Koha Question of the Week: Why are there barcodes or titles of deleted records in my search results?

by Valerie Burnett on Nov 15, 2024

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

Question: Why are there barcodes or titles of deleted records in my search results?

Don't worry, these ghostly hauntings are not dangerous and usually go away with time.

When you search in Koha, it is analogous to searching in a book. You don't flip through the whole book looking for your topic, you open right to the index and find the topic and a link to its location.

Similarly, Koha maintains an index of its database contents. When you perform a search, Koha is looking at its index, rather than the full database. Now and then, the index gets behind. The reindexer got stuck, or sad, or behind. When this happens, you might find deleted records still searchable, or you might not be able to search for newly added records.

Options:

1. If a newly added record is not showing up when you search, simply edit/save the record, no changes necessary. This forces the record to be indexed and thus searchable.

2. Give it time. Wait overnight, and if the index still isn't updated, reach out to us at ByWater about the mismatch. ByWater experts will either apply ghostbusting, to remove lingering ghosts, or run a reindex to rebuild Koha’s index accurately