Priority Owner Problem Description Examples Who is
involved
1 Rich Barton as an SFX source Get SFX buttons into Barton to link to holdings Beth, Nicole,
WAG,
SFX/Verde
1 Rich/Darcy Forgot your password Write a script so that if a user forgets his password the
system can email it to him automatically
1 Darcy / New features Check out how McGill has implemented some of the new ChristineM
Christine / version 16 features that I don’t think we’ve had time for reported
Beth yet. I think their help/new features page does a nicer job of
explaining these options that what I’ve seen from Ex Libris.
- Christine
Also, see emails 050627 + 20050705 from Christine:
Combine several tags together into a one-line citation (into
a single virtual tag - kind of like the PST)
New "Sorted Index" feature: A Sorted Index button
appears in a Browse list whenever there are 2 or more hits
under an entry in the Browse index:
http://aleph.mcgill.ca/F/?func=file&file_name=help-news
"Exploded" Subject Headings: If you click on a subject
heading on the full record screen (or via the paragraph
view of the Results), notice that there are now options to
search the subject heading with or without its extra
subheadings.
051215 look at McGill
060304 WAG looked at and wants to implement; wait until
current reindexing done, then implement
060??? Stephen and Beth will meet to discuss custom
fields
1 Austin / Z13-AUTHOR and Z13- Z13-AUTHOR and Z13-YEAR fields were missing in See email from orbitee dated ChristineM
Darcy YEAR fields - service various Web pages. These fields were available in 14.2 050822 reported
pack update and have been restored. Christine is not sure whether we
used these fields or not, so we should look at this.
050826 Tracy sez: If you have any books on loan you can
go into Your Account and look at the detailed record for
one of your loans. You'll see that the page is missing
anything useful about the book (author and title). This
would be a good set of changes to make. I think this was
an enhancement request I wrote a few years ago :-)
051215 Also includes Z13-TITLE? and make labels
smaller on this screen
060317 Austin will check with Chrsitine about finding
documentation and approach to this problem; Darcy will
check with Tracy
060331 Austin got email with instructions from Christine,
will experiment with this
2 Austin / EndNote export not EndNote export format only working on one of the 2 places Christine
Darcy working where it is currently available. [required double-spacing reported, Mat
doesn't work] Wilmott
050919 Christine: Ex Libris won't fix it without an interested in
enhancement request, so we may want to take on some of fixing
the work arounds ND is planning.
051215 should we remove this as an option if it doesn't
work?
060322 Mat Willmott getting involved, will work with Rich
later this week
060324 met with Mat and Rich; will get Austin to work on
simple fixes; Mat will work on export help page that Barton
will link to
060331 met with Austin, he will change extension of output
file from .end to .txt, try to create new output option for
RefWorks, change text for EndNote output option; Darcy
will look at how to better format entire page; Darcy also
sent as an OPAC enhancement request to ELUNA
060420 Austin has done his part
2 Austin/Darcy Title browse: Heading at With a title browse search, some characters will display To demo, go to full record of Beth
top will display strange oddly under the heading at the top "Results for…"; believe 000253599 and click on title:
characters the unicode font set is not being properly applied Effect of organic solvents for
051215 Austin says change page to use the bib style on extraction of acetic acid during
the "Reults for" line ̲ ̲ ̲ ̲ ̲
fermentation by Cḻosṯṟi̲ḏi̲um
060208 still broken ṯẖe ̲ ̲ ̲ ̲ ̲ ̲ ̲
̲ ṟmoaceṯi̲cum
060317 Darcy will check with Beth
2 Christine / User display preferences ISSUE 1: Tracy
Austin If some users change their display preferences, it can reported
cause those changes to happen for everyone. issue 2
050922 Christine says ExL says, "This is the same
problem as PRB 11681 / SI 36659. A fix_request has
been created for that, so there should be a rep_change
soon..." I don't know how quickly "soon" will be, but they
know we're interested now, so we should hear about it as
soon as the fix shows up in a service pack. I think
fix_request means it's either in development, or someone
has even already done the fix, but needs to get it
approved.
050929 the OPAC preferences fix (1298) will be in the
Sunday Oct 16 service pack; we removed the option from
the Your Account pages, so when this is fixed, we need to
add it back
051215 Christine sez, fix caused another bug, haven't
heard back from EXL
060412 the problem is that the first time a user tried to
change their preferences they get an error message (but
not after that); ExLibris replicated this problem and are
testing this on our test server - we should bug them again
in about a week
ISSUE 2: (tackle when issue 1 is fixed)
Allow users to be able to set table view as their default
view (they would have to log in for this option).
3 Austin / Link to map of Library A user suggested linking to a map from the "library" field LisaH
Darcy (since it can't be from the Holdings link). reported
050825 Christine says, "Aleph does have some
functionality for showing library information from the
library field. I don't remember why we turned it off,
whether it didn't work well or didn't seem all that useful."
051215 USM base; look at it OOB
060427 see I button on full record
3 Darcy / Due date displays New options for due date status (due date statuses now Normally, it just says, Due" with Christine,
Denise look different). the date. I also noticed a status Georgiana
051215 Christine says look in release notes for options of "On shelf" [001281877 - CD
of The Kite Runner] instead of
"In library" which is our usual
status, right?
3 Darcy e-shelf Christine: We’ll *have* to implement[e-shelf] sooner rather
than later, as I think they dropped the existing bookshelf
in 17 or 18.
3 Darcy/Rich New book search /rss Improve our ability to search for new books see UMich: ChrisS/Anna
feed 060322 check Aleph 18 capabilities http://www.lib.umich.edu/newboo reported
ks/index.php
3 Darcy Font issue for Russian Try out Code2000 to solve problem re: ELUNA list - even see Beth's email, 060322 Beth
ligature if this is a shareware code, if folks don't have it, it will
revert to MSArial; test with Unix Athena
3 Darcy Holdings display #1 By removing some fields for redundancy, permanent Reserves temp location: Darcy, Tracy
Display of holdings on temporary locations were displaying instead of temporary 000943470 and Christine
items screen locations for some reserves materials - the fix for this Journal: 000293592
made journal displays look awful; lots of emails on issues
from Darcy, Tracy and Christine
050817 TEMP LOCATION IS NOW DISPLAYING - STILL
NEED TO MAKE THIS LOOK BETTER
3 Darcy Holdings display #2 Make URLs not display - make link called "Full Text", ToC + Pub descr: 001259314
Brief results (full cat) "Table of Contents" "Publisher Description", etc. Full text + ToC: 000293592
CHRISTINE (5/27):
It’s probably a matter of keeping the display that has the
label linked, and just not displaying $$u. However, not all
URL’s have a label built in. We should add a word like
“Link” or “GO” or something… Or, I think I can
conditionally display the URL if it stands alone, and
suppress it if there’s a labelling subfield present.
3 Darcy Holdings display #3 More than 1000 items: change phrasing to be more clear Timeout: 000296523 Anita reported
Items display when over or raise the limit? Some records still time out. 1000 records: 000284609
1000 Suppressed records ar ebeing counted.
Chrstine sez:
Sugggest wording: This record has too many items to
display at one time. Up to 1000 may be displayed below.
Try using one of the filters....
The fact that suppressed items are counted here is a bug
Ex Libris is supposed to be working on.
There aren't that many titles affected by this. I think there
were maybe 50 with over 500 items, and around a dozen
with over 1000. Of course, many of those are important
and frequently used titles.
050817 Darcy will decide on new phrasing; will work later
on changing limit, etc. (priority 3)
050826 Christine says there is a fix [PRB 13002] in the
latest service pack
051215 No longer counting supressed; still need better
error message
3 Darcy Holdings display #4 Make the link to the items page more prominent. Millicent
Availability/Location in Suggestions include: reported
Brief and Full Displays • changing “Availability: Click All items to check current
status” to “Availability: Is it on the shelf?”
• make Is it on the shelf? be a different color (orange or
red)
See U of Maryland
060208 Thisis being explored by WAG in context of
making Barton an SFX source
Fixed? Owner Problem Description
FIXED Austin Call# search in results If you try to do a call# search in the search box at the
050810 screens bottom of a results page, you get an error, "This code
does not exist in the table.". LOC needs to be replaced
in a few places by CND (Nina email of 7/29)
FIXED Austin No email option from After running a call# search and selecting an item, no
050817 call# search email option is given
FIXED Christine Cannot save records If you leave email file blank, records will not save, an
050819 error message comes up.
050819 Just in case this does come up again, the
problem was that the directory configured as $TMPDIR
was not directly accessible through
www_f_eng/../apache/htdocs. I had to add a link there.
We occasionally move $TMPDIR around during indexing
projects, which is probably what happened here.
FIXED Austin Advanced Search get rid of "only" after all entries under formats menu
050819
FIXED Austin Your account preferences Making any changes in Your Account display
050823 preferences results in this error: "The language is not yet
implemented in the system."
FIXED Christine Hayden Reference items In old Barton, the Library location for both Science and
050829 not displaying library Humanities was "Hayden" but the materials in
Humanities Reference didn't just say "Reference", they
said "Humanities Reference" (and the same for
Science). But now they all just say "Reference". This is
very confusing. Is this part of the problem with not being
able to have alternate names appear, or is this just an
oversight?
FIXED Austin URLs not working in The URLs on the items holding page (item-global-head-
050830 items holdings screen 1-mit01) are not working
FIXED Christine Z39.50 server not Reports of EndNote connection file not working;
050831 restarting automatically Christine is fairly sure that this is because the Z39.50
server is not restarting after backups
050817 Christine thinks now fixed - Darcy will check next
week after backups
050822 Christine says fix failed, but she has again fixed -
check again next week after backups
FIXED Nina Customized search box Brief results display gives customized search menus
050913 in brief results after performing journal and reserves keyword searches,
but not browse searches.
FIXED Christine Call# search not working In Reserves, try a "Call number begins with" search. No
0509?? / Nina in Reserves matter what I put in, I get "Your browse request found no
entries" and there is a strange list of seemingly repetitive
indexes to search by. The resulting page also has a
"clear" button that is not our standard button. This also
happens if I do a call# search at the bottom of the results
page. Are we using the wrong index? What am I
missing here?
050919 Christine says: This page needs to be updated:
scan-include-2-mit01 and scan-include-2-mit30 and
include only the usual indexes we have on the scan-
include-mit01 pages. This does not answer why the
call# search does not turn up any results even with a
good call#.
051011 Christine: It looks like we never finished setting
up the reserves tables to convert from using the LOC
browse index to the CND direct index. There really
aren't any entries to find. I'll fix up the tables and
schedule reserves direct indexes to rebuild overnight.
051012 Christine fixed call# search; the strange results
page when searching zzzzzzzzz in call# field is listed in
another bug report
FIXED Christine Punctuation in subject Dashes were not appearing in extended subject
0509?? / Beth headings headings; Christine put a fix in, but still weird
FIXED Christine System emails not User reported that his NMH program could not read our
051215 working in NMH system-sent emails. Christine tested and other mail
handlers are fine, but perhaps we should go to text only
(no HTML) emails if this cannot be solved.
050801 Christine will change to text only.
051215 during meeting concluded that no other
complaints had been received - leave as is
FIXED Christine Reserves title browse not In MIT30 (Reserves searching in the Web OPAC), the
051215 filing right title browse list is incorrectly filing by initial article.
050920 Christine says she needs to re-index reserves
FIXED Darcy Surpressed item still In circ. the Hayden copy is listed as withdrawn, but still
060104 displaying appears in web opac
051215 Christine says this is an Aleph quirk that you
can't suppress holdings even when the only attached
item is suppressed; Darcy is asking Elke about
alternative solutions, but this should probably be an
Aleph enhancement request
060104 Elke says this can (and probably will be deleted);
referred to Maria since Science book.
FIXED Darcy Foreign character display Not working well - depends on machines; need to update
0602?? Help page regarding this as well.
ALSO
My 1st example now only shows chinese characters in
MARC, not in full record; Beth says: "There's two things I
can think of, One is just that the tags being displayed
were changed and we no longer include 880's which is
where the vernacular data lives.
The other is I recall setting up a "fix" to allow the 880
tags to display next to the transliterated data they
represent, but I see **no** evidence on walter or
grammy (in v.16 or v.14) that we ever put it into effect for
real. So I'm a little confused about that fix. I think we
should ask Christine about it when she gets back, as I
can't remember where we left it, and tables aren't
helping shed any light.
FIXED Darcy Font Issues • J's look like I's due to underlining
0602?? • label and text fonts are different on some computers
• the underline for words in bold is leaded differently from
the underline in unbolded words. Since Aleph bolds
whatever words you use for your original search terms,
the result is a kind of funny looking title display.
051215 Does Bob need a font (if so, ask Beth about this
issue)
FIXED Darcy ILB renewals patrons try to renew ILB items through Your Account -
0602?? can we make it clear they can't?
0602?? Darcy working with Christines Q and C on error
messages and courtesy notices
FIXED Christine Library list for hold Hayden listed twice, Archives should not be showing,
060202 requests is messed up something else might be commented out
051215 Christine will talk to Denise
0602?? Fixed?
FIXED Darcy Display of format issues 1. Format display in brief and full record is confusing and
0603?? sometimes wrong
2. Should $h be displayed in title browse? Piggyback
group has recommended and not having it causes
punctuation to not be displayed
0603?? WAG decided not to display the $h (more
problems than solutions)
FIXED Austin LSA holdings in brief In the brief results displays for LSA items, there is a
060310 results surplus line between the LSA holdings line and the
[Request this from LSA] line; perhaps they should be on
the same line?
050208 still broken
FIXED Austin Persisting search terms We did not like the way the persisting search terms
060310 worked, so we got rid of it, but it make sense to have
this function on the "No records found" page
find-b-list-head-mit01 + find-b-permute-head-mit01
FIXED Austin Your Account requests field labels in Your Account Annex requests - field labels
060310 are swapped - I believe the page is: bor-hold-exp-mit01
1. swap field labels for pages and Volume/Issue (make
Volume/Issue come first)
2. Change Volume/Issue to be Volume/Issue/Date
3. Remove Item Status (patron doesn't need to see)
4. Change "Location:" to "Call#"
See also fix entry for the Z13 AUTHOR and YEAR and
TITLE below (priority 3) - we would like to add those
fields to this page if possible
051215 file is bor-hold-exp-mit01
050208 still broken
FIXED Austin Barton pop to front The Barton catalog annoyingly pops to the foreground
060317 feature annoying and into focus. This breaks macros that are operating
on the top window.
050914 sugggestions at BAG: could just make Your
Account pages have javascript?; at least take javascript
out of the basic search page (so it doesn't continuously
refresh every 20 minutes)
051121 Christine sez McGill has solution?
051209 CM sez McGill fix didn't work
051215 A few problems here
1. can pop to front issue be separated from refreshing to
basic search screen? Can we make it not pop to front,
even if it refreshes? [Austin]
2. can we make it so only Your Account pages refresh to
basic screen and not all others? [Austin] Do div libraries
and branches care if no refresh to basic screen? [Darcy]
060310 Austin has made dev not refresh or pop to front;
but seems to not refresh even on Your Account pages
060317 Does not pop to front, but all pages still refresh
to the basic search after 20 minutes
FIXED Austin Direct index failed search In Full Catalog or Reserves a failed direct index search
060317 brings you to ugly page results page has some messed up buttons, and also a
pick list of indexes that is truly dreadful
051215 Austin will get get correct include file and correct
images - we think the file to be edited is "scan-sys-head"
060208 still broken
060315 emailed Austin to replace go with search button
and to make the drop-down menu look just like the
browse menu on the advanced search screen
FIXED Christine Title browse filing Punctuation seems to be affecting the filing of titles.
060323 / Beth strangely 20050809 Beth says: "Yes, I got this email a while back
and talked to Christine about it before she left. it's an
indexing problem with how subfields are handled...the
solution unfortunately is to re-index the browse indexes.
We're thinking to try the parallel indexing feature to
minimize downtime for this...."
060208 still broken
060323 fixed in dev with reindexing, will happen in
production this weekend
FIXED Austin Confirm sign-off not User feels confirmation of sign-off is bad practice and
060331 necessary? insecure. See email to webopac-feedback from
olutz@MIT.EDU dated 050825 for details. Can we write
some javascript so this page is bypassed?
060303 Austin will look into
FIXED Austin Tabbing on search screen The first search button on the journals search page and
060420 the second search button on the advanced search page
are not included in the tabbing sequence - normally you
can tab from the search box to highlight the search
button and then hit return (saving mousing)
060123 Ben also added, "Most browsers will helpfully try
to guess what you are typing and supply the text for you
in a dropdown, but in order to accept the supplied text,
you use the TAB key. And since the Search button is left
out of the TAB order, that is where it becomes a
problem."
060316 not done in dev
060331 Austin thinks he may have solution - will work on
FIXED Austin Phrase searching Not functioning - taken out of live version, needs to be
060420 put back in test
Peter suggested that we make our phrase searching like
Harvard and have phrase searching as an option for
each box
050830 Christine: I've found that we reported this broken
when we first implemented no-frames, more than 2
years ago. At that time, the issue was sent to
programming, and the PRB was never updated again.
As we know, this has been working for us in version 14,
so there must have been a fix. I have put in a new
request asking them to get this fix applied to version 16.
050830 Christine: Getting adjacency to work as we're
used to will require rebuilding our word indexes with a
different table setting turned on. However, a big reason
we haven't done this already is disk space. I don't think
we can even consider doing this on our current server.
There's a new server in the works, but I don't know
exactly where that stands right now.
It is possible to make the search results return what we
are used to, by searching with "zero level proximity", but
that requires typing in the query a bit differently. ex:
william !0 smith [Darcy says: this is not really phrase
searching since word order is not retained in search]
060316 now working properly in test; as soon as
indexing is done in live, add buttons back; also, look into
Peter's suggestion about making it like Harvard
060331 indexing now done in live, Austin can bring
Examples Who is involved
Nina
Angie reported, Nina
working on
Howard reported
Tracy reported
Erja reported
Complete Sarah Wenzel and
Dictionary of Jen Harter reported
Symbols
#001325672
Journal of Heat Stephanie reported
Transfer
#000293592
Peter Cohn reported
Real Course
Reserves call#
HD31.U47 2004
Christine, Tracy, Beth
Christine; user
Nayden Kambouchev
reported
The framework Macee reported
of plasma
physics
The funeral
casino
Hayden item: Ginny reported
000928621
Search in title
keyword:
Gang qin qu wu
shou
au browse:
Mangeshkar,
Lata
Bob; Macee also
reported
ChristineQ reported
2. title browse: Beth
broadening
perspectives
construction
researcg
congress
Erja reported
Bill Guarente
suggested
see Carolyn Greenberg at
http://web.mit.e LL reported
du/darcy/www/i
mg/youraccount
request.gif
Bill Guarente reported
search Nina reported
"zzzzzzzz" in
call# begins with
Title browse: Anita reported; but
united arab Bob's issue?
emirates
In the resulting
list, united arab
emirates: with
city maps....
comes before
united arab
emirates, its
political system
and politics.
Title browse:
turkey
2nd page of the
results list:
turkey: women
in development
But click to
the next page +
looks near the
beginning of
results.
Ben Abrahamse
reported
"King James" Erja reported; Peter
"chemical Cohn added
biology" suggestion
Priority Status Problem
sent as Highlighting search terms
request
060331
sent as Back button
request
060331
sent as Brief results (all)
request
060331
sent as Non-LC call# browse
request
060331
sent as permalinks
request
060331
sent as Call# browse
request
060331
Description Examples
Usually keyword search terms are highlighted in a record, but if
the search term is truncated, then the words in the record with
that truncation are not highlighted. Christine says would have to
be an enhancement request.
Back button does not act intuitively; especially when selecting
records or browsing back and forth in a list; reloads form and
clears search box
Had also been reported as a bug:
With Internet Explorer or the new AOL browser, (not with Safari,
Firefox, or Mozilla), the back button returns from an unsuccessful
search to the search page, but the text in the search box is erased
051109 suddenly, this is also not working for Firefox either
051215 Christine says this is part of new code that causes the
page to reload the form every time; this is also causing strange
behavior when browsing through records (look at 1-10, 11-20, 21-
30, then hit back button and you go to 31-40); Christine reported
to ExLibris, Nina was following up
060208 still broken
When table view is active, make link to table view not a link;
same for list view
060208 not done
060316 not done
060317 Austin says would take a lot of scripting to fix
half-class and music call#s do not browse correctly
have permalinks on each Barton record
Half class#s do not browse well - If you just enter QD, you will get TN.C211
QD1.XXX as the first entry; QD.I61 comes before QD.I395, etc. TN.C652
TL1.S672 no.1474 TN.C2122 [4 digits]
051011 Christine: This actually doesn't sound familiar to me. I'll It appears to only list to
check with Beth and get back to you. A call number indexing 3 digits [.c652], then
problem, assuming it isn't a bug, should be fixable with a short 3- restarts numerically at 4
hour overnight downtime. I know we're also having some browse digits [c.2122]
and word index problems, which are waiting to test and
implement fixes with our new servers. The new test server
should be available any day now.
060309 Beth says will not be fixed by reindexing, also problame
with Music call#s; could create new index? see her email
060313 Christine says she will report to ExLibris, but they may not
be interested since other customers do not have this problem
Who is involved
Bill Guarente and Erja
reported.
Erja reported
Erja, Harolyn reported