[Koha] search function desired added to OPAC

[Brad Weishaupt]

Hello Koha Community.

 

My name is Brad Weishaupt, and I am with a new small seminary
(master's-level theological school) that is one year old and under the
help and support of four churches. The classes meet in four different
cities connected by videoconferencing technology. I am in South Florida
USA (in Jupiter, near West Palm Beach), and we have two other campuses
in Florida and one in Arkansas. The professor can be in one city and
some students are there plus the rest in three other towns. The library
is split up accordingly, but its even more complicated than that. I am
not a librarian (I'm a techie-musician, but put in charge of this), so I
am learning as I go here.

 

We are just starting to catalog our library, and have enlisted the aid
of LibLime and Koha to do so. We are a unique (I think) situation - we
have a multiple-dispersed library. Under the one umbrella of The
Expositors Seminary Library, we have four locations for that library.
Also, we are cataloging for student use the church libraries at each
location. Also for student use, we are cataloging the pastor/staff
members' individual libraries at each church/city. So we have a combined
total library, a seminary library in four distinct locations, four
church libraries and 10 or so individual staff libraries, for a total of
about 16,000 volumes. I will be setting up student records to use their
seminary library as their "home" library for default searches (as that
will be their main usage), but they will also want access to any other
or multiples of any libraries. We want to be able to search the entire
library, any particular library, or any library in the student's
hometown.

 

I noticed in setup exploration that a library can belong to a GROUP. I
setup all my libraries under a group of their city name. The staff page
search has the ability to do searches specifying a group. The OPAC does
not. This would really be important to our students, to be able to
specify a search on books in their own city (Group). 

 

The programming coding is already done - it is on the staff page. How
hard would it be to copy that code to the OPAC page, so students could
set a search parameter on group? Seems like it would be a relatively
easy copy and paste function, wouldn't it? (heh-heh! I know programming
is seldom that easy!) Does anyone else find value in this function being
added to the OPAC search page? Has anyone already done this? 

 

So...? What do I do about it?

 

I look forward to your replies.

 

 

Brad Weishaupt

Cell: 561-339-7553

 

Director of Technology

The Expositors Seminary
17475 Jonathan Drive
Jupiter, FL 33477

561-746-0115

  

www.expositorsseminary.org

Associate Minister to Music and Worship Ministries

Grace Immanuel Bible Church

17475 Jonathan Drive

Jupiter, FL 33477

561-746-4617

 

 

 

www.gibcjupiter.org

 

 

 

 

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