This page describes the latest features of Minaret 3, any
outstanding issues and a list of upcoming additions. If you
discover a problem or have a suggestion, please check here first
before you send it in.
MARC export. You can MARC export an entire database,
the results of a query or a single record with the new "Export" links
that are displayed on the search screen when you are logged in. The
exported data is sent directly to your computer where it can be saved
on your hard disk. This version of Minaret only produces MARC UTF-8
output which supports the full Unicode character set. This data cannot
be read by older versions of Minaret.
Record editing. You can you now edit your records
in either a user friendly or MARC tagged display. Like
display forms (see the next bullet), you can customize edit
forms as well as create new input forms with an easy to use
form editor. Each editing form can contain one or more pages
of one or more fields. The forms are modular, which means that you
only have to define a field or page once and can then use it on
multiple forms. Best of all, a change to a field or page
definition is automatically reflected in every form that uses
that element.
Form editor. All of the
display forms that are used to create the catalog portion of this
site have been rewritten in a form scripting language. All of these
forms can be modified to give your site a particular look and
feel. In addition, user friendly editing tools have been created
for the search and record display forms. You can now control which
fields are displayed on the record display forms, create new forms
and select which forms your users can display their search results
in.
Vernacular language support. Full
support for MARC field 880 ("alternate graphic representation") has
been added to Minaret. The 880 field allows you to add vernacular
language data (like Arabic, Asian, Cyrillic, Hebrew, etc.) to a
cataloging record that is written in another language (like
English). Subfield 6 of field 880 is used to specify which MARC
field is being represented (for example, a 245 title
field). Minaret will treat the data in an 880 field as if it
originated from the field specified in subfield 6, including adding
these fields to the appropriate indexes. This means that the
contents of any 880 fields will end up in the author title, subject
and keyword indexes in their vernacular form as well as their
translated or transliterated version.
Vernacular
Language Records is a small database that has been added to
the sample catalogs that contains records with vernacular
language data. The current samples include Arabic, Asian and
Hebrew in MARC 880 fields added to a record that is otherwise
written in English. If you select a "Title" search and click on
the Find button, you can browse the titles in their
English or transliterated forms as well as their vernacular
counterparts. Note that the vernacular versions sort after the
letter "z".