Evergreen Advisory Committee Meeting, Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Agenda

Updates and announcements

1. Aspen upgrade (Dan)
   • Coming Thursday!

Old business

1. Reports of Evergreen slowness (Dan)
   • How has it been? We had another instance of Evergreen going down because of running into resource limitations on our shared server cluster 12/27/2023, but speeds have seemed to improve since then.
   • Asked at OWWLUG on 1/25; things to be running noticeably smoother?
2. Patron registration form proposal (Dan)
   • Based on feedback from last meeting
   • Full-size
   • Card
3. Holds expiring off hold shelf frequently? (Dan)
   • Data suggests that there hasn't been much of a change over the past few years .
4. Survey (Margo / Erin)
   • Computer usage
   • Fine-free patrons

New business

1. Stricter password requirements for patrons (Dan / Kim)
   • Kim asked a question about library liability for poor passwords. Libraries are probably not liable for patrons who choose to use a password like 1234.</Not legal advice> However, is it a problem that we have defaults (last four of phone) that are not secure? Especially when patrons may not be aware that they can reset their passwords?
   • Other library systems (like Southern Tier) have introduced stricter password requirements for patrons.
2. Intro email to patrons (Dan / Erin)
   • We may be able to set up an email to be sent automatically to patrons when they register if they have an email address on their account.
   • Separately, Erin asked about if there's a way to send an email to patrons who self-register. We may be able to do this, too, though I'm less certain whether this is possible.
   • HTML email may be an option.
3. Lost item mailer timing (Dan / support ticket)
   • Someone questioned the timeline for lost item mailers. Since this was adjusted last year, it may be a good time for a quick check-in about how the new schedule is working.
   • Notices are generated at the first notice run after being 28 days overdue (they could be generated on 28 days overdue, 29 days overdue, etc.).
   • Items are marked lost on 35 days overdue.
4. Email and SMS notifications problems? (Dan)
   • Google and other large email providers made a significant change to the way they categorize bulk email senders as spam. We comply with the new policies, but I just wanted to make sure that you haven’t had a big uptick in problems with patrons not received hold notifications.
   • SMS is a separate issue.
5. Emails upon staff account creation (Dan)
   • We’d like to email staff with further OWWL details when we create accounts (how to manage accounts, password requirements, where to find help, how to ask for assistance, etc.)
6. Aspen grouped works (Kathryn)
   • We'd like to consider adding a permission for library Aspen administrators so they can group works that have been "overlooked" by the system
7. Aspen / Evergreen tracker sheet (Dan)
   • Sharing this so you’re all aware of the things that we’re looking at
8. Aspen training (Dan)
   • Now that Aspen is the sole catalog entry point for the catalog, we’d love to hear more about what types of training would be most helpful.
9. OWWL Docs (Dan)
   • What works well about our Evergreen documentation? What doesn’t work as well?
10. Holds block all renewals. Does this need to be rethought? (Dan / support ticket)
    • We may be able to allow renewals based on whether there are enough other copies available (based on a ratio). This has the potential to be another significant circulation policy project.
11. Hold limit for staff (Dan / support ticket)
    • There’s a gap in the hold policies that doesn’t institute a hold limit for staff-placed holds. I’m not sure if this is intentional or a mistake. Should I fill the gap? Staff with Circ II or above permissions would still be able to override the error if we were to do so.
12. Update to 3 year inactive report (Dan)
    • We’d like to remove deleted patrons from this report

Open floor: Discussions for items not on agenda

Next meeting date: 4/16/2024

Future meetings:

• 6/18/2024

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Referred to OWWLDAC

Grouped work permissions for Aspen administrators

Give Aspen administrators (or a trained subset) permissions to group works that do not group correctly in Aspen.

Hold limit for staff

Right now, Evergreen does not notify staff if they are placing holds for patrons above the hold limit. We can update hold policies so staff encounter an error if they attempt to place too many holds for a patron. Staff with Circ II or above could override the error.

Minutes

EAC minutes 02-20-2024