VuFind Developers Call Minutes: May 8, 2018

Attending: Leila Gonzales, Demian Katz

• VUFIND-1199 - This ticket (listing geographic improvements) has been resolved. The only suggestion on the ticket that has not been implemented is polygon support, which may not be needed. A new ticket can be opened if that is desired in future.
• VUFIND-1280 - This ticket tracks proposals for improving the ILS driver API and implementation.
• VUFIND-1281 - This ticket describes a problem where browse indexing fails if the authority index has never been accessed before.
• VUFIND-1282 - This ticket proposes a IEEE Xplore search backend for VuFind. It should be technically feasible; the challenge is finding time to implement it. If interested, please upvote the ticket.
• VUFIND-1283 - This ticket collects translation notes for the 5.0 release.
• VUFIND-1284 - This ticket is for discussion of future Amazon support in VuFind now that the ZendService_Amazon library is unsupported. Should we remove the code or switch to the Amazon-provided client library? (No answers on this call – please comment on the ticket if you have an opinion).

• #1163 - merged - bug fix to ILS driver refactoring
• #1164 - in progress - proof of concept showing how Bower could be used to manage external Javascript/CSS dependencies
• #1165 - merged - refactoring of facet caching for home pages
• #1166 - in progress - better “see also” support for the AuthorityRecommend plugin
• #1167 - merged - standardization of facet limit functionality between Solr and Summon
• #1168 - in progress - improvements (with some breaking changes) to the RecordDataFormatter
• #1169 - in progress - FOLIO ILS driver
• #1170 - in progress - ContentBlock plugin mechanism
• #1171 - merged - add last login date tracking to user table
• #1172 - merged - refactor view helpers that render templates based on plugin class names to use a common base class
• #1173 - closed - duplicate of #1115 (which is still in progress, though nearly complete)
• #1174 - merged - refactoring of channels code to separate business logic from controller
• #1175 - in progress - Javascript fixes related to recent login process changes

These have been merged to master.

Leila and Demian brainstormed some ideas for possible future channel providers that use analytics engines (i.e. Google Analytics or Piwik) to fetch popular records; Leila will work on a proof of concept when time permits (but probably not until after the 5.0 release).

The UI of the current channels was also discussed – it was suggested that the introduction of a hamburger menu might make it less intimidating.

#1170 contains a complete implementation of this feature and can be merged if there are no objections.

The RecordDataFormatter has been significantly improved by PR #1168. This can be merged soon (following final testing/documentation) if no one objects.

As noted above, the FOLIO driver pull request has been opened, though much work remains to be done. See #1169.

No news.

This work is complete for now.

Jochen still plans to work on this further, but he has not had time to make progress yet; he was not able to join this call.

There has been some further discussion on the pull request (#1141).

Demian has continued talking to the Open Library Foundation; no agreement has been finalized yet, however.

Potentially working with an external non-profit brings up the topic of Contributor License Agreements. It may be time for the VuFind community to consider adding this requirement. This should be discussed further on the next call when we have more participants.

If we decide to hold another on-campus Summit this year, the dates would be October 15-16, 2018. We can discuss further on the next call.

None this time.

The next call will be Tuesday, May 22, 2018 at 9am Eastern Daylight Time (13:00 GMT).