VuFind Developers Call Minutes: March 20, 2012

Attending: Jeffrey Barnett, Demian Katz, Benjamin Mosior, Eoghan Ó Carragáin, Luke O'Sullivan, Sean Purcell

• VUFIND-5 - This was VuFind's oldest open ticket, related to early problems with over-long URLs; it no longer seems to be a problem in recent versions of VuFind, so I have closed the ticket. If you run into a long URL issue, please open a new ticket with more details.
• VUFIND-120 - There has been discussion of FRBR in VuFind recently, so Demian posted some comments here. Feel free to join the conversation.
• VUFIND-157 - Login followup behavior is simplified in VuFind 2.0 and is unlikely to change in 1.x, so I have closed this ticket.
• VUFIND-191, VUFIND-197, VUFIND-199, VUFIND-216 - Several Summon-related tickets have been closed due to the improved infrastructure of VuFind 2.0.
• VUFIND-258 - The patch for using VuFind to index articles as well as monographs has been refined and committed to the trunk. A revised patch based on the trunk version has been posted.
• VUFIND-268 - I have closed the “test VuFind in PHP 5.3” ticket – VuFind 2.0 will be written specifically for 5.3, so it will resolve the issue.
• VUFIND-340 - The “improved password security” ticket has been assigned to Mark Triggs; he will work on it as time allows. Feel free to read his proposal and offer suggestions if you have not already.
• VUFIND-448 - VuFind 2 has been updated to support case-insensitive URLs, so this ticket has been closed.
• VUFIND-521 - This ticket captures last call's discussion about controlling ILS driver through the Solr index; please comment if you have additional ideas. We already have one comment from Zeno Tajoli pointing out that in some scenarios, a single record may need to connect to multiple ILSes (i.e. export from a union catalog with multiple item records attached to a single bib record).
• VUFIND-522 - This ticket proposes an authentication module that allows the user to choose from several authentication options.
• VUFIND-523 - This ticket proposes a change to the way SOLR_HOME is used in the MARC import scripts; this change will make it easier to change behavior by editing import.properties, but it will also force users to ensure that import.properties is always properly configured. Please take a look and comment whether or not you think this should go into the trunk.
• VUFIND-524 - Our first third-party patch for the VuFind 2 branch, this enhancement offers better Javascript configuration in themes; it has been committed.
• VUFIND-525 - This patch proposes making VuFind's editions field multi-valued. Please vote/comment if you feel this belongs in the trunk.
• VUFIND-526 - This ticket requests recaptcha support for comments.
• VUFIND-527 - This patch for VuFind 2 adds “bound in” functionality to the holdings tab. Demian will hold off on committing it until VuFind 2 is more mature, since adopting the patch will require updates to the documentation.
• VUFIND-528 - Luke has submitted a patch which provides a “no ILS” driver to disable ILS functionality when a library either has no ILS or has temporary system problems.
• VUFIND-529 - This ticket records the fact that the “retain current filters” checkbox doesn't work when Javascript is disabled; a solution is proposed, but there is some question of whether it is worth the effort. Please comment if you have an opinion.
• VUFIND-530 - This ticket requests more flexible sort options in the Browse module.
• VUFIND-531 - This ticket requests adding links to call numbers to search for related records.
• VUFIND-532 - This patch allows VuFind's default language to be specified on the URL line. It has been committed.
• VUFIND-533 - This ticket requests a 404 status code for invalid record URLs (right now, errors return a 200 OK status). Demian has committed a fix based on the submitted patch.
• VUFIND-534 - This ticket proposes better social media integration (Facebook/Twitter) for VuFind.
• VUFIND-535 - This ticket proposes a front-page “ticker” to provide general information to users (upcoming announcements, librarian Twitter/RSS feeds, etc., etc.)
• VUFIND-536 - This ticket provides a patch to fix bulk RefWorks export, which is broken in VuFind 1.3.

Demian has continued work on the Summon module and implementing missing recommendation plug-ins; Chris has continued work on the Browse module.

Demian took a survey of the group to see if anyone is using the Admin module, since he is thinking of removing/changing it in 2.0 due to limitations of the current implementation. So far, nobody seems very attached to the existing functionality.

No news.

A VuFind Summit 2012 wiki page has been created for posting the latest information on the conference. Some new details are there now.

The collection module for VuFind is nearly feature-complete. You can see a demo of the code using Villanova's VuDL collection here. (Note that the demo may be unavailable if Demian's test server is turned off).

Demian will be on vacation on the next call date but will attempt to join the call anyway; if he can't make it, someone from Villanova will be on standby to start things up.

The VuFind 1.4 release date was mentioned; Demian is not sure yet whether or not this should come before or after the 2.0RC1 release. It will depend on progress in the collection branch and general workload.

The next call will be Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 10am Eastern Daylight Time (GMT - 4:00).