New Source for Database Promotional Material

On request from staff, we're working on providing database flyers, bookmarks, brochures and other promotional material from a centralized location. The alternative is to visit the dozens of different vendor sites and hunt for the marketing pages, which are usually pretty well-hidden, which is a shame because some of the vendor material is attractive and easy-to use. As material gets downloaded, it will be available on the old database trial page, which has been renamed and repurposed:

Database Resources

There's just a couple of things on it right now, with more to come. If you have a particular interest in some type of promotional material for a database product, but don't have time to look for it, drop me a line and I'll try to make it available.

Request Module Training Resource

Following up the earlier post, here is the link to the training module for Requests. It takes a minute to download but there shouldn't be any problems running it on library computers- let me know if there is. If the person responsible for requests has any questions following the training they can contact me.

http://consortium.lib.de.us/training/requestmodule.html

Did you know?

*ahem*

Have a great weekend.

Replying to Patrons in the Request Module

Please send the names of the staff person at your library who is responsible for managing the Requests Module to sirsi.support@lib.de.us. I am going to create an instructional animation going through the basics of completing a response to a patron request, and would like to send the weblink directly to the appropriate staff along with directors. The quality of the responses is consistently great, and patrons are getting holds and ILLs placed in a timely way, but a lot of the time are not receiving the response from the library because the status has not been adjusted from NEW to REPLIED after they have answered.

It might also be useful if responses included links to some of the procedure instructions available on the "How Do I?" page of the new website. It's very common in the request module to see a patron request that a hold be placed, or for them to ask if it is possible to "get a book from another library". More often than not the library staff member responding will place the hold for the patron without offering the information about how they can do this for themselves.

Item Types and circulation rules

Eagle eyed staff at South Coastal brought this to our attention, and we think it is well worth making sure your circ staff are familiar with the following: the specific circ rules that apply to certain item types apply across all libraries, and will over-ride local rules for generic types of library material. That is, if you are used to having audio books circulate for two weeks, and a patron hold arrives in your library that has one of the more specific item type circ rules, when it is checked out to the patron they may get it for three weeks, two weeks, or less, depending on what item type has been assigned.
A lot of the types of item that this rule applies to in the most restrictive manner do not circulate outside of the academic libraries and cannot be held by non-academic patrons, so in most cases, patrons may end up getting items for longer than they are used to.

Internet User Profile

Starting tomorrow you will be able to sign users up for the Internet Use Only profile. To access this profile, choose the user profile INTERNET when registering a patron and the User Category 1 of FULL. Just to review this profile will cost $6.00 and only allow access to the PCs in the public libraries. The fee will automatically be applied to the user’s account and must be paid before they can use the PCs. You will have to add a rule to your Envisionware management consoles for this to work. The rule should look for the user profile INTERNET and grant it the same privilege as an ADULT user. The privilege is for 31 days only and can be renewed for another $6.00. Users with this card will not be able to checkout items or place items on hold and these rules cannot be overridden at the circ desk. So if you have an out-of-towner who might want to borrow an item then direct them to the non-resident card. This card is intended to replace the daily guest passes but we will leave that up to the individual library’s discretion as to how they want to handle that. Naturally since the academics and school libraries have their own sets of rules governing the access to their facilities and computers this profile only applies in the public libraries. The necessary policy pages on the web are being updated to reflect that. If you have any questions email us at sirsi.support@lib.de.us.