Email Notices Update

Library patrons have started receiving email notices from the catalog. Card-holders who provided email addresses when they registered may be receiving the following email services:

* Notices of available holds
* Email notices of returns due (3 days prior to due date)
* Email notices for overdue library materials
* Email notification when selected new titles or subjects are available

The 1st and 2nd OD reports are sending out mail to all patrons with email addresses. Libraries that do not want to duplicate emails with mailed notices should select the recipient selection option in print out notices "only those with no email address". This will automatically deselect every patron on the report who has an email recorded.

Hold Pickup Notices are also being emailed out at this time. Since many libraries call patrons directly when a hold is received, the emails will be duplicating the patron notice. An upgrade being discussed is to add a pop-up notice that will display when a hold is received for a patron that will state that the patron will be notified by email and doesn't have to be called. UPDATE- this was completed in February 2009. The patron phone number field will include the word EMAIL for patrons who have an email address in their record.

You may wish advise patrons to add sirsi@spock.lib.de.us endeavor.sirsi.net to their list of approved senders if they have spam filters in their email. Most library notices will be titled "Library Notice (Do not reply to this Email)"

Many libraries have reported that they have successfully completed correcting a list of incorrectly formatted email records that was sent provided last week. Since November 29th, only about a dozen emails have been returned due to email format errors, of which only 3 were overdue notices. Most of these records have been corrected by myself or library staff. About another dozen emails were undeliverable, meaning that they wrong properly formatted as an email address but were either wrong or nonexistent. Most of these were more complex formatting areas, which have been corrected where possible. I'll continue to check these returned emails and either correct them or forward them to the appropriate library for follow-up.