Bug 8156

Summary: allow users to put things in lists that are not in the catalog (free text entries to lists)
Product: Koha Reporter: Liz Rea <wizzyrea>
Component: OPACAssignee: Liz Rea <wizzyrea>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: P5 - low CC: katrin.fischer, wizzyrea
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
Change sponsored?: --- Patch complexity: ---
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Description Liz Rea 2012-05-25 16:36:12 UTC
One of our libraries came up with the idea that it would be cool to allow library users (and presumably staff) to put things on lists that are not in the catalog.

One possible way to do it:

in the lists interface, have a "add your own item" form, that allows entering title, author fields.

In the list display, list those user created items with the title and author linked to searches for that exact title/author string. The idea being that a user could put a book they knew was coming on their reading list, but that wasn't already in the catalog, and easily search for it later.

Another example would be for librarians to use this to create award winners lists of items that were award winners, but displaying title/authors that the library didn't own alongside titles/authors that the library *did* own. 

I think there are more applications for this - I recall there were several more when I floated the idea originally in the IRC channel.

It's a nice-to-have, not a must-have. Pretty cool feature though, I think.
Comment 1 Katrin Fischer 2012-05-26 08:43:45 UTC
I think it's not so easy to do. Without a record in the catalog there will be no detail view for the item on the list and it will not be searchable like the other items, so that might be confusing to patrons. Not easy to explain why some entries on the list look different and behave different than others.
Would be using a fast add or an extra framework a solution?