VuFind Developers Call Minutes: April 17, 2012

Attending: Filipe Bento, Demian Katz, Sean Purcell, Alan Rykhus, Ernie Simuro, Kate Wolkwitz

• VUFIND-180 - The Keystone Library Network has offered to contribute some effort to improving consortial support. Al mentioned during the call that he will soon have an ILL patch to contribute (for inter-library borrowing within a consortium).
• VUFIND-298 - Chris has closed this ticket, as the Browse module no longer has Javascript dependencies in 2.0.
• VUFIND-317 - Demian has committed Ronan's patch to correct for book preview API limitations.
• VUFIND-386 - The Aleph driver here has been updated once again. The lack of authentication through Aleph's RESTful API was discussed.
• VUFIND-452 - This ticket was reopened due to a problem with boosts and advanced searches; Demian has fixed the problem and posted a new patch.
• VUFIND-491 - As mentioned on this ticket, Demian's PHP port of the MARC::Lint Perl module is now part of the File_MARC PEAR library; this now provides a convenient mechanism for testing the validity of MARC records.
• VUFIND-525 - There has been a bit more discussion of the multiple editions issue.
• VUFIND-540 / VUFIND-541 - These Voyager fixes have been committed.
• VUFIND-542 - A patch has been proposed for dealing with some of the author issues discussed on the previous call.
• VUFIND-543 - These DOAJ import fixes have been committed.
• VUFIND-544 - URL display code for MARC records has been improved in trunk as per this ticket.
• VUFIND-546 - This ticket proposes a Solr schema change to allow improved date boosting. Please read and comment.
• VUFIND-547 - This ticket was a support request rather than a bug report; the issue has been resolved and the ticket closed.
• VUFIND-548 / VUFIND-549 - These patches provide minor improvements to the PICA driver; Demian has committed both.
• VUFIND-550 - This patch proposes a bug fix for URL auto-detection; Demian has committed it.
• VUFIND-551 - This patch proposes a fix to make file-based sessions more platform-independent; Demian has committed it.
• VUFIND-552 - This patch offers file path auto-detection for VuFind 1.x to reduce the amount of configuration necessary; this improvement is already present in the 2.0 prototype. Demian has committed it.
• VUFIND-553 / VUFIND-554 - These tickets offer some improvements to the LDAP authentication module; both have been committed.
• VUFIND-555 - This ticket requests an admin interface for customizing relevance. That's a complex task, but patches are welcome. (For basic information on non-GUI relevance tuning, see this wiki page).
• VUFIND-556 - This ticket adds a MARC-XML export option; Demian has committed an expanded version that also supports bulk export.
• VUFIND-557 - This ticket fixes an EndNote export bug (committed).
• VUFIND-558 - This ticket improves security by using POST instead of GET for AJAX logins, preventing credentials from being saved in web logs (committed).
• VUFIND-559 - This ticket is a reminder to upgrade to Solr 3.6.
• VUFIND-560 - This ticket proposes using special recommendation modules on the “no results” screen to help users broaden their searches.

Chris has finished the Browse module and Demian has finished the OAI server. Demian also implemented authority record loading tools, link resolver drivers and the OpenSearch protocol (the 2.0 OpenSearch implementation is more functional and better-integrated than the 1.x version).

Demian's next project is porting over all of the authentication options. So far, ILS, DB and LDAP are done. Filipe asked about SIP authentication – Demian plans to port the 1.x functionality, but he will need help with testing to be sure it works correctly in 2.0.

No news.

No news this week.

Apart from minor bug fixes, no news this week.

Discussion of VUFIND-180 also led to a bit of discussion about the idea of creating drivers for external ILL systems like OCLC, either through API integration or simple linking.

There was some discussion of a good introduction to Solr. This video was shared, though nobody specifically endorsed it.

The next call will be Tuesday, May 1, 2012 at 10am Eastern Daylight Time (14:00 GMT).