OWWLUG Meeting, Friday, July 10, 2015

• OWWLUG Meeting, Friday, July 10, 2015
  • Kathryn's rules for ILL
  • Secrets of the Blue Zipper Bags
  • Adult summer reading program tip (PAL)
  • Top 10 Circs Report
  • Unified Patron-focused calendar of library events
  • Holdings Maintenance Training - September, with Kathryn
  • Evergreen upgrade debrief
  • What's new in the catalog
    • Keyword Search: learn it, live it, love it
    • Browse the Catalog

Kathryn's rules for ILL

Managing patron expectations -

• Loan periods - are set by the owning institution, NOT PLS or the local library. The loans may be very short! Renewals are NOT quaranteed.
• Special materials - not all ILL requests are equal. There are different policies for different types of materials, and it also deoends on the owning institution.
  • Textbooks - will almost never circulate for an entire semester
• Owning institutions
  • just because the patron has found the item they want in another library's catalog does not mean that PLS will get it from that catalog.
  • When PLS ILL services are used, all transactions and correspondence should happen between the library and PLS, and PLS and our ILL vendor. If a patron contacts the owning library dorectly, that only ever leads to confusion and problem.
  • If PLS is unable to source the request materials through our ILL vendor, then libraries can reach out to owning institutions on their own. All transactions and correspondence is then the responsibility of the library.

Secrets of the Blue Zipper Bags

• Secret 1 - they change color (sometimes they are maroon)
• Secret 2 - OPEN THEM (sometimes they are empty, but sometimes they contain things like checks…)
• Secret 3 - RETURN THEM (even if empty)
• Secret 4 - Unzipped = empty, zipped = OPEN IT
• Secret 5 - Can be used for all sorts of special things (like chocolate)

PLEASE always check your blue bags! PLS uses them to distribute important materials to libraries. The blue bags can also be used to send things to PLS that might need extra protection - fragile items like magazines or comic books, ILL items, damaged items, etc.

Adult summer reading program tip (PAL)

MUffie Beato shared a great tip for an adult summer program presenter, which lead to agreat discussion of other programs going on amonmg the PLS libraries

• PAL - Mike O'Brien "the Get Away Guy" - great program, easy to work with, responds to contact, attendees loved him (22 registered for program); $75 fee
• NAP - art journalling class - 25 registrants, 4 sessions; "basically 8th grade art" - chalk, oil pastels, next week water colors, collage, book building; Jessie Olney (will travel!)
• GOR - FLCC professor mythology presentation "Heroes, Hobbits, and Harry" very good; recommended by Wendy Freier (GPL)
• Wood - upcoming 5K run/walk around Canandaigua, children's story boards up and down Main St.
• Story benches in Philadelphia - benches thgrough city, specified times storytellers; suggested by Wendy Freier (GPL)

Top 10 Circs Report

This is a new Ad Hoc report that lists the top 10 (actually 15, this to account for the includion of magazines coded with the "default" circulation modifier) circulated items for a selected time range. The report selects items based on Circulation Modifier.

Unified Patron-focused calendar of library events

A patron asked why PLS does not have a calendar of ALL member library events so patrons can easily see what is happening at neighboring libraries.

We (PLS) have considered this issue in the past, and periodically re-consider it, but the essential problem with this is that, in our current set up, it would be a largely manual process: libraries would be responsible for submiting their own events, somebody here at PLS would have to maintain the calendar, it would be hard to make sure every thing remains accurate, etc.

One OWWLUG attendee also pointed out that having a unified calendar of events for the public might further diminish local libraries' online presence.

This is an issue wrth continue evaluation and things might change as our technology changes.

Holdings Maintenance Training - September, with Kathryn

Kathryn is offering TWO holdings maintenance sessions in September:

1. Advanced Holdings Training: special cataloging functions
   • Wednesday, September 16, 2015, 9:30am, PLSHQ computer lab
   • This session is for holdings staff with 3+ years of holdings experience
   • For more details and to register: http://pls-net.org/event/advanced-holdings-training
2. Holdings Maintenance Training: beyond the basics
   • Wedensday, September 30, 2015, 9:30am, PLSHQ computer lab
   • This session is for holdings staff with 1-2 years of holdings experience
   • For more details and to register: http://pls-net.org/event/holdings-maintenance-training

"OTDB" (YHTBT)

Evergreen upgrade debrief

Not much is different, everybody in attendence today is pretty OK with circulation and holdings and patron functions in the staff client.

The only major problem, but one used infrequently by very few library staff, is that within the staff client staff can no longer use the "Add to my list" feature to create temporary lists in order to place bulk holds for patrons. Patrons using the online catalog have improved and expanded options for lists.

What's new in the catalog

• Changes to the format field
• Additional Details

Keyword Search: learn it, live it, love it

Lindsay made another plug for the powers of the basic keyword search. It allows you to craft very focussed searches without extra clicking and selecting from drop boxes, AND eliminates a lot of the garbage-in-garbage-out problems caused by relying solely on MARC records.

Search The Catalog

Browse the Catalog

This is a new feature that supports an alphabetica browse by subject headings, author name, title, etc.

Search the Catalog > Browse