Easy add-ons for your Aleph OPAC

Mark WatmoughEdinburgh Napier University

I will demonstrate the following:

• Spelling suggestions– Yahoo! spelling suggestions & JavaScript/JSON

• New Additions feed– Aleph SDI & Yahoo! Pipes

• Most popular items– SQL & Yahoo! Pipes

• Google Books and Syndetics integration – Javascript

Spelling Suggestions• An easy way to place spelling suggestions in Aleph OPAC. We’ve placed this on

pages that are returned when 0 hits occur (find-e-head & find-b-permute-head)

• Yahoo spelling suggestions: http://developer.yahoo.com/search/web/V1/spellingSuggestion.html

• An example: Search for ‘developin systmes’

• Limitations – Returns are often cached and we sometimes see problems if the users clicks back

button– As it’s a third party app, you’re reliant on them to keep the service up and also

provide relevant returns.

• Full details and the code available on the El commons site at - http://www.exlibrisgroup.org/display/Aleph/OPAC+spelling+suggestions+using+Yahoo!+webservice+*JSON*

New Additions feed• Create SDI on Aleph

• Obtain ‘rss url’ and place into Yahoo! Pipes

• Create 2 pipes: • One which takes the doc number and requests further information via the xserver (ill-get-doc-

short) Which is then feed into our second pipe...• One handling the feed generated via SDI request in the PAC.

• We also provide book covers (where available) via syndetics in the rss feeds.

• We placed the new additions on Aleph (arranged as a full list and by subject) and also on our studentportal. Of course, you can also place in any rss reader, such as google reader and here on mashedlibrary Ning.

• Limitations:– Again as its a third party app, reliant on Yahoo! to keep service ‘up’.

Most popular Items

• Currently in testing!

• We run an sql statement (z35, z13) to search for the most loaned book items over the past 7 days, which ‘spools’ a csv file to the www_f_lng directory (sql statement is run every morning via the job_list)

• From this we run through Yahoo! pipes and obtain the JSON output, which is then used to show the data as we require.

Google Books & Syndetics• Wanted to integrate better. So we produced the following:

• When syndetic image is available, show Google link (but no Google image) when available. Example

• When no syndetic image exists, show Google image/link. Example• When no syndetic image or Google link/image are available, show nothing.

Example

• First add JavaScript to check for the existence of syndetic image• Create JavaScript statement to look at the existence and the create the

variable strings, which are dependant on this existence. Script link

Questions?

Email: m.watmough@napier.ac.uk