Circ Committee Meeting 4/13/21

When a meeting is on Microsoft Teams, it’s best for everyone to log in to Microsoft Teams through the app or their browser using their Active Directory credentials, which is firstname.lastname@westchesterlibraries.org (ex: joe.king@westchesterlibraries.org) Your password is the same password you use to access VDI. Once you are logged in, you will have access to the chat for the meeting you are in.

Evergreen Upgrade

The upgrade to Evergreen 3.6 is scheduled for the evening of May 4 (May the 4th be with you and with all of us! ) WLS will be sending out information regarding the upgrade this week. There is a preview session tomorrow, April 14 at 10 AM. This session will be recorded and made available for those who cannot attend.
**This session was rescheduled to Wed, April 21 at 10 AM. There will also be a training on April 20 at 1PM. Please register on Evanced**

You can view the new catalog in Evergreen! Click Cataloging, and then Staff Catalog (Experimental). This will bring you to the new Search page. The box titled “Query” is where you type in your search term. The Search page, Search results page and Place Holds page all look different. The “OPAC View” is now called “Patron View.” A few cool features:

  1. You can see and save your recent searches in case you need to go back to a previous Search.
  2. When you go to place a hold, there is a “status” on the bottom of the page. It will say “Hold Pending” at first and then change to “hold succeeded” once the hold is placed. On the “Place Hold” screen, once the patron’s barcode is filled in, all of their default information should fill in as well. Please note: as in our current version, if any information is changed on this screen, it will override the patron’s default setting.
  3. You can set a preference for how many results appear on your screen after a search!

If you are a library that uses Acquisitions, please reach out to Lindsay or Allison for a one-on-one demonstration as this too looks very different in the upgrade.

You can also open an incognito window and log into the test server to view all the changes that are coming.

There are no changes to basic Circulation functions.

Checking Out ILLs

There is no more alert that pops up at checkout for an ILL item. This should make the checkout process smoother for these items.

Pending Address

The pending address feature in the OPAC has been disabled. This feature was more cumbersome than it was helpful.

Online Bill Pay

Overdue and lost payments go to the owning library. Collection fees, etc. go to the patron’s home library. Checks are cut quarterly for these payments and sent to each library. Lindsay is working on itemized reports for online bill pay. However, the patron information being anonymized after 30 days is making this difficult. She is continuing work on it.

Phone Numbers on Patron Records

Please enter phone numbers as one long number without any spaces, dashes or parentheses. The number should look like this: 9149412416 If any special character is added in, the system doesn’t like it and it will NOT send a notification. This is especially true of texts. Patrons will NOT receive texts if there is any sort of punctuation in the phone number field.

Circ Stats

When counting Circ Stats, deleted items ARE included in those stats. Libraries want the circs on all of their items, even if they are deleted. Weeding reports and shelf list reports do NOT include deleted items.

Changes to Patron Thresholds

A Circ block is instituted if a patron has 50 items out or $25 in fines. At this point the patron is blocked from checkout. However, the patron may still place holds. The idea is to bring the patron into the library to clear up their record. However, these blocks can also be overridden by the staff. The Holds total was also raised from 20 to 25. This was done to accommodate patrons and the time it’s been taking to get materials.

Is an Item Holdable?

In Evergreen, go to Administration > Local Administration > Shelving Location Editor. You are able to see if the specific shelving locations are holdable at the system level. However, the only time patrons are able to see that items are not holdable in the catalog is if the Holdable? box is unchecked in the item record in Cataloging.

Discussion and Q&A

ILL Discussion

Many libraries do fill ILL requests for patrons who aren’t theirs. It’s a good idea for libraries to communicate to their patrons how expensive ILLs are to obtain and to stress how important it is to have the item picked up and returned in a timely manner. ILL lending will resume on May 3, 2021.

Allison Midgley will discuss with Angela possibly moving the meeting times for the Circ Committee for the rest of the year.

DOB just opened and they have had lots of happy patrons.

Lots of libraries present have staff going into their libraries many days of the week even if the library isn’t open to the public yet.

Questions/Comments

Many libraries are reporting issues with their receipt printers not printing which then requires them to re-boot their computers. Many issues happen in the early morning. However, the issues are not confined to that time. WLS is working on software, hardware and network improvements which will hopefully solve these issues. Allison Midgley is forwarding these issues to the Tech Team at WLS.

BRO also noticed their receipts seem to be printing gibberish. They will forward the issue to the Helpdesk.

BDV mentioned they have had printer issues for quite some time. The recommendation was made to remove printers that may no longer exist at your library from your list of Printers & Devices. A shutdown and reboot seems to help as well.

CHA will be returning materials to their shelves and the catalog soon. Allison Midgley reminded all libraries that if you have renovations going on at your library and you need to make a big part of your collection unavailable in the catalog, please reach out to WLS for help.

GRE has been using COVID times to clean up patron records which is tedious work but also necessary.

Allison Midgley reminded all libraries that we should be running the Transit List monthly. To do this in Evergreen, go to Administration>Local Administration>Transit List. You can change the dates on the calendar to go back to 2019 if you would like. Please run both the Transits To and Transits From and then check your shelves for these items. If they are found, please check them in. If they are not found and they are your item, set them to Missing. Complete information about processing long in transit items is on the IT Wiki and in the SolarWinds Knowledge Base.

Allison reminded all libraries that WLS will be having lots of trainings in the coming months.

The next Circulation Committee Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 8.