Item Sort Routines in GUI and OPAC

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 18.01

Description:
We are on v18 and we would like to sort our item lists for GUI and OPAC display (brief and full). Currently, it appears that the GUI and OPAC lists display the last item that was created first in the brief results lists – and full views, however we would prefer them to be sorted by call number and possibly collection code.

abc50/tab/tab_z30_sort

We have tested changing the parameters in the above configuration table for ITEM and WWW (and restarted the servers), but we haven’t had any luck. Has anyone else run into this problem, or successfully been able to sort your item list display in the GUI and OPAC? If so, which sort routine did you use? Am I missing a piece somewhere?

Resolution:
[From Christine Moulen, MIT:]
First, realize that there are 2 copies of this table. One in the xxx01 library, and one in the xxx50 library.
The xxx01 table handles the OPAC displays, and GUI SEARCH.
The xxx50 table handles the other GUI displays.

Second, I don't have ITEM and WWW in our tables. According to the header, it's WWW-A, WWW-R, and WWW-X. And ITEM-n, repeatable.

You can attach a description to each ITEM-n in pc_tab_exp_field.eng.
E.g.,
ITEM-1 A 04 A 06
ITEM-SORT-TYPE L Sublib./Year/Vol./Issue/Part/Seq. Ascending
ITEM-1

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to make the description cover both ISSUE and non-ISSUE sorts, but since it's mainly ISSUE records we want to sort, we've matched up the descriptions to the ISSUE sort configurations.

Similarly, there are SERIAL-n and CIRC-n in the xxx50 table. If you've only set up ITEM sorts, and you're in the Acq/Ser client, you won't get the sort options you're looking for.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013