Koha is a Library Management System (LMS) used worldwide by approximately 15,000 libraries. The Koha team at Catalyst are passionate about using Koha and helping libraries (big and small!) get the most out of their Koha LMS.
This is the fifth blog in the Koha tips and tricks series to help you make the most out of your Koha instance. In this post, Alex covers how to change the bibliographic information displayed in the OPAC, and solutions for a couple of the more common OPAC display issues.
To read from the beginning of the tips and tricks series start here.
1. Is it possible to alter the ‘material type’ of a bibliographic record?
Material type is a value stored in the bibliographic record. It is displayed by default in both the search results and details pages in both the Koha staff client and the OPAC (more on how to change what is displayed in these interfaces in tip #2). Figure 1 highlights how the material type of ‘Book’ is displayed in the staff client search result interface.
Figure 1. Material type in the staff client search results
The material type value is defined in a bibliographic record as a single character stored in the 006 (7th position) of the leader field (first field in a MARC record). In figure 2 the material type of ‘book’ is denoted by the digit ‘a’ in the 006 position.
Figure 2. Highlighted character in the 7th position of the leader (000) field of a bibliographic record which denotes the material type is ‘book’
If the material type of a biblio is incorrect there are several ways to address this issue with Koha:
- Hide the material type in the Koha staff client and OPAC
1) Go to Administration -> Global system preferences -> Search for ‘material type’.
2) Set the ‘DisplayIconsXSLT’ and ‘DisplayOPACiconsXSLT’ system preferences to ‘Don’t show’. This hides the material type information from being displayed in the staff client and OPAC interfaces. (Note: this will also hide the ‘format’ and ‘audience’ information.)
Figure 3. Staff client search result with material type hidden from display
- Manually modify the material type
1) In the staff client, search for an item and click on the item from the search results
2) Select the ‘Edit’ button at the top of the page
Figure 4. Edit button on biblio detail page in Koha staff client
3) Select the ‘Edit record’ drop-down option
4) Change the 7th character in the 000 Leader field. For example, changing this value to ‘b’ results in the material type being set to ‘Article’.
- Batch modify the material type of multiple bibliographic records
Catalyst has a script called fix_leader.pl. This script can update the material type values in the leader field of bibliographic records so the material type matches the itemtype of the biblioitems. The script retrieves the biblionumber of all bibliographic records with an item level item type of ‘Continuing Resources’ and it goes through and changes the leader of each biblio to serial.
At present this only works for changing the material type where the itemtype is ‘Continuing Resource’ (i.e. a periodical), however with a small modification this script can work with a variety of itemtypes.
2. Can the information displayed in search result pages and book detail pages in the Koha OPAC and staff client be customized?
In Koha on the search result and the individual book detail pages in both the staff client and OPAC interfaces, you will notice information about the book is displayed.
Figure 5. Highlighted bibliographic information in biblio detail page in Koha staff client
It is possible to change the default information about the book that is displayed. The files that define what is displayed are written in a format called XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations). It is used to convert files from one format XML to another format HTML. The XSLT files that are displayed are defined in the following system preferences:
XSLTDetailsDisplay – This XSLT file is used in Staff client biblio detail page
XSLTResultsDisplay – This XSLT file is used in Staff client search results interface
OPACXSLTDetailsDisplay – This XSLT file is used in OPAC biblio detail page
OPACXSLTResultsDisplay – This XSLT file is used in OPAC search results interface
So what you can do is ask your Koha support vendor, to create a custom XSLT file from one of the existing community XSLT files, then amend it to show the MARC fields you are interested in displaying. Upload this file to the Koha server, and change the appropriate aforementioned system preferences to point to the new custom XSLT file.
3. Why is there a ‘No cover image available’ box appearing in OPAC search results and can it be hidden?
Figure 6. OPAC search result with ‘No cover image available’ box
This box is displayed because you have the OPACLocalCoverImages system preference enabled, and Koha can find no local cover image for that biblio. Figure 6 is also displaying a cover image, this is because the AmazonCoverImages system preference is enabled and Koha has been able to retrieve a cover image from Amazon.
Hiding the ‘No Cover image available’ box is easy:
1) In the Koha staff client go to: Administration-> Global System preferences
2) Search for OPACUserCSS
3) Paste the following CSS code into the OPACUserCSS syspref:
.no-image { display: none !important; }
Figure 7. OPAC search result with no ‘No cover image available’ box displayed
4. We have upgraded to Koha 18.05 and the styling is broken, how do we fix this?
After upgrading your Koha instance to an 18.05.x version you may find that the styling of your site is broken.
Figure 8. Koha OPAC home page with broken styling after upgrading to Koha 18.05
There are two fixes for this, outlined below. Attempt Fix 1 and if that doesn’t resolve the issue, then try Fix 2:
Fix 1:
Ask your Koha support vendor to reload and restart apache2, with the following terminal commands:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Fix 2:
(i) Ask your Koha support vendor to add the following two Apache rewrite rules to the /etc/koha/apache-shared-intranet.conf and /etc/koha/apache-shared-opac.conf files.
RewriteRule ^(.*)_[0-9][0-9]\.[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].js$ $1.js [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)_[0-9][0-9]\.[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].css$ $1.css [L]
If your Koha instance is running off a gitified directory (your Koha support vendor will know if this is the case) then your vendor will need to add those Apache rewrite rules to different files: /etc/koha/apache-shared-intranet-git.conf and /etc/koha/apache-shared-opac-git.conf
Once complete save, then exit the file
(ii) As above in Fix 1, reload and restart apache2 with the following terminal commands:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Now reload your webpage and the styling should be displaying correctly.
Stay tuned for more in Alex’s ‘Koha tips and tricks’ series!
Catalyst Koha
If you have any questions or comments about this blog post or would like some support with your Koha instance you are welcome to email us at koha@catalyst.net.nz
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