How to suppress items in the OPAC
Suppressing an item on the OPAC means that specific item records of your choosing will be hidden on the patron side of Koha.
There are a variety of reasons for suppressing an item on the OPAC and the procedure for suppressing an item can be slightly altered for different circumstances. These instructions will be a general overview of the suppression function, using the Withdrawn authorised value in the example.
To discuss the particular needs of your catalogue, please contact Interleaf Technology directly.
Suppress an item with a Withdrawn status
The Withdrawn Status
To view the selection of Withdrawn statuses on your system go to Koha administration > Basic Parameters > Authorized values.
This will bring you to a table of authorised values available on Koha. At the top of this table there is a search box, which can be used to find a specific authorised value.
Use this box to search for WITHDRAWN, which will narrow down the table to authorised values containing that phrase. Click the WITHDRAWN title under the Category column.
This will open a new page with a table of the different WITHDRAWN authorised values defined on the site.
Most systems will have one or two statuses, withdrawn and not withdrawn. It is possible to add more however so the table may vary somewhat from library to library.
Take note of both the authorized value (numerical code) and the description (name) of the status you want to suppress from the OPAC. In this example we will be using the authorized value of 1, which has a description of withdrawn.
Using OPACHiddenItems system preference
Go to Koha Administration > System Preferences and search for OPACHiddenItems.
This will bring up system preferences which include the same phrase.
OPACHiddenItems
The OPACHiddenItems will be collapsed, meaning the phrase Click to edit will need to be clicked so the feature to edit the preference will appear. Clicking Edit will cause a free text box to drop out.
The rules for which items should be suppressed from the OPAC will need to be manually typed into this free text box.
There is a link in the system preference to a wiki that explains the syntax of the rules in detail.
The basic structure of these commands will be field: [value].
Field refers to a specific field in the item record, eg. Collection Code, Damaged status or in this example, Withdrawn status.
Value is the content that can be put into the defined field.
To suppress items marked with a status of Withdrawn, type the following into the OPACHiddenItems box.
withdrawn: [1]
The exact spacing and characters must be used or the item won’t be suppressed.
It is possible to enter multiple values in the square brackets. For example withdrawn: [1,2] means where the withdrawn field contains 1 OR 2.
Once the box is filled in click Save all OPAC preferences.
Using OPACSuppression system preference
Once the OPACHiddenItems system preference has been set, it is necessary to set the OPACSuppression system preference. To get to this system preference, search for OPACSuppression under Koha Administration > System Preferences.
This will bring up a system preference of the same name. This system preference comes up with four preferences that can be set, but for this function only the first, OPACSuppression, is required.
OPACSuppression needs to be set to Hide items marked as suppressed from the OPAC search results. Once this has been set, click Save all Cataloging preferences.
Adding Withdrawn Status to an Item
First, find the item in the catalogue to be suppressed.
On the staff side, click on the Edit button beside the specific item in the record to be suppressed.
This will take you to a new page with the item record available to edit. Make sure the item you want to edit is selected by the barcode at the top of the form.
Go to the 0 - withdrawn status field and choose the withdrawn status that matches the numerical option you input in the OPACHiddenItems system preference. The withdrawn status will come up as the name of the status. So in this example, the correct withdrawn status will be Withdrawn.
After choosing this status hit save at the bottom of the page.
The item record on the staff side now has a status of Withdrawn.
And the item has stopped appearing on the OPAC.
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