This koha tutorial will cover the basics of how to hide specific items from being visible in the OPAC.  Your library has the capability to hide specific shelving locations, item types, withdrawn items and collection codes.  

There is a system preference called : opachiddenitems  which allows custom rules to be written that cause specific items to be hidden from the OPAC.

When you edit this system preference- a text box is created that allows you to put one or multiple commands for opachiddenitems.
The structure of the command you put in this box will look like this  (please note- spacing is important here!) :  

field: [value1, value2]

Field is the name of the field in the item record.  For example, if your library wanted to hide items with the item type Staff, it would look like this:

itype: [STAFF]

Item Type is represented here by itype and within the brackets is the code of the item type called staff collection.  To find out the code for an item type, go to Administrative, under basic parameters is Item Types.

To hide a shelving location on the OPAC it would look like this:

location: [EQUIP]

Here location is what shelving location is referring to and within the brackets there is the authorized value for that shelving location.  To find the authorized value for your shelving locations, go to administration, under basic parameters go to Authorized Values.  Shelving Location is under LOC.

If you need to hide multiple item types, shelving locations or collection codes- insert a comma between each authorized value within the brackets.  For example:

itype: [ILL, STAFF, REF]

To  hide a collection code from the OPAC, the same command is used:  

ccode: [FICTION]

Again, you will use the authorized value for the specific collection code you would like to hide in the list of authorized values.

Another item that you can hide from view on the OPAC is withdrawn items.

withdrawn:[1]

Withdrawn is a status that your item can have.   Check in your authorized values what the value is- the authorized category is withdrawn.   In this example, the item that is withdrawn has a value of 1 in the authorized value.

Here is a screenshot with the system preference opachiddenitems filled in with some values:

A list of fields that an item has is available on the item schema page.

The post Koha Tutorial on Hiding Items from the OPAC by Kelly McElligott appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.

In this Koha tutorial we will discuss the options for using the Coce Server to display cover images.

Koha users have several options when it comes to displaying cover images on the OPAC. Users can choose from OPACAmazonCoverImages, GoogleJackets, OpenLibraryCovers, which are free. Or paid services, like Baker and Taylor cover images or SyndeticsCoverImages.

The Coce Server was introduced in the 3.20 release of Koha.

When Coce is enabled it will look at three services: Amazon, Google and Open Library. It matches the ISBN in the MARC record (020 field) and finds the best match out of those 3 services.

• Google API
• Amazon Product Advertising API
• Open Library Read API

If a book cover is not available from a provider, but is available from another one, Koha will be able to display a book cover. Amazon book covers are retrieved with Amazon Product Advertising API, which means that more covers are retrieved (ISBN13).

The first searches on coce won’t return images – meaning the first time an item is requested in coce, if it hasn’t been cached already, it doesn’t come up, but does for all subsequent request.

Currently, you can’t rank which service it looks at first, Coce sends the first available URL.

To enable Coce go to Administration –> System Preferences –> Enhanced Content

Note: If Coce is enabled, make sure to select Don’t show or Don’t Add for the following system preferences OPACAmazonCoverImages, GoogleJackets, or OpenLibraryCovers. If both are enabled, you will get multiple images on the OPAC.

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The post Cover Images on the Koha OPAC – Coce Server by Jessie Zairo appeared first on ByWater Solutions - Koha Open Source ILS Support.