Items Long Overdue

All, as was discussed at the meeting we will be marking all items overdue for more than 3 months as lost and billing the users who have them checked out. To give the libraries one last chance to search the shelves and clear the items I have created a report to list all the charges that are overdue by 91 days when the report runs and have had 3 notices sent. This report will run in the morning on the first of the month and can be found in your Reports login. Simply run the report to get the list of charges for your library and check your shelves. If you find any of these items please check them in. On the 30^th of the month the Report to make all those items that are checked out and overdue by 91 days lost will run. You will then have a final bill to print up and send to your patrons. So to review:

1) First of the month print your list of long overdue charges and check your shelves

2) 30^th of the month those charges a marked lost and billed to user accounts

3) Print up the Final Bill and send to your patron

If you have any questions email me.

Removing Patrons

All, starting next month we will be removing patrons whose privilege has been expired for over 18 months. So that we all know what is going on I’ve set this up as a two step process. Late in the evening on the first of the month, a list for each library will arrive in your reports login. This is a list of all the patrons who are going to be removed. These are patrons who meet the following criteria: card expired over 18 months ago and has no fines or charges against their account. You should print this list up and check to see if there are any patrons who you do not want removed. If there are then you need to renew their privilege because step two is coming. On the 30^th of every month the system will run the Remove Users Report set to the same selection criteria as the list so all those users will go away. Then on the 1^st of the month the new list of candidates will generate. I will warn you the first list will be a big one and you may not want to take the time to look it over that closely. After that the lists will be more manageable. So here are the instructions.

1) After first of the month go into Reports and print the list Users to be Removed.

2) Check it over and renew any accounts you do not want removed before the 30^th of the month.

3) Repeat next month.

Keep in mind we may be removing users who only use their card to access the databases, so you may be hearing from them. I am looking at a couple of options of how to deal with them. Before that though I think we need to come together as a group and define what usage is and what constitutes an active patron account. This way we can keep all our apples on the apple table. The goal here is a clean and accurate database and I think this is currently the best way I know of to achieve that. If you have any questions email me.

New DVD & Video Rule

All, I have made the necessary change to the Circ Map for the new DVD and Video rule. Starting tomorrow patrons will only be allowed to check out 5 videos and 5 DVDs. I’ve tested this and it does work, but I still need to know how it works in the real world. Let me know if you have any problems. Not that I am expecting any problems, right.

New Reports

All, I’ve just finished adding some new reports to your monthly statistics templates. You should all now see three new monthly reports: Deleted Users, Expired Users, and Active Users. These reports will let you know how many of your users in the past month have been deleted, had their privileges expire or have had activity on their account. The first two combined with the Users Added report will let you keep a running track of your number of patrons. The active users report is interesting because it can show you how many of your patrons are using your library. Don’t be alarmed when you view this report. It will be quite a bit less than your circ numbers for the obvious reason that it is only counting accounts that have been used, so if that patron checks out 1 item or 20 it still is a count of 1. Also activity also includes editing the user profile, but since that does not happen very often it should not muddy things up, unless you want it to.

The last report I added I’ve added under the REPORTS login. In response to one of our libraries I’ve created a report that generates a list of patrons whose items have expired on the previous day. Your staff can then phone these patrons and remind them of this. We did this because by the item the first overdue notice hits the item would be 7 to 10 days overdue and if it is a couple of DVD’s it could be expensive. Now in creating the report I started thinking. Would your patrons rather be notified a day before their items went overdue? I can easily make that change to the report. Email and let me know and I will modify your library’s report template. Then you would have a list of patrons whose items are about to go overdue that you can call and remind them or ask if they want a renewal. Remember this is all up to you and your staff if you have the time/people to do this. If you have any questions just email them to me.

I-Team Decisions 7/2006

1. Dates for notices/expires
1. Holds will be set system wide to expire after 6 months time
2. 1^st notice will come after 1wk past the due date, 2^nd notice will be 3 wks past the due date
3. 3^rd overdue notice will come 5 weeks past the due date
4. Final notice will be the bill generated by the Longoverdue report and will run 3 months past the due date
2. Max Numbers
1. Number of holds is 10 and will stay that way
2. We will wait to set a max number for Claims Returned until we are certain that items are not being set to claims returned in error. Vinny will be setting up a monthly template to list claims returned for that library so the staff can check the shelves for those items. Once we are certain all claims returns are correct we will revisit the issue.
3. Alternate ID usage
1. Doesn’t work for web access, Vinny is continuing to explore that option
2. Currently most public libraries are not using it and will continue not using it. The libraries in Del Tech use it for their student’s BANNER ID so any patron with an Alternate ID that begins with a 7 is a Del Tech student. The driver’s license number should be put in the Extended Info tab in the field marked license and can be searched by the User Search helper. There is no need to put the license in the Alternate ID field.
4. Expired patron records will be purged from the system 18 months after the expiration date, for the public libraries. The academics will have a longer period to be decided on by the directors of those libraries.
5. Vinny will be setting up templates for the Convert Discard Items report for all the libraries. This report will be run monthly by the libraries. Twice a year in June and the end of Dec the system will run a report to delete the items marked by the Convert Discard report. This will clean out the Discard user and delete any items whose fines had been taken care of after being checked out to the discard user. This way the libraries do not need to keep track of these fines and items after they are checked out to the discard user.
6. Vinny will be emailing a list of canned response for the various requests that come across.
7. E-books are coming. DDL has purchased the whole Netlibrary collection of 69,000 titles. The agreement is that users can download any title once, then if the same title is downloaded a second time the DDL pays for and then owns the title.
1. DDL will be testing the records on Sirsinet prior to loading them on the production server.
2. E-books will not be downloadable in the library we will be looking into a way to alert patrons of this and how to instruct them.
3. Records will be loaded by the DDL and will have a unique item type: EBOOK, location: ONLINE and Item Cat 1: EBOOK. This will allow patrons to search just for e-books and will also allow libraries to retrieve statistics on the usage of the e-books.
4. Terry Plummer is arranging for training at the DDL by a representative from OCLC/NetLibrary on the usage of the e-books for the library staff to answer patron questions. This training will be in August, more details will come.
8. We are getting ready to move the public libraries over to the new Cavalier network. Once the final T-1 lines are installed then scheduling of the move will begin. Libraries will be contacted before the work begins so that arrangements can be made.

Other:

A new bill reason SAND has been added to bill users for damage to library materials by sand.

Email is back

The email server is back up and running.

Email Problems

For all the libraries using the web mail, we are having a little difficulty with the software. As result webmail is unavailable. If you try to login you will get a message that the software key has expired. We are working with the vendor to fix this and hope to have mail back up soon.