ByWater Question of the Week: Why Isn't this Item or Record Showing in my Public Catalog?

by Hebah Amin-Headley on Feb 14, 2025

Each Friday, we will bring you a new ByWater Question of the Week. We will select real questions that we receive and share the answers with you!

Question: Why Isn't this Item or Record Showing in my Public Catalog?

Answer: Records, or individual items on a record, can be hidden from a library's OPAC in a couple ways.

The first method is by suppressing the whole bibliographic record via a combination of enabling the OPACSuppression system preference and setting the 942$n tag to yes, or 1; this hides the whole record from the OPAC. Records hidden this way are clearly indicated from the staff client, replacing the OPAC view link with text reading "Suppressed in OPAC."

The other way to suppress items in the Koha OPAC is subtler, and one that libraries often set up once and forget about until they can't find something via OPAC. This method is often a combination of system preferences, namely OPACHiddenItems, which hides individual items based on specific item data fields, usually in conjunction with OpacHiddenItemsHidesRecord, which hides the record if the only items on that record are hidden ones.

For libraries using Aspen as their discovery layer atop the OPAC, Aspen by default hides records with no items on them, and further suppression of individual items by data points like item type or status can be configured.

Additional Resources

Koha Manual: OPACSuppression

Koha Manual: OPACHiddenItems

Koha wiki: OPACHiddenItems documentation

Aspen Help Center: ILS Integration