Re: [IUG] OPAC Display

["Strouse, Mary" <STROUSE at law dot edu>]

I'll say this again, for the benefit of anyone who may be contemplating
reindexing. The index heading sorting problems that Bob points out are
caused not by Browse_d itself, but by a combination of BROWSE_d and
III's once-innovative "rotated subject" display.  

Since the rotated subjects are actually built into the index, the only
way to turn off this feature is to recompile the subject index.
Rotating the headings (and indexing all possible variants) was a
solution to the problem of patrons not being able to predict the order
of subject strings.  Approaching the problem by indexing was probably
the state of the art at the time.  Today, the same issue would doubtless
be approached by parsing and display (that is, through the interface
rather than through the underlying database).

I have a strong suspicion that systems with the rotated headings are
going to have to get rid of them eventually, because there will be
increasing conflicts between the new and old approaches.  There are
various things that need to be done to improve subject display,
including ordering headings hierarchically rather than alphabetically,
and search results lists to be toggled between heading display and
record display.  Having the ability to search for keyword-in-subject and
get back a list of matching subject headings (an index browse rather
than a record browse) would completely obviate the need now met by
rotated subjects.

Mary

Mary M. Strouse
Head of Technical Services
Judge Kathryn J. DuFour Law Library
Catholic University of America
(202) 319-5547
(202) 319-4447 FAX
http://library.law.cua.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org] On Behalf Of Bob Duncan
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 6:10 PM
To: IUG INNOPAC List
Subject: Re: [IUG] OPAC Display

At 11:29 AM 09/28/2007, Robert wrote:
>said shafik wrote:
> > BROWSE in Millennium Administration is in CAPS by default.
> > I typed in my message Browse_t=/abcdefghjklmnopqrstuvxyz/
> > So, I wounder how it works on your title search? What do you have 
> different than us?
>
>I noted after the fact that yours worked with d and not t, unlike ours
>which worked with t and not d ;-)
>
>For what it's worth, we are still non-Pro, 2006 1.3.  I have whatever I
>used to have for t, and added d the other day, which seems to have
fixed
>the d problems:
>
>BROWSE_d=/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz/
>BROWSE_t=245/ab/0|240/abc/0|970/t/0|ab/0
>
>Probably won't help, but there it is!


I've been dealing with printer problems all day (literally...argh), 
so excuse me if this sounds a little cranky, but I think it's time to 
end the madness about correcting the display of "World War Ii" using 
browse wwwoptions.  (And I'm not picking on Robert---you just happen 
to have the most recent post on the subject.)

The purpose of the browse wwwoption is not to alter the display of 
oddities like WW Ii;  the purpose of the browse wwwoption is to 
specify what subfields display in the first line(s) of an index 
browse.  An offshoot of this is that---depending on how your system 
is set up---if you specify a browse wwwoption for a specific index, 
it changes where the system gets the information that displays, that 
is, from the index or from the record.  When you define a browse_d 
wwwoption, instead of seeing what comes from the index (World War 
Ii), you see what's in the record (World War II).

So while specifying a browse wwwoption for an index may indeed 
"correct" some awkward display issues, it can also lead to display 
issues that may not be exactly what you want and are possibly more 
awkward than World War Ii (not the event, the display).

An example from our system.  If I do a subject search for protest 
movements, and I have no browse_d wwwoption defined, I'll get an 
index browse that's arranged alphabetically.  So I'll see (e.g.) the 
following in sequence:

Protest Movements Poland Drama
Protest Movements South African War 1899 1902
Protest Movements Soviet Union
Protest Movements Soviet Union History Revolution 1917 1921
...

But if I define a browse_d wwwoption, those same lines become:

Protest Movements -- Poland -- Drama
South African War, 1899-1902 -- Protest Movements
Protest Movements -- Soviet Union
Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921 -- Protest Movements
. . .

There's been recent discussion about which is better, but I think 
that depends on the user population.  My only point in bringing this 
up is that before everyone runs out to add browse_itag wwwoptions to 
their systems that they consider what impact "fixing" World War Ii 
will have on other parts of their catalogs.


Bob Duncan

PS:  If anyone has any job openings that don't include fixing public 
printers, please tell me where to send my resume.  ;o)


~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~
Robert E. Duncan
Systems Librarian
Editor of IT Communications
Lafayette College
Easton, PA  18042
duncanr at lafayette dot edu
http://www.library.lafayette.edu/ 


--
This message was distributed through the Innovative Users Group INNOPAC
list
Public replies:  INNOPAC at innopacusers dot org
Update your subscription options:
http://innopacusers.org/mailman/listinfo/innopac