Changing the list of Collections available for Print Publications

Administration
1

Hi,

I apologize if I missed an existing forum post. In the regular webui, is there a way to modify the list of collections for a Print Publication? I could not find one, but easily could have missed it since I’m such a new user.

I can see the JSON (I think) string in the database, but if I modify it manually the form for adding breaks. It does not display the Print Publication field at all.

So before I start looking through code or anything, I was hoping to know the correct way. :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Ralph

2

Ralph, good question. This is a feature that was build in a long time ago, and I have not used or edited it since. What you see there is not JSON (good guess ; ), but a serialised PHP array. The numbers represent the length of the string that follows. I suspect in updating your list, you are breaking the array by not updating the number? Have a play and see if that helps, otherwise let me know. This should be OK for you to tinker in your own system, as we are unlikely to update that list at any time. However, if you want to put together a more useful global list of collections, then we could always include that in the next release. Thanks, Ross.

3

Excellent, figured it out. I was thinking array/item length. So I missed the string length just before the list of items.

For a “standard list” I would guess it might change from school to school. In our inventory of books, we have:

Electronic Resources, Magazine, Young Adult, Reference - Non-circulating, Fiction, Fiction - Chapter Books, Fiction - Early Readers, Fiction - Picture Books, Non-Fiction, Non-Fiction - Eye Witness, Non-Fiction - Early Reader, Non-Fiction - Biography`

I’m not sure why they decided that “Young Adult” was not part of “Fiction”.

But it’s easy enough to change now that I understand. And I’m assuming if we edit the list in gibbonLibraryType existing data is not lost in <code class="CodeInline">gibbonLibraryItem. Unless, of course, we edit the book and the choice is no longer available.
4

Ralph, glad to hear that you worked it out. Yes, gibbonLibraryType is the place to make the change, and this will impact all future records you create (which are based on the type). gibbonLibraryItems are the records already created, and you could manually update them to use one of the list specified above, if you need. I’ll keep this list in mind for future, and consider making it the default. In the meantime, thanks for confirming that this fix works, and contributing your solution to the community. Ross.