Classify eJournals as journals

[cx6ds]

With this extension, eJournals are not classified as “Serial”, but as "Journal".

[demiankatz]

Thanks, @cx6ds -- I'm going to consult with the cataloging team here to see if there are any concerns about this change. I'd also welcome input from others!

[demiankatz]

After having some conversations with a cataloger here and with @EreMaijala in Slack, I think there might be a better/safer way to do this.

Our cataloger was concerned that if the leader is set to "computer file," the 008 field is not supposed to include journal data -- this approach seems like it may be targeting non-standards-compliant records.

@EreMaijala suggested that a safer solution might be to look at 008 position 23 for the 'o' value, similar to the eBook handling in lines 262-267 above your change. We could even establish an eJournal value so users could optionally distinguish between electronic/physical journals or else map both to the same Journal value to merge them together.

What do you think? Would that still work for your existing use case?

[cx6ds]

Thank you @demiankatz and @EreMaijala for looking at it. Firstly, you have revealed that our MARC records are probably incorrectly coded at this point. And your suggestion with the subdivision of journal and eJournal or the possibility of mapping the two together is exactly the feature that is needed for our systems in the future. We would be delighted if this solution were to be included in the Vufind standard.

[demiankatz]

@cx6ds, do you want to try to implement the proposed eJournal solution, or would it be helpful if one of us pushed some revisions to this PR? Or would you rather close this for now and open a new one after your investigations are completed on your end? Any of those options is fine with me -- I just want to find the best way to move the work forward. :-)

[cx6ds]

We have introduced a new format type "eJournal" with the MARC characteristics proposed by @demiankatz and @EreMaijala. This is then mapped to "Journal" so that everything remains the same for all those who do not want to differentiate.

[demiankatz]

Thanks, @cx6ds! A couple of suggestions:

[demiankatz]

Since we're getting very close to the 10.1 release and I don't want to introduce any surprises at the last minute, I'm going to target this PR against the 11.0 milestone so there's time for me to review it one last time with the cataloging department here (and make sure @EreMaijala is also happy with its present form). Thanks for the ongoing work; I think we're nearly done!

[demiankatz]

See below for a possible next revision; please let me know what you think!

[demiankatz]

Thanks, @cx6ds! I had to adjust one of our integration tests to account for the fact that the "Serial" format is now less likely to be used; now I believe this is ready to go!