PART I (Dennis)Description of the Cecilia Bard Multicultural Library for Peace, previous Web display solutions, finding Mike

PART II (Michael)Former SQL solution, discussion of X-Server solution, evaluation of the final product

PART III (Marianne)A catalog librarian’s notes on preparing item records in the OPAC, with a little help from our friends at SUNY-OLIS

PART IDescription of the Cecilia Bard Multicultural Library for Peace; previous Web display solutions;

finding Michael

Books donated by BSC professors Dr. Geraldine Bard and Dr. Betty Cappella in 2000

In memory of Dr. Bard’s mother, Cecilia Initial donation about 300 books; now 3,508

Ongoing collection, with several hundred books added each year in 2-3 “lots”

Themes of multiculturalism and diversity, divided into children and adult categories

Because located throughout the library, a condition of the donation was that: “Books will be given a virtual space on a Web page devoted to the collection”

How do we provide the required “virtual space”?

2000-2003, a list of “Bard Books” was prepared by a librarian, and hand-coded by a student assistant for publication to the Web page:

Looked fine, but was labor-intensive.

As collection size grew, we were eager for an automated solution

We reached out to Andrew Perry at OLIS for help

His server-side SQL solution worked wonderfully from 2003-2008 (more on that later from Mike)

In 2008, changes to SUNY/OLIS customization policy present an opportunity

Submitted a Footprints for a read-only Oracle account

Maureen Zajkowski suggested using something called the “X-Layer” in Aleph

Michael Curtis is reputed to be the go-to guy on the X-Layer

PART IIFormer SQL solution in more detail;

discussion of X-Server solution; evaluation of the final product

Project requirements Narrow scope, only Bard

collection items Emphasize browsing, not searching

Various topic/audience categories are used

Collection changes: refresh or update

The past process SUNYConnect server side SQL query & extraction of data Based on 'internal note', tab3 on Aleph item

Metadata based on z15, basic title, author, pub date

Possible X-Server process Buffalo State server side Aleph CCL query Can't match 'internal note' but can search other fields Subject, other MaRC fields Collection code, some other item fields

Metadata extracted from complete MaRC record Usually more metadata than z15 table

Small set of files loaded on Buffalo server: PHP scripts to

talk to Aleph server pull & process data

CSS file to add style to HTML A blank book cover file

• PHP script “bard.php” is the main Web page

• User selects search terms from menu or types in a search box

• After the ‘display’ button is clicked, a properly formed CCL search is inserted in the URL

When bard.php has a CCL request, in the ‘background’ it pulls data from Aleph x-server

Two x-server requests from Buffalo to Aleph are required to pull item data

“Find” runs a search http://saranac.sunyconnect.suny.edu:4380/X?op=find&base=bsc01&request=WSU%3D%22Bard%20children%20Russian%22

“Present” gets a set of item data http://saranac.sunyconnect.suny.edu:4380/X?op=present&set_no=001157&set_entry=000000001-000000005&format=marc

Aleph x-server returns MaRC XML (yuck!)

Catalogers: notice MaRC field numbers, indicators, and subfields in XML elements (and you thought you didn’t understand XML!)

PHP script “search.php” chews up XML and spits out HTML

“pagination.class.php” paginates results

Final product Simple/browsable interface Always up-to-date Access to SUNYConnect server not required

Rich metadata Local styling using CSS PHP could be customized by the library

http://library.buffalostate.edu/collections/bard.php

PART IIIA catalog librarian’s notes on preparing item records in the OPAC, with a little help from

our friends at SUNY-OLIS

DEMONSTRATION

THANK YOUAny questions?