New Books List Copyright 2000-2005, The University of Texas at Arlington Written by Michael Doran, doran@uta.edu UTA Libraries, Box 19497, Arlington, TX 76019, USA See also: http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/autolist/ "Voyager" and "WebVoyage" are trademarks of Endeavor Information Systems, Inc. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 6.1.2 CHANGES: enhancement | |------------------------------------------------------------| Utility revision ---------------- The utility of discovering the Oracle-Perl environment has been revised and renamed "dope.sh". |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 6.1.1 CHANGES: fix and enhancement | |------------------------------------------------------------| Path to Perl ------------ Changed the path to Perl on the top line of the scripts to point to a version of Perl that is being installed by Endeavor during the Voyager with Unicode upgrade. This Perl version has new DBI and DBD::Oracle modules that are compatible with the upgraded Voyager Oracle version. Utility for determining Perl versions and DBI/DBD modules --------------------------------------------------------- Included a utility ("versions.sh") that can be run from the command line. The script attempts to determine how many copies of Perl are installed on the system, what versions they are, and which ones have the DBI & DBD::Oracle modules. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 6.1 CHANGES: enhancement | |------------------------------------------------------------| Canned link via bib_id ---------------------- The link-back to the WebVoyage record from the New Books List result pages is now accomplished via the bib ID redirect that was enabled as part of the Voyager with Unicode release (and that was actually implemented at some point for 2001.2). This enhancement solves the problems inherent in linking back by title for the items that lacked an ISBN number. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 6.0 CHANGES: enhancement | |------------------------------------------------------------| Unicode compatability (enhancement) --------------------- This version of the New Books List has been designed for compatibility with the Voyager Unicode release: 1) Files containing text to be output as HTML source code have been UTF-8 encoded. 2) Data extracted from Voyager by newbooks.pl will no longer need to undergo any character conversion. 3) HTML pages generated by newbooks.cgi now include meta tags that explicitely declare the UTF-8 character set. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 5.0.6 CHANGES: new feature | |------------------------------------------------------------| Browser compatibility tweaking (improvement) ------------------------------ Made some minor tweaks to HTML code for uniformity of display in different browsers. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 5.0.5 CHANGES: new feature | |------------------------------------------------------------| Explicit declaration of character set (improvement) ------------------------------------- New Books List HTML pages now specify, via a META tag, that text is encoded in the Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) character. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 5.0.4 CHANGES: new feature | |------------------------------------------------------------| New language module for Welsh (new feature) ----------------------------- Thanks to the University of Wales Aberystwyth, there is now a newbooks.Welsh language module. A minor change was made to newbooks.cgi to better accommodate Welsh syntax. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 5.0.3 CHANGES: bug fixes | |------------------------------------------------------------| URL encoding for email submission (bug fix) --------------------------------- If location fragment strings contained spaces, it could result in problems if an end user limited a search by that location, the results exceeded the records-per-page, and the end-user then attempted to email records. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 5.0.2 CHANGES: improvements | |------------------------------------------------------------| Windows 2000 version (improvement) -------------------- There is now a Windows 2000 version of the distribution. ISBN vetting (improvement) ------------ The newbooks.cgi script does a more accurate vetting of ISBN values for the canned search link-back to WebVoyage. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 5.0.1 CHANGES: bug fixes | |------------------------------------------------------------| URL quotation marks ------------------- Voyager title searches that contained quotes were failing with the error message, "System could not interpret your search." The newbooks.cgi program now removes quotation marks in the title portion of the link-back URL, for those items without ISBN numbers. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 5.0 CHANGES: new features, improvements, bug fixes | |------------------------------------------------------------| Choice of language(s) for user interface (new feature) ---------------------------------------- Sites can choose a monolingual interface, or can select from available language modules to provide a multilingual interface that allows the end-user to select the desired language. A language module template makes it easy for a site to add any additional languages to those included with the distribution. Easier upgrades (improvement) --------------- All configuration has been moved out of newbooks.cgi and put into the newbooks.ini file and language modules. Separating out these parts should make upgrading easier. SQL "pass 3" option (improvement) ------------------- The newbooks.pl program allows for the optional capture of bib records with an 856, but sans an item record. Many libraries will not want to use this, but it is available for those that don't maintain 856 data in the mfhd record. Form method changes (improvement) ------------------- All form "post" methods were converted to "get". Including the query string in all calls to the newbooks.cgi program, (other than the initial call) means that entries in the web server logs can potentially contain more useful data. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 4.0.2 CHANGES: HTML code cleanup | |------------------------------------------------------------| Hard-coded "week" (bug fix) ----------------- An instance of the word "week" that was hard-coded into newbooks.cgi was replaced with the appropriate variable. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 4.0.1 CHANGES: HTML code cleanup | |------------------------------------------------------------| Compatibility with Internet Explorer 6.0 ---------------------------------------- The HTML code was tweaked so that pages look OK when viewed with the IE6 browser. This mainly had to do with how IE6 rendered table cell content when the table was placed within a div element that had an align="center" attribute. HTML code cleanup ----------------- A few minor code modifications were made to more closely conform to the HTML 4.0 Document Type Definition (DTD). |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 4.0 CHANGES: new features, improvements, bug fixes | |------------------------------------------------------------| New, improved SQL query (improvement) ----------------------- The definition of "what constitutes a new item" (as embodied within the logic of the SQL query) has been totally revamped. Now, new electronic-only items (e.g. eBooks) are included along with the new physical items (i.e. things with an item record). Physical items are defined as "new" if they have both an item create date AND either a mfhd create date or mfhd update date within the desired time span; new electronic items are defined as "new" if they have a mfhd create date within the desired time span. (Alan Manifold contributed to the physical item definition, but any errors in logic or execution are my own.) The new electronic-only items display a web link to the resource. Physical items that include a URL within the bibliographic record also display a web link. Items that have OPAC suppression at the bib level will not be retrieved by newbooks.pl. Previously, only items with OPAC suppression at the holdings level were ignored. Thanks to Paul McClay for alerting me to this oversight. Location information is now drawn from the item table (rather than the mfhd_master table), which is more accurate. Thanks to Alan Manifold for his insight on this. Weeks or months option (new feature) ---------------------- It is now possible to retrieve (and display) 4 months of items instead of 4 weeks. This is a sysadmin option at the time of setting up the program, not an on-the-fly patron option. Although the New Books List was not conceived to be archival in nature, many of the libraries using the program either modified the code to include larger time periods or asked for that enhancement. Lag time choice (new feature) --------------- The "lag time" built into the date criteria of the SQL query exists so that your library's technical services dept has some time to actually catalog an item (and hopefully get it on the shelf) before it is picked up by the new books list. For some libraries, the previous default lag time of one week resulted in a large number of items showing up as "In Process". The newbooks.pl program can now be configured to allow either one week or two weeks of lag time. More records-per-page choices (improvement) ----------------------------- With some libraries choosing to extract a database of 4 months (rather than weeks) of items, it was thought that the addition of a 100 records per page choice might be useful when it came time to display the records. Short or long title choice (new feature) -------------------------- There is now the option of displaying either the short title (the 245 field up to the slash), or the long title (the full 245 field). Temp locations display (new feature) ---------------------- If an item has a temporary location assigned, the temporary location will display below the permanent location. Publisher info display (new feature) ---------------------- At time of configuration, the option exists to display imprint information (publication place, publisher, and date of publication) below the title in the results display. WebVoyage-style pagination (new feature) -------------------------- Large results sets now have WebVoyage-style pagination. This allows intermediate jumps forward and backward by the "records-per-page" interval, for up to 5 jumps forward and 2 jumps backward, as well jumps to the first and last page. This new pagination can also be color-coordinated similar to the WebVoyage default appearance (or the color coordination can be turned off - my preference!). "No third tab" option (new feature) --------------------- Some libraries do not utilize the third tab of the WebVoyage search screen (i.e. Course Reserves). Displaying the third tab of the initial New Books List form is now optional via a configuration variable. Date format change (internationalization) ------------------ The format of dates included in the Save/Print/Email output has been changed from mm/dd/yyyy to Month dd, yyyy to avoid confusion between US and European date conventions. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 3.3 CHANGES: new features, improvements, bug fixes | |------------------------------------------------------------| Diacritics display (new feature) ------------------ MARC data extracted from Voyager by newbooks.pl is converted into the Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) character set. Latin-1 is the base character set for Unicode. For American, British, Australian, and New Zealand sites, conversion is from the MARC-8 character set used in MARC 21 records. Finnish sites have the option of converting from MARC21-fin or FINMARC character sets (modified MARC-8 and ISO-6937/2, respectively). Minor changes were made to newbooks.cgi in order to accommodate keyword searching in a "diacritics-rich" environment. Link back via ISBN (improvement) ------------------ The "definition" of an ISBN number was expanded to allow for dashes ("-"). This is apparently common in non-USMARC records and helps "internationalize" the New Books List. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 3.2 CHANGES: new features, improvements, bug fixes | |------------------------------------------------------------| Ubiquitous "New Books" Tabs (new feature) --------------------------- It is now possible to have the "New Books" tab appear on all of the WebVoyage search screens. This involves editing the opac.ini file rather than any changes to the New Books List program code itself. Instructions for implementing this new feature are included in the INSTALL file. Alan Keely of Wake Forest University is responsible for this little gem. Wrong Color (bug fix) ----------- The search form code in newbooks.cgi had an instance where $inactive_tab_color was assigned as a font color, when the correct variable should have been $active_font_color. A correction has been made. Thanks to Jeremy Shellhase for catching this. Location Fragment Spaces (bug fix) ------------------------ Location fragments in newbooks.cgi can now contain spaces. This had been causing problems for patrons using Netscape browsers (IE users were not effected). William Doering sent the original alert to this problem. inetd.conf Reference (correction) -------------------- Corrected an erroneous comment in newbooks.pl regarding inetd.conf services related to remote copy. "Can't locate Net/FTP.pm" (bug fix) ------------------------- The line, "use Net::FTP;" in newbooks.pl has been commented out with instructions to uncomment it if choosing the FTP transfer option. This avoids the "Can't locate Net/FTP.pm" errors for sites not selecting that option. |------------------------------------------------------------| | Version 3.1 CHANGES: new features, improvements, bug fixes | |------------------------------------------------------------| WebVoyage Integration (new features) --------------------- Search form and results pages have the look and feel of the WebVoyage 2000.1 search screens. Credit for the search form idea is due to Curt Parrish, Internet and Library Systems Administrator at Union University. Curt did it first. Users can now select how many "records per page" they want. This not only matches WebVoyage functionality, but it also reduces page load time for searches that would otherwise have displayed many hundreds of items. Users can page forward or backward to next or previous pages. Users can now "save search results" similar to the WebVoyage functionality. They can select records, retain the selected records as they page through the results, and email or format for printing. Results pages have a "mini search" form at the top of each page allowing users to do another search without returning to the original page. Install Instructions (improvement) -------------------- There is now an INSTALL file with instructions to guide sysadmins in deploying the programs. Downloadable Tarball (improvement) -------------------- No need to cut and paste code from multiple html pages. All the code and informational files are available as one easily downloadable tarball. Fewer File Dependencies (improvement) ----------------------- The cgi-mdd.pl Perl library is no longer needed -- the single function required by newbooks.cgi had been moved to that program. The static newbooks.html page is no longer needed -- the initial search form is now generated by the newbooks.cgi program. Configuration (improvement) ------------- All site-specific code has been extracted out of the main body of the programs and placed at the top of each file. This should make it much easier for non-Perl programmers to install these programs. In addition, extensive commenting has been added to the configuration section to help with customization of those programs. "New Book" SQL Options (improvement) ---------------------- There are now two options for the SQL query that defines what a "new book" is. One is based on Acquisitions related tables, the other is based on plain-vanilla item records. Items marked "suppress in opac" are filtered out of list. File Transfer Options (improvement) --------------------- There are now three options for transferring the output file from the SQL query to the desired server/directory. Sysadmins can FTP, copy or remote copy the file. Links to the Catalog (improvement) -------------------- Now all items are linked back to the catalog, not just the items with ISBN numbers. Items without ISBN numbers are linked back with a title search. Sorting (improvement/bug fix) ------- Author sorting now displays items with no author at the bottom rather than the top of the sort list. Call number sorting now displays "In Process" (i.e. uncataloged) items at the bottom rather than the top of the sort list. Diacritics Cleanup (improvement/bug fix) ------------------ Titles and authors containing MARC "combining" (non-spacing) marks now have the non-spacing character removed. Although the intended diacritic does not appear, the confusing extra character (that was never meant to display) is deleted. This is a good, if not perfect, solution. This bug fix also results in more accurate sorting and allows title-based links back to the catalog for items that originally had a MARC combining mark.