Re: [VuFind-Tech] sabre - University of Sussex / University of Brighton

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

Eoghan's already said it, but it's worth repeating - congratulations on getting things up and running!

Thanks also for sharing your blog link - I've just added links to a couple of your posts in the VuFind wiki (on the usability and developers guide pages), since they look quite useful!  Obviously you're also welcome to do this yourself in the future if you're so inclined.

Regarding the password issue, are there really that many different files you need to worry about?  Off the top of my head, it seems that if you simply excluded the web/conf directory (and possibly one .htpasswd file, if you use the Admin module) that would probably protect you...  but maybe I'm forgetting something important.  In any case, configuration file layout/management is one of many issues I want to revisit as part of the VuFind 2.0 redesign process (which I'm sure you've heard about if you've been lurking here); I'll definitely try to keep password separation in mind as I think about the best strategy.

Also on the subject of VuFind 2.0, if you ever have a chance to look at my work in progress there, I would love to hear feedback - it is always helpful to hear from people familiar with the current architecture in order to get a better measure of whether or not I'm really making the new design cleaner and easier to work with or if I'm taking anything in the wrong direction.  It would also be great to hear from you on the developers call sometime if it ever fits into your schedule!

- Demian

From: Chris Keene [mailto:chr...@gm...]
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 10:33 AM
To: vuf...@li...
Subject: [VuFind-Tech] sabre - University of Sussex / University of Brighton

Hi all

Just wanted to announce we will shortly be launching 'sabre' a catalogue which searches across both the University of Sussex and the University of Brighton.

Both Universities are located in Brighton, East Sussex, England. They have a joint medical school, who will, amongst others, find this useful.

The URL is
http://sabre.sussex.ac.uk/

So first of all, hello. I've been a keen lurker on this list for a while :)

We haven't done anything particularly exciting with vufind, and haven't been able to spend loads of time on it but:

- With the help of Ross Singer (Talis) and various people (Luke O Sullivan in particular) at the University of Swansea we have connected it to the Talis Alto ILS for holdings/availability...

- ... and used Swansea's modifications for two (or more) organisations.

- The (two) connections to Talis Alto for holdings/availability go via Jangle, this is a little slow (may look at displaying holdings on the record page using AJAX in the future to avoid them slowing down page loads, anyone else done this?)

- During user testing we found that people often missed the fact that filters we're still applied, so we added a glow/fade affect to the Remove Filters box on page load

- Because some of our records (especially older ones) were quite poor, and sometimes the standards used by the two Universities differed, we have cut back on the visibility of the browse options, as they often implied showing/restricting ALL items of a certain type leading users to not find a suitable item. Likewise, though our records contain Shelfmarks, these do not correspond to those used at the item/holdings level. Annoyingly Brighton uses Dewey and we used our own *special* version of LOC (yes, I know, I KNOW).


We've kept a blog during the development: http://credaul.wordpress.com/
(please bear in mind we're still learning, so forgive any mistakes)


I wont bore you all with the thoughts/comments I've had during setting it up, but I will just say the one that came in to my head today: I love sharing code. If all passwords were kept in one password file, it would be easier to share the svn/git repository, with that file excluded, confident that I'm not sharing anything I shouldn't. Just food for thought.

The people I have shown it to so far love it. As well as catering to a specific need (those wanting to search both local Unis) I think it will also provde useful as a backup catalogue, and providing a nice mobile interface and nice export options. It's a great system.

Regards
Chris Keene
University of Sussex