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

Description:
We have two odd symptoms in our Web OPAC brief view. We sometimes see the wrong content in some of the columns in the brief view display and sometimes we see content from a previous record carrying over into another record.

A normal record might have columns like these:
Author: <none>
Title: Journal of display technology [computer file].
Format: Computer File
Year: 2002
Location: ONLINE RESOURCE -- TK7882.I6 (ONLINE)
Links: http://sfx.fcla.edu/usf?sid=sfx:e%5Fcollection&issn=1551-319X

Sometimes, though, we get a record that displays the wrong information in some of the columns (note the Year, Location and Links fields):
Author: <none>
Title: Journal of the Optical Society of America. [electronic resource]. A, Optics, image science, and vision
Format: Electronic Resource
Year: ONLINE RESOURCE -- QC350 (ONLINE)
Location: http://sfx.fcla.edu/usf?sid=sfx:e%5Fcollection&issn=0740-3232
Links: <none>

When this happens, we also sometimes get field content carried over from a previous record, as in the following two records:
Author: <none>
Title: Optics infobase [computer file].
Format: Computer File
Year: 1998
Location: ONLINE RESOURCE -- QC350 (ONLINE)
Links: http://www.opticsinfobase.org

Author: <none>
Title: Journal of lightwave technology [electronic resource].
Format: Electronic Resource
Year: ONLINE RESOURCE -- QC350 (ONLINE)
Location: http://sfx.fcla.edu/usf?sid=sfx:e%5Fcollection&issn=0733-8724
Links: http://www.opticsinfobase.org

That last "Links" URL ("http://www.opticsinfobase.org") isn't really present in the "Journal of lightwave technology" record, but appears to be carrying over from the previous record.

What is happening here and how can we fix it?

Resolution:
The problem here is that the definition of the Year field in www_tab_short.eng includes a list of bibliographic record formats that is not exhaustive:

...
3 L Format S ## TYP##
4 L Year 01---D02---A 00 00 0100 S BK YR
4 MU YR
4 CF YR
5 L Availability 00 00 0100 L ## ITMG
...

The list includes definitions for formats BK, MU and CF, but not for any others, such as SE or ER. For any given numbered group (which translates into a column in the OPAC brief view), the program expects to find either an entry for every possible format or a "wildcard" (##) for remaining formats. If it does not find a matching format, it skips to the next definition without moving to the next column (which it really should). So, the best solution is to add a final entry with a wildcard for the format:

4 ## YR

If you only want the Year to display for certain formats, you can add a bogus entry for the wildcard instead of the YR field, such as "ZZZZZ":

4 ## ZZZZZ

As long as you don't have a "ZZZ" field in your record, this should simply leave this column blank in your output.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013