"Notify Users About Favorites" now being tested.

You may have noticed the option in iBistro to "Tell me when more items [on this subject or by this author] are available". When a patron clicks on this link, they are added to a report which generates notifications based on newly-added library material. While this has always (?) been an option available to patrons, it has not before now been up-and-running. Discussions with the advisory committee and others suggested that it would be a useful option for patrons, and a manageable procedure for running the notices should be developed.

Since there was no interest (or resources) to create and administer another expensive and time consuming mail-based report for each library, this report has been reconfigured to only be delivered by email to patrons with a current email in their patron record. The language on the screen which patrons will see if they select one of the "tell me when..." options has been revised to emphasize the medium of delivery.

This report service is now in testing mode to deliver to staff profile patrons only. If you have ever used the option in iBistro to be notified when new material is acquired on specific topics or by specific authors, you should begin receiving a twice-weekly email listing the acquisitions which meet your specifications. Once it is ready to rollout to patrons, I'll probably configure it to a weekly or perhaps monthly notification schedule, which will run automatically and not require any new procedures from the individual libraries.

Since a lot of the email options are uncharted territory in the public library environment, it would be greatly appreciated if you could sign up for a few notifications and forward any quirky or weird notices that you get to me, or notify me if you don't get anything at all for the next couple of weeks. Any lessons learned from this service will help with upcoming email notification projects, and those currently in the works. Thanks.