The official SDI service, p_sdi_01, produces rather basic e-mail output which does not use the newer XSL templates. It is hard to control the formatting of the messages. This service allows the e-mail output to be controlled fully by the library, including the provision of links to the catalogue, lists of items, etc. The RSS feeds are also enhanced to comply with standards more fully.

While Javascript XSS queries are forbidden by default, we use client-side scripting in two ways: piping requests through a cgi proxy script, and using the Yahoo YQL API (returns the SFX response as JSONP-X, which overrides the browser XSS restrictions). This page describes the latter option (YQL).

A service for Aleph version 20 onwards. It calculates the new z30-process-status-date field for all items and deletes uninteresting item history records which have been created as a result of the book circulating. Very useful if you have been using the ALL-FIELDS option in tab_item_history.eng and are switching to ALL-NON-CIRC. Using this service reduced our item history from about 7,000,000 rows to 2,000,000.

Patron photographs in Aleph have to reside in the ADMLIB/bor_pics directory and are named after the Aleph internal patron ID. Often there is a need to import photographs from another system. This script searches for photographs whose names are based on alternative IDs held on the Aleph patron records, and creates symbolic links in bor_pics to make them available in Aleph.

Displays SFX link/button on OPAC's full record screen according user's IP address (IP validation made on server side via PERL) and only for records with ISSN.
It can be used on all Aleph500 versions.

This custom service generates pages displaying new books (and other materials) and Atom feeds (a variety of RSS). The configuration is very versatile, allowing many different criteria from the item, order, budget and MARC records to be considered.

This extension to the Aleph OPAC and to the SFX Menu provides a graphical representation of our often complex serials holdings. It enables the user to see very quickly which years of a journal are available at each library and which are available on-line. Information from the SFX API is combined with the Aleph holdings in a single graphical summary. The bar charts shown for electronic holdings are clickable, taking the user through to the correct year (where supported in the linking syntax).

This is a PHP script used to generate RSS feeds from the Aleph catalog. We use it to get new titles from our new title logical base.

This extension to the Aleph OPAC provides links from the full record display to other related material on the catalogue. Links to other editions of the work are shown, as well as Amazon-style "people who borrowed this also borrowed..." type links based on the usage of the collections. Subject headings and classification numbers attached to the MARC records are also exploited to provide links to books on closely related subjects.

This script aims to help opening files in columnar report format, i.e. those generated from aleph's p-ret-01 or p-ret-03, etc.
in spreadsheet applications, like excel or openoffice, by converting the reports into csv (Comma Separated Values) format.
The script works with standard python 2.x installation and doesn't require special libraries.

The Z39 server log is obscure and confusing, and it is very difficult to analyze it for beneficial statistical data. This programme does all the hard work, resulting in a clear and simple report that would help you understand how your Z39 server is actually used by clients.

We wanted to be able to integrate Google book covers with syndetics in our Aleph OPAC. To do this, we created the following scenario:

• When we have a syndetics image, display link (no covers) to Google.
• When we have no syndetic image, display Google cover. If we have no Google cover, display just a link to google books.
• If neither Google nor syndetics has a cover or link, then display nothing.

Does what it says on the tin! If you want to restart the job daemon regularly so that it re-reads the job list, this little script will do the job for you. It's important to restart the job daemon when changing clocks moving from summer to winter time, as otherwise the job daemon will fire off each job twice, an hour apart.

Finding workflows for handling e-books between systems can be a challenge. We load MARC records into our ALEPH catalog for all of our e-books. Maintaining e-books in both the catalog and SFX is a problem as they often are out of sync. 

• This is a very local solution for handling the problem. I am not expecting others to implement this as it is, but it can give you an idea on how to handle similar issues and perhaps you get an idea on how to solve this problem at your library.
• This is how it works at our library: Someone decides to buy a e-book and leaves it to the ACQ department to get it. The ACQ people buys the book and a MARC record is sent to our systems librarian. At the same time a notification is sent to the SFX administrator who looks for the e-book in the SFX KB. If the book is not yet part of the CKB they need to remember that book and over time they have long lists with books that they need to look for after each CKB update.
• The way we solved this for the SFX administrator was to create a web based export  tool that extracts information on the different e-book vendors and generates a tab delimited file with ISBN:s ready for DataLoader.
• With this tool the SFX admin can generate a file from ALEPH, run updates and activate old and new portfolios whenever they feel like it. They do not need to maintain any lists or backfiles. This tool saves the SFX admin lots of time and enables the ALEPH catalog and SFX services to be more in sync.
• When we ran this tool and updated our e-book targets we more or less activated thousands of e-books that had been neglected in SFX.
•  

A perl script which exports basic patron information from the Aleph database in to a tab-delimited text file for use by other processes, in particular authentication systems.

For historical reasons, ALEPH uses different tablespaces in Oracle according to the "Z" table size, in order to avoid a large number of extensions. The "out of the box" configuration can cause the tablespaces to fill unnecessarily, and force us to expand our database needlessly.
This utility analyses the tablespaces and produces a report that helps to reduce the database size and to avoid adding more dbf files.

This script modifies the files which appear as the Tag Information in the Aleph Cataloguing client so that links are added to the full MARC 21 manuals on the Library of Congress web-site. This makes it easy for the cataloguer to call up the full manual whenever they are in doubt. The script copes correctly with the 006 and 008 field sub-formats, and provides helpful links to the MARC language and country code lists.

Following the development of mobile devices, this is a proposal on how to customize the ALEPH HTML pages to create a simple and light WEB OPAC Interface.

The interface was tested with iPhone and Blackberry devices.

The current development status is "Production" however new developments will happen as "My Library Card" (Book Renew, Hold Requests, etc) is a demand of our users.

Libraries must sometimes load records that are not available to them in a bibliographic format standard (Marc21, Unimarc...): integration of the book database of an academic research center, list of new e-journals bought by the library... This can make the conversion procedure of the data to the Aleph sequential format quite hard. Sometimes the records are only available in Excel. There is a way to convert easily in a few steps an Excel file into Aleph sequential in order to load records with manage-18. The strength of that method is that no extra programming is needed! Moreover, a basic knowledge of Excel is enough to understand and use that method.

Users may wish to bookmark records in Aleph, but if they do so from a search result set the link will not be persistent. The following method offers a way to provide persistent links via various social bookmarking sites as well as the user's browser bookmarks.

This script aims to fix various faults with the Aleph SDI mechanism, and to enhance the service by the inclusion of item-less e-books in the SDI alerts.

This service allows you to send a letter or e-mail to a group of Aleph patrons. The service uses the standard Aleph print mechanisms. Patrons may be selected by status, type, expiry date or by local or global block code. The text of the letter is defined in the print template in form_xxx. The letter may include a list of items on loan to the patron. A separate report of the patrons included in the mailing may also be generated.

This script provides a custom service for use in batch jobs or the Aleph GUI. It takes the XML reports output by jobs such as the General Retrieval Form (ret-adm-01) and the Shelf List (item-05) and allows the user to sort these by up to three levels, with a wide variety of fields being available for sorting. It is easy to add extra fields for sorting without modifying the script. The items may also be filtered by publication date or the date they were last returned.

Create a web form for pulling a title list from the X-Server (e.g. for printing journal lists, bibliographies...) with one click – as opposed to the standard Aleph GUI-Services workflow. Example is for generating a journal list based on a fixed cataloging field. You could use the basic code to get an idea for a general X-Server query with PHP.

Create a custom RSS feed with PHP using a fixed query and a regular XML export routine. It works nice for new acquisitions if your catalog data has a custom field that you can query.

By using the ticTOCs Journal Table of Contents Service you can include a link to a RSS feed for a journal. You can also parse the RSS feed for a journal and display the latest articles. This example is bundled with the embedded SFX services script. But it is easy to leave out the SFX part if you wan't to.

A UNIX file that is invoked in aleph_start.private that can be used to customize the Aleph environment. The file consists of environment variables and aliases.

This Perl script wrapped in a shell script sends Aleph email notices from the server, rather than using the client print daemon.  Files are picked up from a library's print directory based on print ID, similar to print daemon functionality.  Leftover letters with no email address are left in the print directory, in XML format, with a new print ID, for client pick up.

Analyze www_server logs.  Output includes number of events in each hour, average elapsed time per event, number of events that take longer than n seconds, percentage of events that take longer than n seconds, number of reply timeouts, number of network connection timeouts.

Analyze pc_server logs.  Output includes number of events in each hour, with average elapsed time per event, number of events that take more than n seconds, percentage of events that take more than n seconds.  Same statistics are presented for each event type.

We can't use PHP, so I've developed this code to read the JSON return from Yahoo! Spelling suggestion service. Suggestions are returned following a search that has 0 hits and then made clickable. However, it could in theory be entered anywhere a search variable is passed.

A cgi script to format Aleph citations in BibTex format

Very basic and simple perl script to test adding a new borrower to ALEPH using the X-service bor-update.

The ALEPH OPAC supports the inclusion of a SFX button. But you could also include the SFX services offered for a bibliographic record by using the SFX API. This is an example of how to do that for records that holds an ISSN. This doesn't change the native ALEPH-SFX integration.

This Library Maps tool is a comprehensive tool for providing access to library maps from an opac or other service. It uses combinations of sublibrary, collection, and call number to serve up an appropriate map, floor label, and even section of a floor. The system includes a database back-end (mysql), an administrative GUI, a web services based API and a PERL based front end. While it was initially created for Aleph, it could easily be extensible to any system that needs to associate map images with call numbers and other related information.

The attached document, and accompanying associated zipped file, show how to make either a Basic, Advanced Keyword or Advanced Browse search string stick in the opac. Also the type of search sticks. Cookies are used to differentiate between each type of search.

This document (11 pages; see "Files" at the head of this page) focuses on how to reduce as much barriers as possible in Aleph OPAC.

OPAC Enhancer is a daemon written in Perl that sits between Aleph www server and Apache. It can be used to modify requests before they reach the www server and responses before they reach the client (browser).

A small script that can be used to monitor Aleph status.

By using the Amazon webservices API you can embedd data from the bookstore in your OPAC. This example pulls Editorial reviews and bookcovers from Amazon based on a ISBN in the bibliographic record.

A couple of scripts to put a spell check facility into the OPAC to suggest new searches when users mispell search terms.

When a search is done in the local OPAC the query is passed to MetaLib X-server and search results are displayed in the OPAC. This is a way to give the users a small federated search from within the OPAC. Putting the local search in a broader context.

There are several ways to provide your OPAC with a spellchecker. This is one way using the Yahoo! webservice. You could hook it up to other spellcheckers like the Google SOAP webservice or Pspell. This example uses the javascript framework of Prototype for DOM manipulation, AJAX call and PHP to handle the communication with the Yahoo! REST webservice. It does require that you register your application with Yahoo! and there is a limit of 5000 requests / day.

The serials EDI invoice loader retrieves EDI files from the specified vendor, and loads it into Aleph using p_edi_09 and p_edi_10 services.
Logs are emailed to specified Acquisitions and Systems staff.
The loader is available from the Acquisitions client Services menu, as MIT Custom -> Serial EDI Invoice Load (custom-01).
This is used for our serial EDI invoicing, but would probably be applicable to many monographs vendors as well.

Most recently used with Aleph version 18. Changes will be coming to implement new batch features with version 19.
May work with earlier Aleph versions. Earlier versions of these scripts have been used with Aleph 16 and 14.2.

This is a basic PERL module for parsing and modifying Aleph sequential files.

FindIt is an Aleph record extension script. It's purpose is to offer extended services for items in Aleph. The extended services include maps, openurls to document delivery forms, google book, worldcat.org, books in print, ulrichs, and amazon.com reviews.