User:JJU/portfolio/New title banners & refined searching

New-Title Banners and Refined Searching added to Koha

Edmund has been hard at work on some new Koha OPAC enhancements that we'll be rolling out to your systems soon.

Recent Items Banner

The first is an option which will add some more interest to your OPAC's landing page, with a random assortment of titles that have recently been added to the catalogue. If you'd like to see this in action check out the Western NSW and Far West LHNs Libraries Network home page: http://gwahsopac.intersearch.com.au/ You'll be able to turn this off and on in your system preferences as well as change the number of titles displayed and how often they'll refresh.

Setup Instructions:

This option can be activated under Administration > System Preferences. On that page you select the Local Use tab on the left. Above that list is a button that says "New Preference." When you click on the button you'll see a form. You only need to touch the first three fields, Explanation, Variable and Value.

Explanation is the text that explains the preference (so you can find and change it again later). This should be something like: "Number of new titles to randomise on the home page." It doesn't matter if it's exactly the same text, just something that helps make sense of the setting.

Variable is how Koha recognizes and interprets the new setting. This must be: ProsentientNewTitleLimit (all one word, with that capitalization). It does matter that this is exactly the same.

Value is how big a list of recent items you would like the homepage to be choosing from for its random display. It will only display one at a time! This can be whatever number you want. If you set it to 5, it will only pick from the last five items added. If you set it to 40 it will choose from the last 40 items. If you set it to 0, nothing will display and your homepage should appear the way it did before.

Once you've filled in those three fields, click the "Save" button. The preference should now be listed on this Local Use page. If you want to change the number of items being chosen from in the future you can return to this page and just change the number for the ProsentientNewTitleLimit preference. (This is why you want your explanation to be something that makes sense; it will help you find it in the future.) Thanks very much to GWAHS for funding this rotating banner of new titles feature.

Refine Your Results

The other is a bit more of a nuts and bolts enhancement. If you're on Koha 3.2, Edmund has added a way to respecify what your looking for in your searches without having to retype your original search terms. You may have already noticed it when you've been searching your catalogue.

Instructions:

Now when you have a list of search results (this applies in both the Staff Client and the OPAC), there are two new options just above the list: A button that says "Edit this query" and a text field with a button that says "Search within these results." If you click on "Edit this query" a new Advanced Search screen comes up with your previous search already input in the main search box. This way you can add in new search terms, and limit your search to specific item types or libraries. This is similar to what you can do with the normal "Refine your search" options on the left of your search results list, but goes deeper into your catalogue than those options allow.

The "Search within these results" feature is for when you just want to add some search terms to your query (after realizing your initial search found far too many more than you wanted). You simply type them into the text box (you can use CCL commands if you like) and click the "Search within these results" button. Again, unlike the "Refine your search" options on the left of the screen, these new search terms are applied to the entire list of search results, not just the first screen.

Prosentient is on Twitter

Finally, we're now on Twitter, so if you want to follow @prosentient you can read a bit more about what we're doing day to day. We'll also be trying to post links to interesting news about Koha and IFLA and other library technology topics we're following. Here's a link to our profile: https://twitter.com/#!/prosentient