Sorting OPAC Results By Cat Date?
During my presentation on XML Server applications at IUG 2005 in San Francisco, a member of the audience asked if it would be possible to search and sort by cat date if we indexed it. Now, many months later, I seem to have the official answer from III:
Sorting by cat date would require an enhancement request, as the “existing chronological sort options (chron and reverse chron in the SORT_BROWSE wwwoption) are both based on [and only on] the date in the 260 field.”
Searching by cat date might be possible, I’m told, but I’m waiting on clarification on how it might work (a search by range — say records from July 2005 — might be rather useful).
In the end, featured lists were suggested as a likely solution, but there was a hint of recognition about the failings of such static lists.
It looks like I’m back to using an external database cache of bibrecords that I can sort by cat date.
October 4th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
[...] Finally, I’ve gotten an answer about indexing cat dates in III so they can be used in searches or sorts. The answer is mostly “no,” but I go into a little more detail at LibDev. [...]