The Books Edition Page

Purpose

This screen is used to create, view, update, clone and delete Book records. In the context of Project Hirtius, you need to create a Book record before you can quote it using a bibref record (bibliographical reference) while documenting your fully-fledged or lesser objects. Likewise for Articles, you need a Book record first (for the periodical, for instance), before you can link Article records to it.

Book records in Project Hirtius will not only track the reference to the published work (e.g. through its author, title, publisher, etc.), but will also help you locate it again should you need it, by storing the name and address of the Library where it is available and the "UDC" code of the book, so you can locate it easily on the shelf.

Getting There...

To reach the Edition Page of an existing Book:

From the Main Application Menu (or indeed almost any other Project Hirtius page), click on the "Manage Books" icon in the header (). This gets you to the Books and Articles List.
Navigate the Books and Articles List until you locate the book you're looking for.
Then click on the book ID (first column), or on any of the action links (last column) to view, edit, clone or delete the book record in question.

Of course, you can also reach the Book view or edition screen through a lot of other ways, such as using search results (see Navigation Tips).

To add a new Book record:

From the Main Application Menu, click on the "Manage Books" icon in the header (). This gets you to the Books and Articles List.
Press [End] to reach the bottom of the list.
Click the Add action link in the bottom-right corner of the list.

Supported actions

The Book Edition Page supports the following actions:

Add: the form to fill in and submit in order to create a new Book record.
Insert: creating the new Book record in the database (post Add action).
Edit: modifying an existing Book record through a form populated based on the current database contents.
Update: storing the modified data in the database, updating the appropriate Book record (post Edit action).
View: display the current database contents for the selected Book record. No form in this case.
Clone: create a new Book record from a form filled by the database contents of an existing record. The Clone action will be followed by an Insert upon submit. Please note that if the original Book record contains linked Articles, these are not duplicated by the Clone action.
DelCon: first step when requesting the deletion of a record -- issues a prompt for confirmation.
Del: the actual removal of the selected record (as well as all linked metadata records) from the database (post DelCon action). Please note that deleting a Book will also delete all Articles it may contain.
That action will be recorded: a new entry will be added to the Event Log.

Of these, only Add, Edit, View, Clone and DelCon are entry points. They are typically reached from the Books and Articles List (but in the case of View, there are many more possibilities).

Fields

Here below are the fields that you can expect to find on the Book Edition Page. The goal here is not to simply duplicate the database layout information. If this is what interests you, please refer to the Database Layout, the database creation script or the database itself. The purpose is rather to explain what each field is meant for [D], what format it is expected to follow [F] and what are the conditions for its validity (if applicable) [V].

A star (*) after the name of the field denotes a mandatory field (the star is shown in red with the same meaning in the application user interface).

Object ID*	D	Sequential ID, automatically assigned by the DB during record creation. Displayed read-only once available.
Author	D	Author name. In the case of collective works, the name of the director may be used instead. Since the book list will typically be used sorted by author, it makes sense to enter it as "LAST NAME, First Name" (the use of all capital letters for the full name is optional, of course). In the case of anonymous works or periodicals, simply leave the field empty.
Author	F	Free text.
Title*	D	Title of the book, periodical, etc.
Title*	F	Free text. HTML markup allowed, but it is recommended to limit its use to simple tags (e.g. italics). Do *not* terminate by a full stop (.), as these will be added by the application when displaying.
Subtitle	D	Subtitle of the book, periodical, etc. Leave empty if not applicable.
Subtitle	F	Free text. HTML markup allowed, but it is recommended to limit its use to simple tags (e.g. italics). Do *not* terminate by a full stop (.), as these will be added by the application when displaying.
Place	D	Location where the book has been published. Leave empty if this information is not available.
Place	F	Free text.
Publisher	D	Name of the publisher. Leave empty if this information is not available.
Publisher	F	Free text.
Edition	D	Typically left empty for the first edition. Use something like "2nd ed." otherwise. The text will be inserted as-is in the quote.
Edition	F	Free text.
Published	D	Year of publication. Leave empty if this information is not available.
	F	Up to 6 digits.
	V	Should be a numerical value (int).
Available at*	D	Library where the book is available. Select from list. The contents of the list is managed through the Libraries Edition Page.
Available at*	F	Drop-down list.
UDC code	D	UDC code for the book at the listed library. UDC stands for Universal Decimal Classification. Can also be used if the library uses another classification system. Leave empty if not applicable.
UDC code	F	Free text.
URL	D	If the contents of the book is available online (through Google Books, for instance), you can use this field to store the URL. When set, a globe icon linking to this URL will be displayed next to the book ID in the Books and Articles List, giving the user direct access to the contents.
URL	F	URL.
Periodical	D	Select this flag if the book or magazine is publish periodically (e.g. weekly, monthly, bi-annually, etc.). This impacts the way references will be rendered.
Periodical	F	Checkbox.
Comment	D	Any comment you might have on the book itself (how you found out about it, alternate locations where it's available), or its subject (its relevance for your work, its level of quality and target audience).
Comment	F	Free text. HTML markup allowed.

Controls

In View mode

Library link: The library name (Available at field) is a link that will open the Libraries Edition Page in 'view' mode for the library in question.
Articles link(s): If the current Book contains any linked Article, the Articles section will list them. Their IDs are links that will open the Article Edition Page in 'view' mode on the specified article. When followed by a star ('*'), a comment has been entered for that article. Hover your mouse over its ID to get it displayed as a tooltip. Comments that are longer than '$max_ttip_len' char. (see Global Definitions File) will be trucated and suffixed with '...' to denote the truncation.
Quoted by link(s): The Quoted by section offers direct links to the objects that quote the current book through bibrefs. These links will open the object edition page in 'view' mode.
Switch to edit mode link: Located at the bottom of the page, just above the footer. Click on this link to edit the current object (switches the view from a R/O rendering of the contents to an HTML form that allows you to modify that contents and submit it afterward).

In Edit mode

Submit button: (Also in "Add" and "Clone" modes). Commits the locally modified HTML form fields contents to the database that stores Project Hirtius data. Use it to save your latest modifications. It is of course perfectly legitimate to click Submit any number of times during a long edition session to avoid loosing unsaved data. When doing so, use the Edit this book some more... link on the update result screen (see below) to return to the current book record and edit it further.
Reset button: (Also in "Add" and "Clone" modes). Cancels any un-committed change, and returns all HTML form fields to their initial value (i.e. the one they had when the page was last loaded in the browser). Use this button to revert any erroneous edit you might have done (Beware: this only works on local changes that have not been saved to the database yet, i.e. for which you've not clicked on Submit yet).
Quoted by link(s): The Quoted by section offers direct links to the objects that quote the current book through bibrefs. These links will open the object edition page in 'view' mode.
Switch to view mode link: Located at the bottom of the page, just above the footer. Click on this link to view the current object (switches from the current HTML form that allows you to modify the object contents and submit it afterward to a R/O rendering of that contents).

The Articles list

For each Article in the list, the first and last columns of its row contain links that correspond to actions to be performed on the related Article object.

Article ID: the Article ID (left-most column) is a link that opens the Article Edition Page in view mode for the selected Article. When followed by a star ('*'), a comment has been entered for that article. Hover your mouse over its ID to get it displayed as a tooltip. Comments that are longer than '$max_ttip_len' char. (see Global Definitions File) will be trucated and suffixed with '...' to denote the truncation.
Edit: opens the Article Edition Page in edit mode for the selected Article.
Clone: opens the Article Edition Page in clone mode for the selected Article (use it to create a new Article record based on a copy of the original one: all fields will be pre-filled; further edit them as needed before hitting Submit).
Del: opens the Article Edition Page in delete confirmation mode for the selected Article. You can then confirm to proceed with the deletion or cancel it and return to the list.

In addition to this, a global action is available on the last row (bottom right corner) of the list:

Add: opens the Article Edition Page in add mode (displays a blank HTML form to be filled in order to create a new Article record).

In Insert or Update result mode

This result page appears once you have clicked the Submit button on the Add, Edit or Clone page. It will offer the following links:

Edit this book some more... link: Returns you to the current Book record in edit mode. Use this link to further edit the book in question. This link is also present just after you added a new book. You have to use this link to add some of the metadata that can only be attached once the record has been created (articles, for instance).
Add a new book link: Opens the form that allows you to create a new Book record. Usefull when creating multiple records in sequence.
Add article to book link: Opens the Article Edition Page in add mode (displays a blank HTML form to be filled in order to create a new Article record). This link is also available on the Books Edition Page in 'edit' mode, in the Articles list section (see above) and on the Books and Articles List in the Book actions column.
Book list link: Returns you to the Books and Articles List.