[Koha] Koha 3.0 : item types or CCodes (again - sorry ..)

[Owen Leonard]

>> I do want to assign icons to item types which indicate Format ie DVD,
>> Book, and will want those to display on the OPAC search results too,
>
> currently the itemtype icons that display for the search-results are
> 16x16 silk.

This is a troublesome issue: the icons that display in XSLT search
results are connected to the material type of the MARC record. Those
icons are not configurable in Koha administration. They don't have any
relation to your records' item type.

Joann, you wrote to me that your scheme "hinges on the icon, CCode,
Shelved at and Call number
fields all being displayed in the OPAC search results, and the CCodes
set for Advanced Search options."

Unfortunately neither the icon, CCode, or Shelved at information is
displayed in search results. Getting shelf location into search
results seems pretty doable, but the new architecture of items in Koha
3 creates a problem for displaying ccode and/or item type information
in search results.

Now that ccode and itemtype are stored at the item level rather than
the biblio (title) level there can be any number of ccodes and
itemtypes attached to one bibliographic record. Even if this isn't the
case for your library, the very possibility makes it difficult to
imagine a system for displaying them accurately in OPAC search
results. Would you have to display an icon for every kind of
itemtype/ccode which were attached to each record?

Cab Vinton wrote:
> The one major problem that I see, that we've bumped against as well,
> is that Koha currently forces you to choose between Item Types &
> Collection Codes for searching purposes.

The whole itemtype/ccode issue is really confusing. I'm still learning
the ins and outs of it even though I've been working on Koha 3 since
the beginning. Here's as much as I know:

collection codes are good for defining, you know, collections. And if
you choose you can set those as a search point in the OPAC. But you
can't use collection codes to set circulation policy, so I can't set a
collection code and then limit my patrons to only checking out 10 of
that collection code. And though you can associate an icon with a
collection code, the effort is pointless: Koha doesn't display that
icon anywhere.

Item types /can/ be used for defining collections. Like with ccodes,
you can choose to use itemtype as a search point in the OPAC. But as
Cab points out it's an either/or proposition. Unlike ccode, you can
use itemtype to set circulation policy. This makes it useful for
defining broad categories of materials which share the same policy.

For instance, we use itemtype to define "AV materials," under which
various ccodes fall: Adult videos, juvenile videos, adult DVDs,
juvenile DVDs, etc. The AV itemtype allows us to set a circulation
policy which says that our patrons can only have 10 AV materials at a
time. The broadly-defined itemtype allows us to "collect" multiple
categories (ccodes) under one policy.

Unfortunately, displaying an icon in the OPAC for "AV Material"
doesn't make much sense when the patron really wants to know whether
it's a kids video, a grownup DVD, etc. If it weren't for the circ
policy issue (in particular the "Current Checkouts Allowed" aspect of
issuing rules), we'd be better served to covert our ccodes to
itemtypes and use ccodes as broad category definitions for statistical
use only.

What steps could be taken to make this work well for everybody?

- Enable display of collection code icons in places where information
about individual items is displayed: the holdings table of
opac-detail, lists of checkouts, lists of holds on specific copies,
lists of waiting holds.
- Add the ability to define circulation policy based on ccode as well
as itemtype?

I don't know what a broadly-applicable solution to the icons in search
results problem is.

  -- Owen

-- 
Web Developer
Athens County Public Libraries
http://www.myacpl.org