Attending: Jeffrey Barnett, Filipe Bento, Lutz Biedinger, Chris Hallberg, Demian Katz, Eoghan Ó Carragáin, Luke O'Sullivan, Sean Purcell, Graham Seaman
SolrMarc 2.3 adds some new methods for identifying record formats. Conceptually, two different areas are covered: content type and media type. This distinguishes between, for example, the general content type of “Sound Recording” vs. specific media like “CD” or “Cassette.” VuFind's current getFormat() indexing routine is not very sophisticated. It has been proposed that we take a two-part approach to improving this:
There was no objection to this approach on the call – a JIRA ticket will be opened to track progress.
Now that SolrMarc 2.3 has been released, Demian can update the VuFind trunk to use Solr 3.x. He will begin work on this in the next few days.
Chris has continued improving the VuDL module and has begun porting over the Help module.
Demian has continued reimplementing Favorites and Lists as a new Search Object; the overall framework is done, but some details still need to be filled in.
Additionally, Demian has given deeper thought to how VuFind 2.0 could be made more easily extensible. See this blog post for more details.
There was some discussion about how separating code customizations like this can make it harder to track changes with version control – this is true; version control probably remains a better solution for people willing to do frequent merges, but separation of logic may be more convenient for those with relatively simple customizations who only look at code during infrequent upgrade processes.
Graham asked if we should start a separate vufind2 mailing list; it's probably not necessary yet, but if traffic gets too heavy and needs to be separated, we might be able to repurpose the existing quiet vufind-admins list.
We're tentatively setting the next release date at January 30, 2012. The main focus of the release will be the Solr 3 update, so this gives us a few months to test that. It would also be nice to incorporate the cart if we can get it done in time.
The National Library of Ireland is going to start looking at the new theme soon, as is Villanova University. Swansea is already using it.
The trunk demo has once again been updated with a new version of the cart patch. Feel free to test it out and report any problems that you encounter.
Luke has also done some bare minimum work on the classic and default themes so that the cart patch won't break anything there (though cart functionality so far only exists in the blueprint theme). This means that it may be possible to commit the patch fairly soon without making the trunk unstable. If anyone would like to see cart functionality in classic/default and is willing to help with the development, please get in touch with Luke and Demian.
Since the cart functionality can work without Javascript, implementing at least basic non-JS behavior in classic/default should not be too difficult.
Demian recently committed some enhancements submitted by Luke: an AJAX mechanism for checking the hold eligibility of items (to compensate for slow performance in the Voyager API) and some security improvements to renewals and hold cancellation.
Demian reported (courtesy of Carlos Cordova Sandoval) that VuFind is going to get some exposure in Chile at an upcoming conference called Innovatics.
It looks like the next VuFind conference is likely to occur in early October, 2012 if there is sufficient interest. At least three people expressed interest in attending in person, and more liked the idea of remote participation; Luke mentioned that later October might be better for him due to start-of-term.
Graham has been doing some work with Summon in VuFind 2.0.
There was some discussion of the VuFind 2.0 VuDL module and its relationship to the normal record view (it's currently a separate screen for viewing full documents, but it might eventually be incorporated more tightly into the record screen; previous Flash dependencies have been eliminated).
The next call will be Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 11am Eastern Daylight Time (GMT - 4:00).