[Koha] ItemType icons and "biblio vs biblioitems" revisited (sorry)

[hansbkk at gmail.com]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 10:49 PM, Owen Leonard <oleonard at myacpl.org> wrote:
>> Well, I expect that the biblio records will be getting updated
>> frequently, and since I also plan to use virtual shelves (lists) and
>> have members using tagging, item-level item-types seem the way to go
>> rather than duplicate biblios, right?
>
> It's really just the frequency of updates that is an issue. Having
> item-level item types or not doesn't much affect lists and tagging.

But if I use biblio-level itemtypes, and therefore have a duplicate
biblio-level record for each format, each one will need to be updated,
tagged and listed separately? I think keeping these all in sync would
be a data maintenance nightmare, since there currently isn't a way to
bulk update the "biblio" level information on all of them in a single
operation.

My Proms 2009 video is available in Bluray, AVI, MPEG, standard DVD
and mixed data/vdo DVD. All are exactly the same content, just
different presentation/delivery formats.

>> Plus (correct me if I'm wrong) this eliminates my having to choose for
>> Advanced Search - only Collection Code will be available for that?
>
> You can choose whether Advanced Search uses collection code or item
> type either way, if I'm not mistaken.

I thought the Advanced Search option was only available for the
biblio-level item types? I meant if I'm choosing to us Item-level
ones, I can't use them for A.S., and therefore I'll make sure to use
CCodes appropriately as a search factor. Note that then I'm **not**
using the item types for my "format" information, just for circ
policies, and don't need these to show up anywhere.

>> Back to icons then, is there a good biblio-level field to indicate in
>> the search results (ideally with an icon) that a given biblio has
>> available (child items with) format A only, or formats A+B or A+C?
>> Fortunately there aren't that many possible combinations. . .
>
> In terms of search results, there is no good way to indicate multiple
> formats if you're using item-level information. It's a common


I'm hoping I just didn't make myself so clear. Using the same example:

Biblio:
  Title: Proms 2009 video
  Subjects: Music; Anglophilia
  SomeField: "Disc-VDO + Disc-AVI" (a single string value)

Items:
  3 copies of Disc-VDO
  2 copies of Disc-AVI

The member could then choose to check out one disc, or one of each, etc.

Now if that **Biblio-level** SomeField has say seven possible values,
enforced by Authority, isn't there a way to assign an icon to each
value and have this show up in search results? Or failing that,
re-purposing an existing field that will at least show the text there?



> complaint and we don't have a good solution. The best you can get is
> to turn on XSLT and see a biblio-level material type (book, audio,
> etc).

This pulls up those tiny icons based on the leader content right? I'm
hoping to not have to get into customizing that. . .