[Koha] All I want from Santa (or possibly the great Paul Poulain ;)

[M Brooke Helman]

Salvete!

I love Koha so far. I am really grateful to the developers for this
gift. It's really making a difference for the library. I was pleasantly
surprised by how easy, quickly and smoothly the upgrade from 2.0rc3 to
2.0 went. I can't yet commit financial resources to the project, so I
well understand that there are more important things for every one out
in developer land to do. I also am not sure whether I'm noticing bugs,
or asking for large or small features, so I'll put my requests here. I
want to make it plain that my attitude here is very similar to the
attitude I take towards Inter Library Loan. I will put my request out
there in a bottle, and if someone picks it up and responds, stellar! I'm
also aware that a lot of this is probably me setting stuff up wrong. If
the fix can be posted, then great. I just need to be able to tell my
tech guy (my fiance) what he needs to fix when he feels like it.


On items with multiple 856u fields, the URLs are running into each other
and making a mockery of your lovely database. There is clearly a pipe in
the display, so I'm not sure why this is happening. I can cut and paste
the url into the address box at the top one at a time, but it's so sweet
to be able to have patrons click on the url attached to the record and
have it go straight to the address. What am I doing wrong? Here's an
example

http://65.110.139.7/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=2174

On items with fictitious character subjects for characters with a first
and last name, the comma that separates their name seems to be wreaking
havoc with the subject headings. I could have sworn that this wasn't
happening initially. This is important to me because it turns

Baggins, Frodo

into 

Baggins
Frodo

If I type Baggins, Frodo in the search box on the first page of the
OPAC, it will find the right records. However, if I click on the subject
link from the record itself, it seems to be searching for just Baggins
or Frodo not Baggins, Frodo. So it doesn't link to anything. What am I
doing wrong? You can see it at the same example:

http://65.110.139.7/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=2174

I am having issues with the subtitle field. I've noticed that in other
Koha catalogues it will not display until you hit the records page, but
I can't even manage to get it to do that. Under my Marc Links page, I
have it linked to the 245b remainder of title field. For now, I am being
naughty, and squishing the subtitle into the 245a title field for
important subtitles. How do I get the subtitle to show with my record
screen? I.E. this screen

http://65.110.139.7/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=4

I am having issues with the additional author field. Left Behind is co
written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, for example. Theoretically, I
ought to come up with every book they've written together even if I type
Jenkins, Jerry in instead of LaHaye, Tim. Koha doesn't appear to search
this field properly from a basic keyword search. However, clever
programmers you are, if I enter Jenkins into the author field of an
advanced search, it will in fact bring up the full list. I have the
additional author field linked in Koha, so it does indeed appear on my
records screen. I wish this was linked like the author field is, and
would be searchable under a basic search. What am I doing wrong? Again
the record is:

http://65.110.139.7/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=4

I know I am asking for blood on this one. But it would be fantastic if
we could please have an author search from the MARC biblio management
screen

http://65.110.139.7:8080/cgi-bin/koha/acqui.simple/addbooks.pl

This is useful for me because on older books where there is no ISBN and
the title is strange, sometimes it takes me a while to find the record.
I know that I have to type a "The" if the title starts with "The" on
this screen, but every now and then, I forget the title proper and have
to turn the breeding farm on its ear to find my record.

This is something I haven't even tried yet and have no clue where to
start on. In Massachusetts, we fill out a form every year that's
basically an inventory of our collections. I know that there's a shelf
list function, and I see the stuff for inventory taking. I don't know
how to use either. What I want to be able to generate is a raw number of
records for a certain type of material. For instance, one of my item
types is Adult Fiction. I now have all of my Adult Fiction in Koha.
Rather than count each book by hand, I would like Koha to tell me how
many Adult Fiction items are in the database. When I'm fully automated
with Koha, I would like to be able to know how many of all of the item
types I have in my library. In my dreams, I would love for Koha to be
able to generate a report that tells me how much each item type
circulates. (IE my fiction collection as a whole has circulated 13,000
times last year 4,800 of which were renewals.) In my wildest dreams,
Koha would take that data and do nifty pie charts I could present to
other librarians or officials. I definitely get the impression that I
can at least get raw numbers. But how?

Thanks so much,
Brooke @ Hinsdale MA

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