CIRCULATION MEETING
MAY 9, 2019

We had a special guest, Terry Kirschner, Executive Director of WLS. Terry thanked everyone for the successful migration to Evergreen and reiterated the system’s reason for migrating.

-The decision was made to go to Evergreen because Evergreen is “Open Source” and gives us a future that we can control. Sirsi had no plans to change. We were promised changes by SirsiDynix and they never came through.

-With Evergreen we can give our feedback and suggestions and we will actually be able to see the changes made.

-Melanie is our biggest advocate as well as Allison Midgley and Allison Pryor. Please continue to give your feedback and ask questions of the Help Desk.

-The Circulation front desk is mainly the driver for everything. We will hear what the patrons are asking for and forward those recommendations to the ILS Steering Committee.

–ILS Steering Committee: PLDA has started an ILS Steering Committee with 20+ members representing multiple libraries and positions. The committee’s role is to discuss and plan improvements to the Evergreen interface and workflows. All improvements must be brought before PLDA and voted on before they are enacted. WLS’s role will be to administer whatever recommendations come forth from the various committees and budget for these changes.

-Libraries have been asked to create a list within their library to add “wish-list” items that they would like to see incorporated into Evergreen. These wish-lists will then be brought to the ILS Steering committee, and then forwarded to PLDA. Please do not send Wish-list items to the Help Desk.

–Over Due Transits: We now have control over the Transit List. The transit list is used to track items that have been in the delivery longer than expected; follow-up includes mark items missing and retarget holds to available items. Go to Administration → Local Administration → Transit List. Instructions will soon be added to the Daily Maintenance Quick Start guide found on the IT Wiki.

-The first time you check your library’s Transit List, set the Start Date to March 14, 2019 and the End Date to two weeks prior to today.

-Print the Transit List using the Print Full Grid option found in the drop-down menu to the right of the page sorter. Check your shelves for any items on the list.

-After checking and clearing transits list from March 14, best practice will be to check the list once a week. (Note: # of available items is not an available column option.)

-Previously, the long-in-transit transit list was generated by WLS and provided to libraries. This is now the responsibility of the libraries. Evergreen now generates this report.

–Intermittent Lost Notices Link: the Lost Notices link may not work immediately. If you cannot log in to retrieve your libraries lost notices, try again in a half hour. If you are still not successful, please e-mail Allison Pryor and she will send you a PDF of the lost notices. At this time, there is no way to remove the previous lost notices.

–Fake Patron Cards: Libraries were asked to discontinue checking items out to “Repair/Mending/Damaged/Discard All” cards and instead change the item status to “Damaged”. Change the status to “Bindery” only if you are sending the book out to be repaired. Delete Items as needed using the Actions drop-down menu from the Item Status Screen, or by using a bucket. (Items checked out to the WLS card Discard All were not migrated.) WLS will give notice before deleting Repair/Mending/Damaged/Discard All cards.

–Clearing the Hold Shelf Best Practice: Clearing the Holds Shelf best practice has been established as Print Expired Holds List > Pull Books from Shelf that expired yesterday > Checkin w/ “Clear Holds Shelf” modifier. Clear potential expired holds the following day. (Potentially expired holds are holds that appear to have expired on today’s date as well as upcoming dates. Any potential holds with today’s date need to be cleared the following day.)

–Placing Holds: Libraries were asked to discontinue using the “Place This Hold for Me’ button as it does not work properly.
Scan your own library card to place a hold for yourself.

–Hold Notifications: If a patron does not get phone calls for holds go into their record and check their phone number. For Daytime Phone and SMS (text message), do NOT include spaces or dashes between numbers. E-mail addresses should be entered in lower case letters.

–Re-activated Holds will appear on the queue position based on the hold date. If the position shows as 0, it means the hold is still suspended.

–NEW INFO: Change the Book Club profile to “Libraryuse” profile to avoid the override alert for more than 20 holds.

–Pickup Library: If you change the default library, your holds will always go to that library and you will not have to enter it each time.

–I-Types: are now called Circ Modifiers. A list of Legacy and Current Circ. Modifiers is available on the IT wiki.

–Replacing Patron Barcodes: When giving a patron a new card, do not copy the new number into the OPAC user name field if they have already given themselves their own username. It is against System Policy to reactivate lost barcodes.

–Latency issues: This is still ongoing for libraries. Receipts will print out after books are checked in and placed on the cart, the more items checked in, the slower it acts, Evergreen acts slower in the afternoon rather than the morning, etc. This has been reported to and is being monitored by Equinox.

–Patron receipts: You can only email a receipt to a patron from the checkout screen.

–Transit Slips: If you check in an item at your library and the receipt says route to your library, please send a screen shot to Allison Pryor with the item barcode. Do not check the book in a second time.

–Checkout Receipts: WLS is not responsible for customizing Libraries receipts. Check the Evanced Calendar for Receipt Classes.

–Reporting Issues to the Help Desk: Include description, Patron barcode and Item barcode details as text in the body of the email. For supporting documentation or clarification, please attach a screenshot using the Snippet tool. If we are not getting responses in a timely manner, please send an e-mail to Terry.

–Deliveries: Terry asked how the deliveries are going. Any libraries experiencing issues with the Delivery team are encouraged to email wlsdelivery@wlsmail.org This could be for inconsistent arrival times to miss-loading bins.

–Training: There is additional training sessions listed on the Evanced Calendar. Training will be on-going for Evergreen as the product will be continuously changing.

–For Evergreen Help: It is recommended to bookmark the IT wiki page.
(it.westchesterlibraries.org) Quick Start Guides for various Evergreen functions are available as well as videos. Certain Quick Start Guides are also searchable using the Ctrl & F keys.

-Angela Groth suggested we have another Circ Committee meeting before we break for the summer. The next meeting is scheduled for June 13th.

-Angela Groth advertised a part-time position at the Ardsley Library.