2023-12-18 Meeting notes: Text field enrichment | 2024 outlook

Date

Dec 18, 2023 

Housekeeping

• Convener and notes: @Martina Schildt 

• Next meeting: Jan 10, 2024

Discussion items

1. Text fields enrichment (RTF, HTML)

Minutes

Feedback in Slack

Bernd Oberknapp: Hi, have you considered markdown (or some markdown flavor) as an alternative to HTML or RTF for rich text fields? This seems to meet the requirements and probably would be easier to handle. HTML and RTF would have to be sanitized to avoid introducing security issues or breaking the frontend, and RTF also has other issues (we try to get rid of RTF in our current library system because for example many mail systems block RTF for security reasons). Using markdown which is much more readable in the original format and can be rendered for display in different ways seems a much better choice to me.

Maura Byrne: I've spoken with people in my department at UChicago, and there was a fair amount of opposition to the idea of changing plain text fields to RTF or HTML.  Basically, it complicates imports and exports, because the entities that either supply or receive data will have to "know" that the data isn't in plain text, and what format it's in.  Someone brought up that HTML might be insecure, if javascript isn't excluded.I asked the opinion of the members of UM-SIG, and the general opinion boiled down to "is the juice worth the squeeze?"  How would we have to change our current setups, workflows, data models, and does the benefit offset that?Also, would something like using RTF or HTML be configurable?  Could UChicago opt out of using it at all?

Laura Daniels: So far, there is general opposition to the idea of any rich text/html in Inventory or quickMARC

Requirements

→ do not apply text field enrichment to all fields = opt-in

→ opt-in per institution

Use cases

Use cases for text field enrichment | rtf, html, markdown

2024 topics

• continue text field enrichment

• open container discussion items:

  • no integration between Agreements and Inventory - better integration between electronic and physical needed

    • question: how can we best discuss this?

  • capture history over a long time - this is what we had expected from containers and this is still needed in FOLIO

• Filters: contains vs. starts with - from WOLFcon discussion - to be continued 

General: 

• do we have a member that regularly attends Implementers SIG and could bring discussions and questions there? - like a liaison?

• same for PO meeting?

Next steps

Chat

Attendees

Action items