/retrieve/mods/isbn/0786222743
>
> ** **
>
> Is there a way to retrieve/include the copy summary information in a
> similar fashion and format?"
>
>
> A technical response would be appreciated.
>
> ** **
>
> Many Thanks,
>
>
> Don
>
> --
> Don Butterworth
> Faculty Associate / Librarian III
> B.L. Fisher Library
> Asbury Theological Seminary
> don.butterwo...@asburyseminary.edu
> (859) 858-2227
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Implementing and using Evergreen Serials

[Dan Scott]

We use MFHD serials, which may not be the serials your academic
customer is looking for. However, our cataloguers like it, and it works well
for providing a view of what you have in the collection, but it
doesn't support circulation or claiming, and checkin is a matter of
copying & editing a MARC field... the process is roughly
http://biblio.laurentian.ca/tickets/conifer/wiki/cataloguingEditingSerials
(although the way to get to the Edit MFHD Record button changes with
TPAC).

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 2:22 PM, Kathy Lussier  wrote:
> Hi Jennifer,
>
> You may want to look at the documentation at
> http://docs.evergreen-ils.org/2.3/_serials.html instead of the link you
> found. It looks fairly similar, but the official docs is where any new
> serials functionality will be updated. For example, the "Group Serials
> Issues in the Template Toolkit OPAC" documentation is there and provides an
> alternate method to display serials information in your catalog. When I was
> first using serials, I found the documentation very helpful and easy to
> follow.
>
> As far as workflow, I don't know if this is the case with all of our
> libraries, but I think many prefer to use the alternate serials control view
> to create their distributions and prediction patterns, but then prefer to
> use the serials control view when receiving issues. It's also good to know
> that special issues can only be created in the alternate serials control
> view.
>
> We do have some wishlist items and bugs that we've come across. Most of
> these can be found at (sorry for the incredibly long URL):
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bugs?field.searchtext=&orderby=-importance&search=Search&field.status%3Alist=NEW&field.status%3Alist=CONFIRMED&field.status%3Alist=TRIAGED&field.status%3Alist=INPROGRESS&field.status%3Alist=FIXCOMMITTED&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITH_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITHOUT_RESPONSE&assignee_option=any&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.bug_commenter=&field.subscriber=&field.structural_subscriber=&field.tag=serials&field.tags_combinator=ANY&field.has_cve.used=&field.omit_dupes.used=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.affects_me.used=&field.has_patch.used=&field.has_branches.used=&field.has_branches=on&field.has_no_branches.used=&field.has_no_branches=on&field.has_blueprints.used=&field.has_blueprints=on&field.has_no_blueprints.used=&field.has_no_blueprints=on
>
> Or you can use the shortened URL: http://bit.ly/V2xaMm
>
> None of them jump out at me as being worthier of mention than others.
>
> Also, Lebbeous and Dan Wells are always super helpful if you come across any
> questions or problems as you try to set it up.
>
> Feel free to let me know if you have any other questions.
>
> Kathy
>
> Kathy Lussier
> Project Coordinator
> Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
> (508) 343-0128
> kluss...@masslnc.org
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
>
>
> On 1/15/2013 1:56 PM, Jennifer Bielewski wrote:
>>
>> Hello!
>>
>> I am interested in speaking with Evergreen users that are using the
>> Serials functions in Evergreen particularly if you are an Academic library.
>> I'm happy to provide a summary of any discussion. Im interested in
>> libraries workflow and implementation of using Serials in EG. I have seen
>> the
>> Using the Serials Module - Evergreen from
>> open-ils.org/dokuwiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=serials, but have no working
>> knowledge of using Serials in EG, it's all just in theory.
>>
>> I'm curious about changes in workflow, bugs, permissions etc that we need
>> to set up or be aware of during implementation, and any tricks to using.
>>
>> Thank you!
>> Jennifer Bielewski
>> LYRASIS
>> 1-800-999-8558
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Proposal to change Evergreen versioning scheme

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2013 at 02:07:58PM -0500, Kathy Lussier wrote:
> Hi Alexey,
> >>I think a lot of the "Is it going to be a huge pain to upgrade? Or is it
> >>just a minor upgrade?" angst would be diminished if we (devs and release
> >>managers) did a better job of communicating expectations about each
> >>upcoming release. We pledged to do this at EGConf 2012 and had a good
> >>start, but need to stay vigilant on this front - and pitch in on the
> >>documentation (release notes & upgrade notes).

> >I agree and would like to offer my help with this, however, not sure exactly 
> >how at this point.

> Here are some thoughts on pitching in on the release notes front.
> When I'm in Launchpad, I have started using a needsreleasenote tag
> for pullrequests for release-note-worthy new features that don't
> already have release notes. The development community has adopted a
> practice of writing the release notes when they submit code for new
> features, but this doesn't happen in all cases, meaning that we
> don't have a comprehensive set of release notes at beta time. I
> haven't gotten very far in adding this tag to new feature
> submissions, and I'm sure there are probably several Launchpad
> submissions that should get this tag. I'm hoping it will result in
> more comprehensive release notes at beta time.

Towards this end, during last month's dev meeting I pointed fellow devs
at a sign-off review checklist -
http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dev:signoff_review_checklist
- that includes the question "Does this commit have an associated
release notes entry, if applicable? New features, new config.tt2
entries, new user or org unit settings, changes in behaviour should have
a release notes entry."

People seemed to like the checklist idea, but I'm not sure how to
implement it. Maybe have people copy the checklist results into
Launchpad when they sign-off?

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Proposal to change Evergreen versioning scheme

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Jan 04, 2013 at 03:21:08PM -0500, Rogan Hamby wrote:
> I would disagree.  It's not this one:
> http://www.open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=versioning
> 
> But, I would propose that we are following one based largely on the
> developer's perception of what are major and minor features and impact for
> users.  I've been there for a few of those discussions and those were the
> concerns voiced when discussing version numbers.  Unintentional?  I can't
> speak to that.  But, to me what is already being done, as abstract and ill
> defined as it is (and I think that is part of what bothers some) - works.
>  I'm fine with things as they are.  It works with the larger community's
> goals (or at least mine) and a raw number means something to the front line
> users.

If we had a marketing team, and they had done some research that showed
that version numbers actually matter when it comes to perceptions of a
library system's stagnation (or not) and adoption of said system, then I
would defer to their decision. But as far as we know, we don't have a
marketing team, and I haven't seen any citations about such research on
generic software products in the discussion to date.

On the argument that we're not following our current versioning scheme
criteria around the major number - I like James' pointer to the semantic
versioning proposal, and that fits quite well with library
versioning semantics that we're already doing (to some extent) via
autotools.

That said, given that some major piece of infrastructure is likely to
always change (Dojo or PostgreSQL or XULRunner or Apache or any of the
other umpteen dependencies that we have), we could either strike the
pertinent clauses from the versioning scheme in the wiki, or alter it to
say that it will be incremented when major features are added.

As someone who is (currently very slowly) working towards packaging
Evergreen, I would much prefer version numbers and tarballs to just
pulling directly from git. Tarballs are a much lower barrier to entry
and having a release artifact means that (in theory) the people testing
the release candidates are all testing the same base code, without
differences based on their local version of tools that generate the code
that is in the tarball and not in git.

I don't like the date approach very much as, although we've agreed to
time-based releases, we've also agreed to let the release date slip if
there are known blockers. So we could end up with 13.04 / 13.11 / 14.05
/ 14.10, and that would lead to references to 13.10 having to be updated
in multiple places to 13.11 if we slip. Bah.

I think a lot of the "Is it going to be a huge pain to upgrade? Or is it
just a minor upgrade?" angst would be diminished if we (devs and release
managers) did a better job of communicating expectations about each
upcoming release. We pledged to do this at EGConf 2012 and had a good
start, but need to stay vigilant on this front - and pitch in on the
documentation (release notes & upgrade notes).

I will admit to suffering from fatigue around this discussion, which
last came up in May:
http://libmail.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-dev/2012-May/008203.html

In the end, I'd really like to not have this discussion come up on a
regular basis. There's code and docs and tests and websites to be worked
on, and a product that is solid and reliable and easy to understand and
use is going to succeed no matter how much the version numbers diverge
from the scheme documented on a wiki page. And if the current problem
can be rectified by striking out two clauses from the wiki page, why
don't we just do that so we can focus on everything else we have to work
on?

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Sending E Mail Notification

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 04:04:38PM +0530, Jayaraj JR wrote:
> Dear Sir,
> 
>   E Mail notifications are not working with our Evergreen installation.
> We have configured action / trigger mechanism. Is Evergreen uses any
> particular protocol for sending e mail. We are using Evergreen 2.2 in
> Ubuntu 12.04. mail command in ubuntu is working.
>
> What else we have to check for the functionality of sending E mail
> notifications through Evergreen

One troubleshooting technique is to check the output in your database to
ensure that it's an RFC 2822 compliant email, with To: / From: /
and Subject: headers:

SELECT ateo.create_time, ated.name, ateo.data
FROM action_trigger.event_output ateo
  INNER JOIN action_trigger.event ate
ON ate.template_output = ateo.id
  INNER JOIN action_trigger.event_definition ated
ON ated.id = ate.event_def
WHERE ated.reactor = 'SendEmail'
ORDER BY ate.id DESC
LIMIT 5;

You can also just grab the last 10 action_trigger.event_output results
where there was an error registered when the event fired to see if there
was any error recorded:

SELECT ateo.create_time, ated.name, ateo.data 
FROM action_trigger.event_output ateo
  INNER JOIN action_trigger.event ate
ON ate.template_output = ateo.id
  INNER JOIN action_trigger.event_definition ated
ON ated.id = ate.event_def
WHERE ate.error_output IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY ate.id DESC
LIMIT 5;

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Updating patron expiration dates??

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 01:02:12PM -0500, Tony Bandy wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Does group membership affect the editing abilities of an account on
> Evergreen?
> 
> For example, one of the local sys admins at our libraries is attempting to
> go in and update their staff accounts expiration dates.  For some accounts
> this can be done, but for other accounts, the option is grayed out and no
> edits can be done.
 
Does the local sys admin have the permissions to create and edit the
particular profiles to which the problematic staff belong? For example,
just grabbing a few entries returned from the following SQL query:

SELECT code FROM permission.perm_list WHERE code ~ 'group_application';

group_application.user.staff.acq
group_application.user.staff.circ
group_application.user.staff.admin.local_admin

If you don't have the "staff.circ" permission, then you won't have the
ability to create, remove, or edit user accounts that have a profile of
Circulator.

These are permissions that you should be able to grant to users through
the normal user permission editor interface, or directly in the database
if you prefer that.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Error: Upgrade the Evergreen database schema

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 10:09:58AM -0500, Jason Stephenson wrote:
> Quoting Jason Stephenson :
> 
> >Quoting Araik Manukyan :
> >
> >>Dear Jason,
> >>
> >>We have simply added *-v eg_version=2.3.1* to the script so that it became
> >>
> >>*psql -U evergreen -h localhost -v eg_version=2.3.1 -f
> >>version-upgrade/2.3.0-2.3.1-upgrade-db.sql evergreen*
> >>
> >>Yet, the command did not work. Should we modify the command in a different
> >>way? If it is not difficult, can you share with us the exact script?
> >
> >Did you get the same error message?
> >
> >I believe the 2.3 release maintainer has added a fixed version of
> >the script to the 2.3.3 release tarball. You might want to
> >download that and upgrade to 2.3.3.
> 
> That should be the 2.3.2 release tarball, sorry.

Also, for the archives - while the 2.3.2 release tarball has a corrected
script that does not require the "-v eg_version" option for psql, if
anyone runs into this problem again, the correct syntax is:

psql -v eg_version="'2.3.1'" ...

or more simply, and to remove any worries about release numbers:

psql -v eg_version=NULL ...

Dan

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Ripping slony out for replication

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 12:24:37PM -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> So I was told that if I was able to rip slony out for replication of
> PostgreSQL with Evergreen, that the Evergreen community would be
> interested in this.
> 
> Well, you can, easily. If you are running PostgreSQL 9.0 or above,
> you do not need Slony as long as you are replicating the full
> database. Further, replication can be synchronous and yes, it works
> with PgPool for load balancing. All you need is Hot Standby.
> 
> The benefits are:
> 
> Easier upgrades
> Easier management
> Better Stability
> One less external component
> Very easy backups
> True High Availability

Right-o. And some of us have written about (and have been using)
streaming replication since shortly after 9.0 came along. I wrote a
9.0 approach up in July 2011 at
http://bzr.coffeecode.net/replication9/postgresql-9-replication.txt and
a hasty intro to a 9.1-based method in Evergreen in Action a couple of
weeks ago:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/evergreen-in-action/care-and-feeding-of-evergreen/

I guess the downside that some sites see with streaming replication vs.
Slony is that you get all of the bloat of the auditor tables, etc,
because you have to replicate the entire database. Not a problem for our
installation, but an issue for others.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Academic bibliographic reserves

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 10:35:27AM -0500, Donald Butterworth wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> We are still thinking through our organizational structure and have run
> into the issue of academic reserves. Although the titles we check out for
> material that is placed on reserve is diminishing every year, it is still
> something that needs to be dealt with. Other library systems have a module
> dedicated to reserve material, but I gather academic Evergreen libraries
> have been using the bookbag feature to service this area.

I don't think much has changed since I posted
http://coffeecode.net/archives/250-Current-state-of-academic-reserves-support-for-Evergreen.html
(but note that I did update that post to point at a new branch to better
support TPAC integration).

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] [OPEN-ILS-DEV] JSPAC removal blockers, what and which are they?

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 12:21:36PM -0500, Mike Rylander wrote:
> Well, do don't really know, exactly.  But, thanks to Kathy Lussier and Ben
> Shum, we learned at the dev IRC meeting this week that we have a good
> starting point.  It lives at
> http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dev:opac:template-toolkit:plan#jspac_features_missing_from_tpacand
> each feature now has a Launch Pad bug.

 

> What we need from everyone that can spare a few minutes are data and
> opinions, and the best way to offer both is on the Launch Pad bugs linked
> from the above wiki page.  Please take a moment to scan that list of JSPAC
> features not yet in the TPAC, find the one that looks important or
> interesting to you and your institution, follow the link to the LP bug and
> leave a comment after having read the description and any previous
> comments.  Even if your comment is, "we don't care about this feature and
> are planning to move to TPAC with or without it," that is important
> information to have.

 

> Questions, comments or concerns?

If adding comments to bugs in Launchpad is a barrier for participation
(having to sign up for an account, etc), then posting to the mailing
list would be helpful too, IMO.

Also, in the unlikely event that Kathy and Ben missed something that
matters to you in the current round-up of missing features, feel free to
raise that!

Dan

P.S. crazy flu-influenced idea - we could push one JSPAC removal bug to the
mailing list each day to solicit feedback, so that everyone is looking
at the same bug at approximately the same time...

[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Status of new book: "Evergreen in Action"

[Dan Scott]

As you might have gathered from a couple of mentions on other threads,
various social media sites[1], an article in the Linux Weekly News, and
the Evergreen blog[2], we[3] went to Google last week and wrote a book.

"Yeah yeah yeah, enough rambling," I can hear you say, "where's the
book?"

Right. We're just polishing up a few last bits[4] before we publish it
publicly... our goal is to make paid and free versions available, with
all proceeds from the paid versions going to the Evergreen project, and
we hope to have everything ready by the end of the week.[5]

So stay tuned - we'll have an update for you soon!

1. https://plus.google.com/u/0/102508317458716178274 /
   http://twitter.com/search?q=%23egils
2. http://evergreen-ils.org/blog/?p=865
3. "We" are Lindsay Stratton, Robert Soulliere, Kathy Lussier, Jim
   Keenan, Dan Scott
4. Like adding the authors' names somewhere, and fixing some
   formatting glitches...
5. Just in time for certain holidays!

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Client 2.3.0 grabbing and not releasing memory

[Dan Scott]

On Dec 4, 2012 8:46 AM, "Galen Charlton"  wrote:
>
> Hi Bob,
>
> On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 8:38 AM, Bob Neeper  wrote:
>>
>> The only solution so far has been to completely exit the client many,
many times during the day.
>> Our director said Saturday, the East CIRC (Has the most activity) client
took so much ram he had to kill the process.
>
>
> A bug has been opened on Launchpad for gathering information about
potential memory leaks in the staff client.  One of the points raised so
far in that bug is a question worth asking your circ staff:
>
> "Taking a different tack, Jason Etheridge suggests asking circ staff who
seem to be hitting this problem the worst this question: by chance are you
keeping you entire morning check-in history in the on-screen list (not
using Trim List)?"
>

Also note that xulrunner 15 addressed some longstanding memory leak issues
- and as we're on 14 currently, it might be worth trying out a more current
version for the sake of comparison to see if that makes a difference.

http://m.cnet.com/news/firefox-15-remembers-to-forget-old-memory/57501454?ds=1

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] All Search Results are not showing in TPAC

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 11:10:01AM +0530, Jayaraj JR wrote:
> Dear Sir,
> 
> We are using Evergreen 2.2.2. While searching using a keyword through JSPAC
> will display correct results. When the same search is made using TPAC, it
> will also show the same number of results.
> 
> But the details of the results are displayed incorrectly.
> 
> For example We made a search using the keyword ' Biology'. It gives  335
> results in both TPAC and JSPAC. In TPAC the first results page will display
> one result ( it is suppose to show 10 results per page ) even though it is
> showing *Search Results Results 1 - 10 of 335 )*. When browsing the second
> and later pages  it shows 'Sorry, no entries were found for your search '
> 
>  Kindly instruct us what to do

Chances are that many of your bibliographic records are missing a 901 field
with subfield 'c' identifying the record ID. There are probably error
messages in the logs that mention this. If so, then you need to reingest
your records to ensure that they have 901 'c' field/subfield combos.

See http://goo.gl/s0QPQ for a chunk of the 2.1-2.2 upgrade script that
was recently added to try and flag this issue and help sites reingest
the records.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] I STILL need your stories! (Evergreen Newsletter)

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Amy Terlaga  wrote:

> Thanks, Dan - I can certainly highlight the new committers.  And Kathy's
> writing something up about the last developer's meeting.
>
> Are you saying you can on this?
> >Thomas and I went to the Google Summer of Code Mentors' summit, but we
> haven't written anything about it (but probably should).
>

Okay, at long last on the GSoC 2012 wrap-up front:
http://evergreen-ils.org/blog/?p=858 (I feel horribly guilty that it took
us so long to get this out, hopefully my facts are reasonably straight...)

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] circs.tt2 files

[Dan Scott]

The git commit log is generally helpful when you want to trace changes and
the associated rationale for changes.

In this case, you're probably looking at
http://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=Evergreen.git;a=commitdiff;h=f64b4a4aca8884e46e1e60c7a4a38fd7e9157952-
the old style was fine for an English-only, fixed-width, fixed-font
size
use case, but the new style supports translation, as well as doing (in my
biased opinion as the author of the change) a much better job of supporting
different screen widths and font sizes.
On Nov 30, 2012 4:31 PM, "Tony Bandy"  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Just wanting to confirm if anyone knows about changes in the circs.tt2
> files between 2.3 and 2.3.1 (for the TPAC)?  I was working on some template
> changes for the libraries in our consortium today and noticed that the code
> was different.
>
> Has anyone else noticed this?  Maybe it was noted in the release notes and
> I just missed it.
>
> Please pardon any duplication...but I liked the table implementation in
> 2.3 better than 2.3.1...or maybe I'm looking at the wrong file
>
> Tony
>
> --
> Tony Bandy
> to...@ohionet.org
> OHIONET
> 1500 West Lane Ave.
> Columbus, OH  43221-3975
> 614-486-2966 x19
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] I STILL need your stories! (Evergreen Newsletter)

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 03:33:32PM -0500, Amy Terlaga wrote:
> Hi all-
> 
> There's still time to get your Evergreen news in!  You have until this
> Friday, end of day.
> 
> Don't miss your opportunity to be featured in the November/December issue of
> the Evergreen newsletter.
> 
> (Seriously, I'm hard up for stories.  Somebody throw me a bone.)

Thinking of some development things...

Is there a summary of the outcomes of the Hack-a-way, as was promised in the
last newsletter?
http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=communications:newsletter:sept-oct_2012

Thomas and I went to the Google Summer of Code Mentors' summit, but we
haven't written anything about it (but probably should).

Maybe we could celebrate new first-time committers?

Is there any coverage of the recent releases?

>From feedback, the number of countries running Evergreen continues to
grow: http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=evergreen_libraries

Sorry, just a quick random braindump of potential topics... hoping it
might spark some thought.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] TPAC [%content%]

[Dan Scott]

Hi Michael:

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 02:21:17PM -0500, Michael Schell wrote:
> I've been playing with creating a new template for the TPAC and have
> only learned enough to be dangerous.  Can anyone explain where
> [%content%] in the base.tt2 file pulls from?  There are a few
> things it is showing I would rather it didn't.

This is a case of the WRAPPER directive in action:
http://template-toolkit.org/docs/manual/Directives.html#section_WRAPPER

"The WRAPPER directive provides a way of simplifying this a little. It
encloses a block up to a matching END directive, which is first
processed to generate some output. This is then passed to the named
template file or BLOCK as the content variable."

If you run "grep -r base.tt2 Open-ILS/src/templates" you'll find tons of
files use base.tt2 as a generic container via the WRAPPER directive.

Hope this helps,
Dan

P.S. Please configure your email client to send plain text email; the
list archives don't deal very well with HTML-only email; for example:
http://libmail.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-general/2012-November/007760.html

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Apostrophe and Title Searches (still an issue?)

[Dan Scott]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 12:53:05PM -0500, Tony Bandy wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> After upgrading to 2.3, we're noticing the apostrophe issue when doing
> title searching in the catalog.  Specifically, when using the apostrophe,
> titles never get found.

Hi Tony:

Please provide more details.

What is the title in question? Where is the MARC record for it?

What search are you trying to use to retrieve the record? Are you using
JSPAC or TPAC?

Can you reproduce the problem using a clean install of a supported
release?

Thanks,
Dan

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Library Communications Framework

[Dan Scott]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 02:12:29PM -0800, Lori Bowen Ayre wrote:
> I think instead of inviting BIC to use Evergreen, it would be more fruitful
> for we, US Libraries, build on the work they've done to look beyond those
> many protocols (from among the "yet another" you mention) that a) are
> implemented completely differently across systems) and b) are limited in
> the functionality they support and c) are built around one-at-a-time
> barcode technology.

I think that you completely misunderstood what I meant, which was the
BIC / CILIP could use Evergreen as a reference implementation for their
LFC work. As in, they could go ahead and develop modules that add the
LFC standard protocols to Evergreen, thereby making at least one ILS
capable of speaking to equipment that would also implement the LFC
standard protocols.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Library Communications Framework

[Dan Scott]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 10:13:01AM -0800, Lori Bowen Ayre wrote:
> I have just returned from the UK where I met with BIC and CILIP (Chartered
> Institute of Library and Information Professionals) representatives as well
> as RFID vendors.
> 
> BIC has commissioned of a new set of library interoperability standards,
> which define a framework for the communication of data between self-service
> devices and other library terminal applications to and from library
> management systems. This framework replicates and extends the range of
> activities commonly conducted using 3M's open SIP.2 protocol and
> additionally provides web services functionality for the exchange of
> information.
> 
> It is anticipated that further functionality will be added over time, as
> new requirements are identified by libraries and by their management system
> and terminal application developers and suppliers. Support for additional
> functionality in the areas such as stock management is under consideration.

I suspect saying "here's yet another set of emerging standards, you guys
should spend your limited development hours chasing them in the promise
that one day it will be useful and adopted by the world" isn't going to
go very far. Libraries or equipment vendors generally want to get an
immediate return on their investment rather than a promise that one day
what they're paying for might be useful.

On the other hand, BIC and CILIP would certainly be welcome to use
Evergreen as a reference platform for implementing their emerging draft
protocols. Reference implementations are pretty common in standards
processes, and having it available as part of a reasonably large open
source library system, with test suites that help enforce adherence to
the documented standards, might sway equipment vendors to actually adopt
the standards themselves.

[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] OpenSRF 2.1.2 release

[Dan Scott]

As of November 18, 2012, the OpenSRF 2.1.2 release is available for
download from the OpenSRF downloads page at
http://evergreen-ils.org/opensrf.php

This release corrects a problem where OpenSRF 2.1.1 clients were unable
to access the shared configuration section of opensrf_core.xml,
resulting in errors. The most commonly observed symptom of this problem
was an inability to registering new Evergreen workstations in the staff
client after installing the OpenSRF 2.1.1 release.

The fastest means of updating your OpenSRF 2.1.1 release to 2.1.2 is to
copy the version of src/perl/lib/OpenSRF/System.pm from the 2.1.2
release over the installed version of that Perl module. For example, on
Debian Squeeze:

1. cp src/perl/lib/OpenSRF/System.pm /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.1/OpenSRF/.
2. Then restart all OpenSRF Perl services

Many thanks to Jason Stephenson for diagnosing the problem and providing
the fix in such a timely fashion.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Dymo printer settings

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 11:32:47PM +, Jesse Ephraim wrote:
> We use the Dymo LabelWriter 450
> I can put you in contact with the staff member who set it up, if you
> like.

If you and Jane opt to have a conversation off-list, can one of you
please post the resolution back on the mailing list? There have been
a number of previous discussions about this issue, and as my latest
attempt to share the configuration options that we had to follow with
our Evergreen 2.3 on Windows XP clients didn't meet Jane's needs
(http://list.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-general/2012-August/007232.html),
whatever you come up with might be of more help to future people
interested in the mysteries of setting up Dymo label printers on
Evergreen...

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] grace period and reserve materials

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 12:01:55PM -0500, Gordana Vitez wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>  
> I have a question re: hourly loan materials, like reserves, that
> accrue fines at an hourly rate. How are other libraries dealing with
> the grace period for these hourly loans? Ideally, we'd like to see
> fines charged as soon as the item is overdue. I realize this seems
> like a really ogre-ly thing to want, but we need to get reserves back
> in a timely manner for the next person. 
>  
> Is there a setting I can play with to remove the grace period on
> reserve items only?

I think you need to look at least two things:

1) Admin -> Server Administration -> Circulation Recurring Fine Rules &
edit the "Grace Period" column of the rule(s) that are applied to your
reserve items.

2) Run the fine_generator script (via cron) on a much more frequent
basis. I think the default recommended time frame is daily, but ours
runs every 15 minutes. (We might need to look at optimizing the script
if we want it to run every minute... haven't tried going that far!)

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Updating Instructions from 2.2 to 2.3

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 09:24:43AM +0530, Jayaraj JR wrote:
> Dear Sir,
> 
>When can we get the updating instructions of Evergreen from version
> 2.2 to 2.3.

Robert Soulliere wrote up these instructions as part of the
documentation some time ago: 
http://docs.evergreen-ils.org/2.3/_upgrade_the_evergreen_code.html

You can subsitute 2.3.1 for 2.3.0 throughout, as Evergreen 2.3.1 was
released very recently and the docs haven't had time to catch up yet.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Mobile catalog?

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2012 at 04:10:38PM -0500, Aaron Zsembery wrote:
> On Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 2:30:59 PM "Buzzy Nielsen" 
>  wrote:
> > I think it's a lot more accessible, and less hassle,
> > for our patrons if we don't require them to go out and download a
> > separate app to access something that can be made accessible without one.
> It also includes those (like myself) who use other mobile platforms
> (such as Windows Mobile) that aren't based on iOS or Android

And as one of the token Canucks in the room, Blackberries / Playbooks :)

[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Security releases: OpenSRF 2.1.1; Evergreen 2.3.1, 2.2.3, 2.14

[Dan Scott]

The Evergreen development team has announced security releases for the
currently maintained versions of OpenSRF and Evergreen. Please see
http://evergreen-ils.org/blog/?p=828 for complete details.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Mobile catalog?

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2012 at 10:46:53AM -0500, Kathy Lussier wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I don't know the best way to develop and maintain an Evergreen
> mobile site, but I wouldn't say the native catalog is particularly
> mobile friendly. The GRPL example is much closer to what I would
> call a mobile friendly site. I would expect the mobile catalog to be
> more stripped down than the native tpac skin. I visited some
> 2.3/master catalogs after reading the initial e-mail, and I still
> need to do zooming as soon as I reach the catalog to read the
> screen. What I would envision on a truly mobile site is:
> 
> 1. On the main catalog page, I am immediately presented with a
> search box front and center, similar to what happens when I arrive
> at Google's mobile site. Font sizes should be bigger so I don't need
> to zoom. I would expect the filters to be below the search box to
> fit to the screen better, as we see in the GRPL mobile site.
> However, even on the GRPL site, I need to zoom to get that search
> box front and center. A prominent link to "My Account" would also be
> needed. Many libraries use the bottom space of their main page for
> graphic images, search tips, or other extraneous material. I
> wouldn't want to see that piece of the page displaying on a mobile
> site because it takes up valuable real estate.
> 
> 2. On the search results page, I want to see a list of titles that,
> once again, is front and center without the need to do any zooming.
> I think the bibliographic information should be minimal on a mobile
> site and the "place hold" link prominent. I would also like to see
> the call number for the library I am searching here. We often think
> of users searching a mobile catalog from home, but, as a library
> user, I never use the public catalogs in my library anymore. I find
> it much more convenient to walk around the stacks with my iPhone in
> hand. I would either entirely scratch the facets on the search
> results page or find another way to provide access to them. For
> example, in a typical browser, Amazon provides limiters in the left
> sidebar of its search results. When I access Amazon on my phone,
> those limiters are located at the bottom of the screen, and I get a
> "Choose a Department" option at the top of my search results that
> brings me to those limiters.
> 
> 3. The mobile catalog should also have the ability to link to the
> full version of the catalog (as I saw in the GRPL example) so that
> people who want to access added content or features can do so. In
> those cases, the person is actively choosing to do that pinching and
> zooming dance.
> 
> 4. Geolocation would also be a great addition to the catalog,
> particularly for consortia and multi-branch libraries. It could
> identify the library that is nearest to the user and possibly set it
> as the default search location.
> 
> I don't remember where I saw them, but I recall seeing some
> screenshots last summer from the GSOC project to build an Evergreen
> Android app. If I remember correctly, the app did a lot of the
> things identified above. Personally, I prefer a mobile site over an
> app because I'm guessing some users won't want to go through the
> trouble of downloading an app to search the catalog. Also, as an
> iPhone owner, the Android app wouldn't be useful to me.
> 
> I'm curious if others have thoughts on what would make the catalog
> more mobile friendly.

Thanks for the concrete suggestions. Almost all of this can be achieved
via CSS, possibly with some changes to the underlying HTML (e.g. tables
to divs or whatever so that "Place Hold" appears under the bib info
instead of way over to the right). I don't see anything that suggests a
need for two distinct versions of HTML in your wish list.

Geolocation functionality could be supported for desktop browsers too,
but be careful in how you implement it. If you go to branch1.example.com
in your browser and get redirected to automatically searching branch2
instead of branch1, that's probably going to break user expectations.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Mobile catalog?

[Dan Scott]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2012 at 09:06:13AM -0500, Ben Shum wrote:
> I think you're thinking of the Bill Erickson's "Beanstalk" simple
> TPAC that was a sample mobile catalog. 
> http://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=working/Evergreen.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/collab/berick/beanstalk
> 
> Also, I guess Bill Ott, GRPL took that code and ran with it some.
> See http://catalog.grpl.org/eg/tinypac/home which is what I get when
> browsing them from my phone.

Yep. I will admit to deliberately not mentioning beanstalk in my initial
response because I think the approach of carving out different sets of
HTML for different browsers (whether mobile or desktop based) is
difficult to test and maintain, versus defining the content that you
want in your HTML once and changing the layout via CSS based on the
display capabilities of the consuming browser. And it seems that Google,
at least, agrees that responsive design is the best practice:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Mobile catalog?

[Dan Scott]

On Nov 7, 2012 8:11 PM, "Dan Scott"  wrote:
>
>
> On Nov 7, 2012 7:42 PM, "Buzzy Nielsen" 
wrote:
> >
> > Mostly its formatting. I'm currently looking at it on the stock browser
on a phone running CyanogenMod 10, and in order to use it effectively, it
requires a lot of pinching and zooming. The results also appear below the
facets (screenshot attached). We are running 2.2, though. I'll check out a
catalog running 2.3. We're hoping to upgrade in September. Thanks!
> >
>
> Here are two TPAC 2.3-ish screenshots. I think the move away from fixed
widths definitely helps with the pinching/zooming, although at skinny
enough resolutions the facets still get annoying.
>
> The first uses Firefox Beta on the Nexus 7 in portrait mode. No facet
problem, but there is some weird crowding of the pagination widget for some
reason.
>
> Then there's the screenshot of Chrome, which does suffer from the
facet-at-the-top effect... but fixing that problem would fix the same
problem on low-resolution desktops too.
>
> So... I still think the answer is to just invest a bit more energy in
improving the TPAC. It's come a long way already. Contributions welcome!

Oh... I should also note that at Conifer we somewhat exacerbated the
problem by shifting to a base font of 15 px instead of the default 12 px.
At http://www.concat.ca (where the default is in effect), the facets don't
cause the same problem in Chrome.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Mobile catalog?

[Dan Scott]

On Nov 7, 2012 6:58 PM, "Buzzy Nielsen"  wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Does anyone out there have a TPAC mobile catalog? We've been tentatively
exploring the possibility of having a mobile catalog here in the Sage
Library System, but we don't quite know where to get started. Is there
already a mobile skin included with 2.2 or 2.3? If not, would anyone care
to share templates of their mobile catalog with us?
>

Is there anything specifically non-mobile about the TPAC on 2.3 that you've
encountered? Apart from possibly disabling the JavaScript so that it
wouldn't have to download the meg of code for auto suggest (which we
provide a config var to do), I would be interested in knowing what you
think a mobile skin would need, as the TPAC works quite well with the
Android devices at my disposal.

Note: in 2.3 we put a fair amount of effort into reducing the fixed-width
design of the TPAC, improving its accessibility and localisation support,
making it easier to skin... and that effort has continued beyond 2.3.  I
hope we can maintain our focus on producing one good user experience. Maybe
one of the next steps is to work towards a more responsive design?

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] 2.3 colors.tt2 and CSS

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2012 at 02:38:08PM -0500, Tony Bandy wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I apologize in advance if this is the wrong list or it's been discussed
> already, but given 2.3 and the colors.tt2, is there a similar option for
> the regular stylesheet CSS?  Can each library have their own version of the
> stylesheet?  Reason I'm asking is that given some of the colors are
> hard-coded in the sheet, with multiple libraries, not quite sure how to
> override this other than make new directives in each colors.tt2.

I might not be understanding your question correctly, but
Open-ILS/src/templates/opac/css/style.css.tt2 is itself a template that
you could override at multiple levels (e.g. add one layer of
customization across the consortium, and then another layer at each
system, and then another layer at each branch).

I know some people (hey bshum!) have expressed a want / need to break
the colors out more granularly, if there's some common ground that we
could find and merge to Evergreen core, that would probably help sites
with their customization efforts.

If I'm misunderstanding, then some concrete examples would probably help
move the conversation along :)

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen and Apple

[Dan Scott]

Hi James:

On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 04:32:22PM +, James Wagner wrote:
> I've had several patrons come into the library saying they couldn't access 
> their accounts from their Apple products. Two have been using Safari on their 
> computers, one person was using an iPad 2 (upgraded to 3?), and another 
> person was using their iPhone. The problem is that Evergreen is not showing 
> them the login screen, so they can't put items on hold or see their account 
> information. Could this be an authentication issue?
> 
> Unfortunately, this is not a universal problem. One of my staff used her iPod 
> to log into her account and renew a book, this morning. Her iPod is several 
> years old. Could there be something about newer Apple software that doesn't 
> play nicely with Evergreen?
> 
> We started getting the complaints shortly after we upgraded from 2.2.1 to 
> 2.2.2.

I noticed you're still using the JSPAC, which has huge amounts of
JavaScript and is quite fragile as a result... that's why we switched to
the TPAC as the recommended catalogue as of Evergreen 2.3 (and will be
removing the JSPAC entirely in 2.4). You do have a version of the TPAC
on 2.2 ( https://lincoln.niagaraevergreen.ca/eg/opac/home ) but it is
rather limited in functionality in comparison to the 2.3 edition.

I'm wondering if the problems you're seeing have more to do with
upgrades to iOS and OS X that might have rolled out at the same time as
your Evergreen 2.2.1 -> 2.2.2 upgrade. One of the major problems with
the JSPAC is that we're using a version of a JavaScript library that
dates back several years ans thus doesn't know about the quirks (or even
the existence of) new browser versions. I know that IE 10 breaks on the
JSPAC as well, probably due to the JavaScript library not knowing how to
deal with a two-digit version number for IE.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Whoops... RDA is a coming!!

[Dan Scott]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 04:33:53PM +, Lisa Hill wrote:
> Hi Folks-
> RDA- which I am being told does not stand for retirement day approaching  is 
> set for 3/31/2013.
> 
> What that means for KCLS(and likely some others on this list) is that
> we will see an onslaught of records with the publication date recorded
> in the 264 $c second indicator  1 instead of the 260 subfield c which
> is where it has been for like a million years.
> 
> So what is everyone doing about this? Are you reingesting your records
> to include the 264 $c is anyone working with ESI to ask them to
> develop some code so that if there is nothing in the 260 $c the record
> would display the 264$c_1?
 
Rather than jumping directly to development proposals with specific
companies or individuals, I would suggest opening a bug at
http://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen with the details so that all
Evergreen developers can discuss the best way forward for ensuring that
we handle this in the Evergreen 2.4 release. There are a number of
potential ways of handling both the indexing and display side of things.

> Sorry if this email sounds frantic- I am not a cataloger- I kept
> hearing that RDA was coming- and I sort of hid my head in the sand
> I guess I will always be a reference librarian at heart.
> #catalogerswereright

There are a number of other RDA changes to address as well. Having one
or more bugs with clear directions on what the community wants will help
all of us!

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Need Help for Upgrading

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 09:28:07AM +0530, Jayaraj JR wrote:
> Sir,
> 
> We  ( Indian Institute of Science Education and Research
> -Thiruvananthapuram ) have been using Evergreen version 1.6.0.0 for
> automating the Library Oparations. Now we would like to upgrade to the
> latest stable version. I have learned from the manual that we have upgrade
> step by step from version 1.6.0.0. to 1.6.0.1 then to 1.6.0.2 and the like.
> It will take a lot of technical effort. we are using Ubuntu version 8.04 as
> server. Is there any easy way for us to upgrade direct to any of the recent
> releases. What factors should be considered while upgrading ?. Kindly
> provide some easy manual for this purpose.

I don't know what version of OpenSRF you're on, but you'll want to
upgrade to 2.1.0.

For Evergreen you'll need to upgrade from 1.6 -> 2.0 -> 2.1 -> 2.2 ->
2.3, with all of the intermediate SQL upgrades in between. Also, 1.6 has
not been supported for a very long time, and even 2.0 has been out of
support for some time now, so there won't be much community support
available for those hurdles.

And you'll want to upgrade your Ubuntu 8.04 server to Ubuntu 12.04.

And you'll likely want to change from script-based circulation to
in-database circulation, and from the JSPAC catalogue to the TPAC
catalogue.

I honestly think, at this point, you would be better off just dumping
the core data from the actor, asset, biblio, and action tables (those
are the important ones I can think of off the top of my head), and
treating it as a migration of data to a brand new Evergreen server.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] authority validation

[Dan Scott]

Looks like it's been reported as this bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1013783 - there is a patch for
part of the problem.

If you're paying for support and you're being asked to pay for development
to fix a regression, that sounds weird.
On Sep 28, 2012 12:53 PM, "Gordana Vitez"  wrote:

>  Hi Gislaine,
>
> As far as I know, this problem is considered a bug in 2.2 and someone
> would have to sponsor development in order to have it fixed. Quite frankly,
> I haven't looked into how much the development would cost to have this
> problem fixed.
>
> If I'm wrong, I would love to hear if someone has figured out how to deal
> with the problem.
>
> Thanks!
> Gordana
>
>  Gordana Vitez
> Library Services & Systems Coordinator
> NC Libraries and Learning Commons
> Niagara College
> 300 Woodlawn Rd
> Welland Ontario
> L3C 7L3
> Phone: (905) 735 2211 ext 7404
> Fax: (905) 736 6021
> gvi...@niagaracollege.ca
>
>
> >>> On 9/28/2012 at 11:09 AM, in message <
> f8c346176383bf41ac37111becb039110de59...@f6stcemmba04.statcan.ca>, <
> gislaine.hame...@statcan.gc.ca> wrote:
> Hello list,
>
> Is anyone else having trouble with the authority validation? We are
> testing on 2.2 and the red colour alert that indicates a heading is not yet
> authorized is not functioning.
>
> Gislaine Hamelin
> Integrated Library Systems Coordinator | Coordonnatrice de système intégré
> de la bibliothèque
> Information Resources Management | Gestion des ressources d'information |
> Statistics Canada Library | Bibliothèque de Statistique Canada
> R.H. Coats Building | Immeuble R.-H.-Coats / Floor | Étage 2 Q
> Statistics Canada | 100 Tunney's Pasture Driveway, Ottawa ON K1A 0T6
> Statistique Canada | 100, promenade Tunney's Pasture, Ottawa ON K1A 0T6
> gislaine.hame...@statcan.gc.ca
> Telephone | Téléphone 613-951-4576
> Facsimile | Télécopieur 613-951-0939
> Government of Canada | Gouvernement du Canada
>
>
>

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen on OS other than Ubuntu or Debian

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 03:09:50PM +, Lazar, Alexey Vladimirovich wrote:
> Dan, that's good to know, thank you. I also found your blog post [1] 
> interesting and informative. I guess, I was kind of curious why Apache had to 
> run as opensrf, but not curious enough to ask.
> 
> Thinking strategically, fewer barriers and more documentation for running 
> Evergreen on various Linux distributions is a plus, but like you say, return 
> on investment is a consideration. I think any steps in that direction, like 
> your work with SELinux, are helpful though.
> 
> So, why does Apache have to run as opensrf user?

It doesn't have to, which is why we should change the instructions and
defaults accordingly.

Long story short, it wants to write logs to /openils/var/log which is
owned by the opensrf user, but we can default to syslog and avoid that
problem.

Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Evergreen on OS other than Ubuntu or Debian

[Dan Scott]

I'm likely the only person running Fedora - on my laptop - and I would not
recommend it for a production server as it has a very limited support
lifetime.

I know there are some sites running RHEL or white box variations thereof,
but there's not really an active champion of those distros and thus no
longer appear in the prereq installer or README.

I have some hope that my work on packaging dependencies for Fedora and
figuring out SELinux (per a recent blog post) will help with RHEL
eventually, although at present I'm not targeting EPEL as the return on
invested effort is not high.

Beyond that, there was some work on FreeBSD support by Bill Erickson and
Jason Stephenson.
On Sep 20, 2012 2:29 PM, "Lazar, Alexey Vladimirovich" <
alexey.la...@mnsu.edu> wrote:

> Hello.
>
> What organizations out there are running Evergreen in production
> environments on OS other than Ubuntu or Debian? I am considering testing
> some of the documentation I'm editing on an additional OS and was curious
> what would actually be useful. I noticed the install instructions for
> OpenSRF and Evergreen include Fedora. Is that because someone is running it
> for a production Evergreen system?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Alexey Lazar
> PALS
> Information System Developer and Integrator
> 507-389-2907
> http://www.mnpals.org/
>
>