Re: [VuFind-Tech] Progress on Dewey Decimal support...

[Demian K. <dem...@vi...>]

Okay, one more round of Dewey additions in r1952:

- Added a dewey-full index to Solr and a new SolrMarc indexing function which populates this with a whitespace-stripped, uppercased version of the full Dewey number.  This is now searched as part of the standard call number search, so you can find LC and Dewey numbers using the same search option.  (Since they're structured differently, this should work seamlessly without any need for special search reconfiguration; you just need to uncomment the appropriate import/marc_local.properties line to actually populate the dewey-full index).

- Added a dewey-sort index to Solr that is populated by using SolrMarc's CallNumUtils.getDeweyShelfKey function.  By uncommenting the appropriate line in web/conf/searches.ini, you can make the call number sort option use Dewey instead of LC.

At this point, I think the Dewey support in the branch is feature-complete, at least from a bare minimum perspective.  This just leaves three things on the to-do list:

1.) Merge the branch into the trunk -- I'll wait until the new year so that people have a chance to test out the branch code before I do this.
2.) Document Dewey configuration -- there are quite a few configuration settings involved in switching from LC to Dewey.  This is not ideal, but I don't see an easy way to avoid it at this point.  I'll create a Wiki page detailing all the issues once the feature gets merged into the trunk (or sooner, if there's any demand).
3.) Hierarchical facets -- right now, search results are only faceting on Dewey at the hundreds level.  It would be nice to be able to drill deeper without switching over to the Browse module.  I'm going to start thinking about a generic way of implementing hierarchical facets, but this can be tackled as a separate issue from Dewey.  I'll probably post some thoughts on this as a separate email a little later on.

- Demian

From: Demian Katz
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 2:13 PM
To: 'Michael Beccaria'; 'tim.mcgeary@Lehigh.EDU'; 'vuf...@li...'
Subject: RE: Progress on Dewey Decimal support...

As of r1947, I have added browse support to the Dewey branch mentioned below.  As with other Dewey features, this is disabled by default.  It can be turned on using the "dewey" setting in the [Browse] section of config.ini.  Once enabled, it will show up as the Call Number browse in the Browse/Home module of VuFind.  If both LC and Dewey call number browse options are enabled at the same time, the browse module will label the options appropriately so users can choose between them.  Please take a look and let me know what you think.

- Demian

From: Demian Katz
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 11:21 AM
To: 'Michael Beccaria'; 'tim.mcgeary@Lehigh.EDU'; vuf...@li...
Subject: Progress on Dewey Decimal support...

Hello,

As recently promised on the vufind-general list, I have created a new branch in Subversion to aid development of Dewey Decimal support in VuFind:

https://vufind.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/vufind/branches/dewey/

This is based on the current trunk, and as of r1934, I have added basic support for indexing Dewey numbers at ones, tens and hundreds levels.  SolrMarc is currently reading call numbers from 082 and 083 fields, but this is easily customized if you store yours elsewhere.  Also, since I expect that this branch will eventually merge back into the trunk, things are configured with Dewey disabled by default since I expect the majority of users will not be using these features.  However, to try them out, you can easily enable them by editing import/marc_local.properties and web/conf/facets.ini.

I'm going to do more work today and next week to start adding Dewey support to the Browse module -- I'll post again when this is ready for testing.

- Demian