[301] in ad-lib
Forwarded message: [patf@MIT.EDU:advance issues/problems]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Grant Young )
Thu Apr 6 13:26:06 1995
To: patf@MIT.EDU
Cc: ad-cat@MIT.EDU, opac-lib@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 95 13:25:41
From: gyoung@MIT.EDU (Grant Young )
Whew! I've condensed some of the message and inserted my answers...
>The Rotch testers met this morning to discuss testing progress. We have
....
>For one, there were several issues about moving around in Advance.
>
> 1-the system seems to time-out too quickly and bounce you back
> to the initial screen. Can we slow this down?
Yes. The timeouts are part of the port (user) records. We can
change them to whatever seems best.
>
> 2-The opac parameter qualifications also time-out. When we get
> the new initial search screen ready there will be a warning
> onscreen that the params. have been changed. However, maybe we
> want to slow down this time-out also. I can't really tell how
> long it takes now.
I think this is the same timeout issue as above. I think that when
the system times out it resets the terminal. Timeouts are primarily for
public terminals so they reset to an initial state when the patron goes off
looking for a book. Geac has the same feature/annoyance. I'll take a look
at what we use on GLIS and set the opac port record to match.
>
> 3-There are some screens that you get to in Advance that don't
> offer an easy way out. Some testers here found it was easier
> to just do a new search than to figure out how to get out of a
> screen.
I believe this is the way it's designed. When Matt was here and we
were searching in the OPAC it became the way to get out.
>
>Searching issues.
>
> 1-We are wondering when we will be able to search for series
> numbers. Will this not be until the 2nd migration?
Sam's the indexing expert. I'll let him answer this one.
>
> 2-Why is it that when you want to change qualifiers or enter
> material type codes sometimes you can enter the term and it
> works? Other times, you have to put in the question marks,
> call up the list of possibilities, and select one - a time-
> consuming bunch of steps when you already know which one you
> want.
I think I'll need examples to work with here. If you know the
terms you should be able to enter them directly.
>
> 3-how will call number SUFFIXES be searchable? RVC's video-
> cassettes have videocassette as a suffix, where Music has it
> as a prefix. Will either work as an opac parameter qualifier?
I think we'll be moving the suffix like things into the call
number prefix field as part of the Holdings table. We could use it as a
qualifier there but we need to be somewhat careful about how many
qualifiers we create. Call number suffix means something different on
Advance. It becomes a substitute for the item status in Advance and is a
separate field. In GLIS it was part of the call no. I don't recall
whether we were planning to strip the current call no. suffixes during the
GMA. Sam?
> 4-will it be possible to chain any commands in Advance as you
> can with the present GEAC system?
I don't think so. But expert searching should take care of most of
what you use the command chaining to do.
>Display issues.
...
Sam's been working on the displays. Eric's group has been working
on the serials stuff. There are definitely a bunch of issues that need to
be worked out here.
As far as the Catalog goes we have a lot of flexibility in what
displays at a variety of levels. Rather than trying to fix every problem
that's come along I've been letting Sam coordinate the work. He's been
tuning the display that the cat users see and when that's working he was
planning to copy for the opac users. I'll take a quick look and see if I
can remove those annoying circ codes.
>Food for thought...
>
>Pat, et. al.
>------- End of Forwarded Message
>
-- Grant Young, Libraries Systems Office
