New books pages and RSS feeds for Aleph
Tags: new
, books
, aleph
, rss
, atom
, sdi
, elympics
Last Updated: Sep 10, 2010 11:35
- Description
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.
- Author: Matthew Phillips
- Additional author(s):
- Institution: University of Dundee
- Year: 2010
- License: GNU Public General Licence v. 3 or later
- Link to terms: Detailed license terms
- Skill required for using this code:
intermediate
Further description
The extension uses a custom service which can be run from the Aleph job_list. It regularly updates web pages, hosted in the OPAC, and Atom feeds (a variety of newsfeed similar to RSS) to reflect the new material being acquired by the library. It exploits the Z324 table which is used by the Aleph SDI mechanism from version 18 onwards. This means that staff do not have to do anything special to cause new material to appear in the lists: it's all automatic. The only work is in setting the system up!
The new books pages can select the material to be displayed by any number of criteria based on the order, item, MARC record or budget, making the system very versatile.
Serials issues may be excluded or included in the reports, as preferred. If included, SFX can be queried to discover whether full text is available and if so a link will be inserted in the page.
State
Stable
Programming language
Perl
Software requirements
Nothing beyond the standard Perl modules which are supplied with Aleph installations.
Screen captures
Download
Working example
http://library.dundee.ac.uk/F/?func=file&file_name=dun-new-books-desi
Installation instructions
Please download the detailed installation instructions which are attached as a Word document.
One omission from the document is that you may need to update the MIME type declarations in your Aleph Apache configuration in order for the Atom feeds to be fed correctly to browsers and feed readers. If you do not do this, they will display as expected in some browsers (e.g. versions of IE) but not others (e.g. versions of Firefox). Putting the correct configuration in place should mean that the feeds display properly in all browsers.
The configuration file is in $alephe_tab/apache/conf and is called mime.types. You need to add the following line, if not already present:
application/atom+xml atom
(You can insert tabs or spaces to make the columns line up nicely if you wish, but this is not crucial.)
Then restart Apache for the change to take effect.
Known issues
The Aleph SDI mechanism, on which this script relies, has some quirks and minor faults. Please see my related service for enhancing and fixing faults in Aleph SDI for a solution. You will also find on that page a link to a Word document containing the tests and background information.
Ideas for enhancements
The script as it stands only supports MARC21, but can be modified for other MARC variants. Making this automatic or allowing easy configuration of the fields which are used in the resulting pages and feeds would be an improvement.
The script could be enhanced to include book cover links from various sources in the results pages.
The tests do not allow for selection and filtering based on the contents of HOL records. This could be added to the script but would be quite a bit of work to do elegantly.
Release history
Release 2, 30 July 2010. Minor correction to new-books.pl script to improve error message when configuration file cannot be located.