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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.