I-Bisstro Back Up

All, i-Bistro is back up and running. Sirsi fixed the issue with the content server so that shouldn’t be holding things up. We also had another problem with our webserver. It was being hit quite frequently from two IPs not connected with the libraries. Ben is making some changes to the firewall to block them. This should keep the OPACs from going down. Let me know if you experience any troubles today.

Taking System Down!

All, tonight at 9:00 pm we will be bringing the system down to apply a patch to correct the problems we have been having with the OPACs. All you need to do is when you close down for the night, make sure you log out of Workflows, you will be dumped out anyway but it is best to log out. The libraries that will be open you will be taken out of Workflows and you should wait 20 minutes before logging back in. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Patron Phone Numbers

All, as many of you have noticed the phone numbers are still missing from patron records. Since the people at Sirsi created this mess they are also fixing it. I’ve been told we can expect the phone numbers back tomorrow or Thursday at the latest. I’m still pushing for today. In the interest of keeping you informed here is what happened. (Actually it is what I believe to have happened based on what I’ve seen and been told.)

We contracted with Sirsi to provide a custom report that would give us addresses in three lines instead of four. This will help with the cost for the libraries using bulk mailing. The report was finished last week and run for the first time. It didn’t work. That was why some of you had notices with the library’s city, state copied over several times. The person who worked on the custom report found the errors and fixed it, then had to clean out our database. Also on Friday many had the problem with patron records being locked and unable to be modified. This is tied to that. Every night, a little after midnight we run a report to reorganize the patron and item database. The one that ran on Friday morning errored out for some reason I am not entirely sure of but is tied to the custom report. Either way since that report was not able to complete it locked all the patron records, which this report does when it starts. Normally when it finishes it unlocks the records but that morning it never finished it errored out so the records remained locked. Our report writer fixed this Friday afternoon when the cleanup was initiated. The problem with the clean up was when we went live we agreed (and to facilitate the SVA telephone server) that all phone numbers would be entered into the system as 10 digits only. We then set a max number of characters for the home phone number field of 10 digits. We had had already migrated the existing users data over and many of those were in the database with phone numbers with hyphens or parenthesis, all numbers over 10 digits. When the clean up ran it took those and since it could not put them back in the fields that only had room for 10 digits it removed them. Who ever said computers were smart. That is where we are now. So we have to run a load report that contains those users and their phone numbers to add them back. I’ve been told Sirsi has the file with all the old phone numbers on it and will be running that tomorrow or Thursday at the latest. I am pushing hard for today, but we need to make sure the database is clean. So as soon as the report runs I will let you all know.

i-Bistro Content Problems

Many of you may have noticed problems with i-Bistro today. Well the good news is I didn’t break it. The bad news is it appears to be affecting all Sirsi libraries and is tied to the content server (that’s all the pictures and blurbs attached to records). That updates every Sunday night and my guess is this latest one had an issue that caused it to hang up or error out or [insert clever metaphor here]. The reuslt is searching i-Bistro is painfully slow and if you get a result and try to pull up a record with attached content the system just hangs. Anyway Sirsi is giving it their full attention. I will let you know when we have it resolved.

Lost Assumed ERROR

The fun keeps on coming. I’m sure by now many of you have noticed all your Lost notices are coming form the Bridgeville Library. I am so glad I tested all this out on the terst server only to have it fail on the production server. Such is life. Unfortuanately I tried rerunning the notices but could not. I am able to rerun the bill notice so I will do that for all the libraries with the correct addresses on them. Check back in the reports loging later this afternoon or tomorrow for the report [your library] Lost Notice. I apologize for the mix up.

Lost Item Notices Ready

I’ve finished running the new Lost Item notices and you can now get them form the Reports login. These are sorted by zip code and are batched by the bill library. So some of these people may not be your patrons, (I was hoping to do it by patron library but that wasn’t working to well. So now it is by the library that generated the bill. By far the majority will be your patrons, but you may also see some ILL out of system and state stuff as well. As I said in the earlier message my intent was to run the report based on the charge but put the library item address on the notice. Apparently that is beyond my current ability. I do have the report fixed for next week so that it will put the charge library address on the notice, so we won’t have to go through this again. I apologize for the trees that had to fall for anyone who set the notices printing before realizing the mistake.

Lost Assumed Reminder

All, just a reminder the final bill notice for lost items ran as expected Sunday night. The notices are in the Reports login, you may have to scroll down past the holds and overdue notices that printed this morning, but there they are for you. Just a note. The report looked at the checkout library when selecting charges but I told it to print the address of the library whose item was not returned. So you may see some of your notices printing out with other libraries’ addresses on them. I don’t want to confuse anyone and the intent was when the patron saw the notice they would make good with the library on the notice. The only problem I can forsee is some of the patrons might be a little confused if they use only one library but see a charge from a different one. You will just have to explain how even though they checked the item out at your library the item belonged to another.

Misread Item IDs

Some of you have already come across this. Since adding the items from Sussex Tech we have noticed that occasionally some barcode readers will misread a barcode only scanning a part of it. As fortune would have it this part matches a Sussex Tech item and the system checks it out or checks it in or what every Wizard you happened to be in at that time. The staff person knows because a pop up appears saying the item is now in transit to or in transit from Sussex Tech. The reason for this is the Sussex Tech items do not have 14 digit IDs as all the other items and as it happens their IDs closely match the first few digits of the public library IDs. Because of the way the scanners are set up on your PCs and work in Workflows we cannot prevent the partial scans. We have already ordered new barcodes for Sussex Tech items and it is my recommendation that they recode their existing items. This will take time so all we can do now is wait it out and remain vigilant. If an item gets mistaken for a Sussex Tech item and is checked out. You should:

1) check it back in (this will put it in transit to Sussex Tech)

2) send an email to Patricia Birch at Sussex Tech with the item ID so that she can receive it in (even though it is still on her shelf the system thinks that Brooks has it)

If you have any questions email me.

Vinny

Long Overdue Items

All, as we discussed at the last directors’ meeting, beginning this Monday Nov. 6^th you will have a new notice appear in the Reports login. This notice will be titled [you library] Assumed Lost. This prints the same as your overdue notices so do not print the log with it. This first one could be a big one because it will encompass every item that is over 3 months overdue since the beginning of the system and the migration. You can mail them all out or go through them and mail only the ones you think might have any effect. This report will continue to run every Sunday evening at around 10:00 PM. So every Monday morning you will have these notices which will be the fourth and final notice to the patron. Here is the text of the notice.

“The following Library materials which are charged to your account have not been returned. Since you have not responded to previous notices sent to you, we assume they are lost. The following charges have been applied to your account.”

The report will then list the items and the charges.

This report will check the item in, bill the patron for the cost of the item and a processing fee of $4, then move the item into the location “Lost-assumed.” As I said this first one will be long but future weeks will see the number of notices drop. In many instances the truly long overdue items, (I’m talking from 2005) have already resulted in block those patrons accounts so if you haven’t heard from them by now chances are good that you won’t hear from them after this notice goes out. The ones that are more recent could be different and I suspect you will hear from some of those patrons. Unless I hear differently I will suspend the List Long Overdue reports as this new report will be running weekly and capture all of those in the process so the list would be redundant and a little out of date. If you have any questions email me.

Circ Maps

I have sent out a spreadsheet showing the circ map as it is now. (Mind you I am not recommending changing it). I just wanted to give everyone a listing of how the system circulates the various item types. I’ve added a column for the max number of charges and details about each line. These details are things like # days for the circ, amount of fine, max fine and # or renewals. The entire circ map consists of 752 lines broken out as so:

Public Libraries/Defaults: 272 lines
Del Tech: 423 lines
Sussex Tech HS: 37 lines
Wesley: 20 lines

A couple of things to remember when looking at this spreadsheet.

The circ map is read form the bottom up. That is why at the very top is a rule that does not allow anything to circ. If you ever hit that it means we have an item type not captured in the map. (Not likely but that is why we have that rule).

This is only a part of the map, the part for the public libraries. The other libraries have already received their individual spreadsheets. If you want to see those I have also posted them to the documents web site. http://consortium.lib.de.us/