Tuesday, March 12, 2024 via Teams

Welcome to Abigail Gallagher, the new head of circulation at North Salem/Ruth Keeler Memorial Library!

Poll: What kind of ID do you require when

  • Registering new patrons?
  • Renewing a patron account?
  • When a patron moves from another library?

Most libraries require ID and/or a utility bill for initial registration or when a patron moves from library to another or changes address. Renewals are less strict if the address is the same. Libraries are stricter with patrons from other libraries but use more discretion with their own patrons. Libraries also have various methods of using USPS mail to verify addresses.

Formal poll to follow.

Email entry at Patron Registration

This is not a required field unless email is the patron’s notification preference. Uncheck “email” in notifications to remove the yellow highlighting. Do not use placeholders like N/A or any other characters, as Evergreen will try to send emails. Use an actual email address, or leave the field blank if the patron does not have email.

Lindsay has tested a way to use regular expressions to enforce proper email and phone formatting, with example text. (namexyz3@something.com, or 000-000-1234. If this is put in place, irregularly formatted entries will fail to save. You can see this in action in the test server.

We can’t have a formatting hint in the hold notification preferences box, so we have been using one-string format for all phone number fields. No punctuation/spaces is crucial for the SMS field–text messages fail if the phone number is formatted incorrectly.

Merging Patrons

Allison M says be extremely careful–Once you merge patrons this cannot be undone. Consider that only select staff should merge patrons.

When patrons are merged, settings are “delete old cards completely” or “inactivate like when patron loses a card or moves.” General agreement was to continue to delete the old record completely.

Even as we have been updating expired cards in preparation for the purge of old accounts, Lindsay is still seeing a lot of accounts with no emails or invalid/placeholder characters in that field.

Evergreen 3.12 may have more specific settings for notification options.

In Evergreen, the patron default pickup library can now be reverted to blank–before, once a library was chosen we could only change it to a different library.

Hold Cancellation emails

Currently patrons receive an email when holds are canceled, either in the OPAC or by staff. This is a system-wide setting and can’t be customized for each library. Discussion: Do we need to send these?

We can add notes (Use the dropdown to select the correct cancel reason, and add an explanation in the note field) but patrons can’t see these.

Lindsay said: Available  notification emails are

  • Hold canceled by patron (enabled)
  • Hold canceled by staff (enabled)
  • Hold is about to expire on shelf (2 days before shelf-expire-date) (not enabled)

Consensus was to stop sending “your hold was canceled” message and start sending “your hold is going to expire” reminders instead.

Purge of long-expired patrons is set to run 3/13

  1. Patrons who have been active on digital resources will not be purged right now
  2. WLS will change authentication configuration so they will not be able to access Libby, Hoopla, etc. with an expired card
  3. In June, Equinox will remove the exception and patrons will be purged normally

WLS has fielded some requests for fee-based cards for people who have left the area but still want access to digital resources.

About 2000 patron records have been updated since 2/24 when they were notified of the pending purge.

Remember to update your closed dates in Evergreen

Confirm your library’s contact information in the spreadsheet here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qfk4FDMflsEBtaX_T5x9cIdCPapYFqTFV8zd2Br4EsU/edit?usp=sharing

And on the IT Wiki here: https://it.westchesterlibraries.org/circ/circulation-committee-membership-list/

If this needs to be changed, contact support@wlsmail.org and Allison will update the site.

Many libraries are using their own email domains and not wlsmail.org. Make sure you are using the correct email address

Our email list is not a listserv but you can add staff to that email list.

Use support@wlsmail.org instead of emailing staff directly. Log into SolarWinds with your active directory information to initiate the ticket from there and to see all progress (first.last@westchesterlibraries.org and your active directory password). Be sure to add your new “library” email address in a cc on emails to support@wlsmail.org so you get “incident” emails; you’ll get updates and be able to reply and update.

Check Item Status before you delete anything. Make sure all staff has the status column displayed on their Item Status and Item Bucket displays.

If you get a message that says “this item is not in an ideal status for deleting” STOP and investigate.

Given that patrons can pay bills online, does it make sense for patrons to have to contact owning libraries of lost items? Perhaps after a bill is 1 year, 2 years or older?

“Lost Items Paid Online” runs for all libraries every two weeks. Data is anonymized after 30 days so we lose circ AND billing information.

This report can be found in Evergreen Reports. Go to:

Shared Folders->Output-> evergreen.reports->Bills and Payments

Due to variability in how libraries handle lost/damaged items, payments, replacements, etc, the consensus was that we should continue to have patrons contact the owning library if they have questions, or let them know they can pay online through Aspen. We tabled this discussion for now and may revisit it later.

Aspen Updates from Lindsay:

  • We have a dedicated Evergreen developer at Aspen
  • We are exploring better online patron registration
  • Item note in the staff side of Evergreen now display in the Aspen interface if you drill down to the affected holdings.
  • Imported reading histories: Previously, borrowing history was linked to the item barcode so if the specific copy a patron borrowed was deleted, that history would be deleted. Now it’s connected to the title record so the history is maintained even if the copy is deleted.
  • Borrowing history: if it was enabled in Evergreen OPAC, it’s been running in the background. If it’s turned on in Aspen it will retrieve old loans. If it was not enabled in the Evergreen OPAC, turning it on will start recording.

Discussion/Announcements:

Croton is officially fine-free. WLS will be adjusting settings ASAP

Chappaqua has a new director, Jennifer Daddio

Greenburgh will be hosting a virtual training with the Westchester County GIS office, about the Library Service Area Map (tentative date is April 18)

Next meeting: May 14, 2024. Topics to include annual upgrade (to Evergreen 3.12) and a follow up to the purge of expired accounts

Respectfully submitted, Laura Burk, Greenburgh Library