Flinders University Library Opening Hours, RSS and Authentication Modules

Library Opening Hours Direct from Voyager Opening Hours for current day in easy to read format Options for RSS feed, HTML popup page, or embedded in HTML page using separate CSS style sheet to format as appropriate Using Perl/CGI querying voyager via SQL and rendering results

HTML version

RSS version

Embedded HTML

Perl Modules DBI, CGI qw(:standard), Tie::IxHash Uses flinders specific Oracle connection parameters defined in dbi_defaults.pl The Tie module allows ordered hashrefs Script pulls out list of circulating locations, transforms or removes locations to give a list of friendly location names.

Then loop through each location and pull out exceptions for current date. If there are none for a circulating location pull out the opening time for the current day of the week. Uses parameter display_format to determine how to render results. Choice of html, html_brief or RSS. RSS feed can be added to Firefox Bookmark toolbar for easy reference.

New Books RSS Feeds Extended Michael Doran’s New Books script to include normalized call number field and ISBN. Allows to generate a RSS feed based on call number parameters that include cover art from providers like Amazon or Google based on ISBN.

Parameters to script include call_lower and call_upper to give a particular range ie Dewey 200’s include Religion Script reads the newbooks.txt file generated daily for new books so no complex processing – uses BBID linking to link direct to bib ID. Includes title/author, location and cover art. Example URL: local/newbooks_call.cgi?call_lower=700&call_upper=79 9

Authentication Modules Used in SMS gateway, student portal, My Record Support LDAP (Flinders Authentication Name) and Barcode/Surname authentication within the University ldap_authentication.pl and barcode_authentication.pl are perl include files that create an authentication token to facilitate authentication and provide a common data structure.

Result returned from authentication is a hash value consisting of following entries: –‘auth’: Y/N – has user been authenticated? –‘error’: if defined contains any error from process ie currently suspended or authentication failed because invalid username/password – can be exact LDAP error. –Key value ie flinderspersonstudent – indicates student/staff etc. Generally is the LDAP attribute containing ID number. –‘instid’: Institution ID value such as student number etc –We also retrieve a few other values such as address, first and last name.

People can be both students and staff, and each has their own patron record in voyager – so we need to know when authenticating which record to log person in with. Plans to extend authentication modules to allow patrons to pull in Papercut printing/photcopying information into the portal using these modules. Allows user a choice of authentication methods as we also have community borrowers who are not students/staff. Example URL: bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=pbLogon