Circulation Committee Meeting

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

ILLs and circulation overrides

Allison Midgley: With staff override, a patron may be able to check out ILLs even though their account may be blocked for other circulations by fines or lost item bills. This has to do with the way that the ILLS are added in the system. WLS is reviewing that process, as well as the way patron blocks are applied.

When adding Messages to a patron record, staff should be aware of Alert vs. Block, and be intentional about which one you use.

Pending addresses

Allison Midgley: The OPAC allows patrons to change their address, but there is no notification system or report that will alert staff to the change. The new address sits in the patron record as “pending” or “other” and requires approval/confirmation. Some discussion about toggling this feature to “OFF” in the OPAC. ILS committee will discuss further.

Online bill pay

Checks are distributed by WLS quarterly. Monies from payments connected to an item (late/lost materials) are paid to the owning library. Migrated or misc bills with no item attached are paid to the patron’s home library. Lindsay sends the full list of payment information to Rob @ WLS. She’s working on an itemized report, specifically for lost materials, to send to libraries monthly. She thinks that online payments will appear in the patron record with WLS as the patron library, but will investigate.

Patron phone numbers

Should always be entered as 10 digits with no spaces or punctuation. This is essential in the SMS/Text Message field.

What happens to circ stats when an item is deleted?

This is determined by a filter in the report template. Deleted items are not actually deleted from the database, only masked, so they are still available to the Reports module. For statistics involving circulation count, deleted items ARE included. For shelf lists and weeding reports, deleted items are generally filtered out. If you are running your own reports, check the template for the presence or absence of the “Is deleted?” filter.

Locked cases

Send back to the owning library with a NICE note. If there are other copies, you can “Find a new target” to speed up filling the hold (since things are sitting in quarantine at every point in the process).

Curbside processes–what works?

GRE puts patron card # and contact info on hold slips. Types in patron card # to check out, keeps one slip from each transaction to get a patron count. When Evergreen is down, staff keep all the slips and use the patron and item barcodes to check out items when service is restored.
CHA uses a cell phone for curbside. Patrons call the cell number when they arrive, and this frees up the regular phones for scheduling and normal business. Staff with cell phone has mobility.
WHI scans the item in “Item Status” and follows the link (in the Holds tab) to the patron record, and checks out from there.

Has the Zebra spine label printing issue been fixed?

Allison M: No. You can fiddle with the margins to find what works and then set those parameters with every session.
Allison P: Use whatever workaround you can. One library uses Word and Avery labels.

The Next Evergreen Upgrade–3.6

Probably in May (first week)
Allison M: 3.6 will be installed on the test server and we will have the opportunity to preview the changes.
Lindsay: Main difference will be catalog search, which resembles the Experimental Staff Catalog currently available under the Cataloging tab.
Key to an easy upgrade will be to CLEAR YOUR CACHE, before logging into Evergreen, before and after the upgrade. (Lindsay gave a good explanation of the hows and whys of the cache, and recommended that it’s a good practice to
clear the cache periodically.)

Allison M: It’s important to make sure that Chrome is syncing
1. Open Evergreen Staff icon
2. Check top right corner for your Google profile icon. Log in if necessary.
3. Log in to Evergreen

Does it matter if we keep the Clear Holds Shelf checkin modifier on all the time?

Lindsay: Probably best to only turn it on when needed to avoid accidents. Extra checkin modifiers might slow down the checkin process in general.
Best practice: Keep it off unless you’re using it.

Issues with Epson receipt printer

System “forgets” size of paper, randomly during the day, and assumes it is 8.5×11.
System drops Epson printer, randomly during the day (AKA Epson Dying), according to libraries, and IT has not been able to resolve these issues
Allison M: IT is talking about timelines for improvements, specifically upgrading VDI hardware to make it “more robust” and have some capacity for memory.

How to clear Claims Returned

Allison M & Lindsay: Claims returned should clear when the item is checked in. The count can be changed in the Edit screen of the patron record. (This may be permission related and AM & LS will follow up.)
If the item does not clear, check for an unpaid bill.