Attendance
Arlene Arris, Freeport Community Library; Allison Atkins, Kennebunk Free Library; Dave
Billings, Falmouth Memorial Library; Nancy Brown, Norway Memorial Library; Cyndi Burne, Topsham Public Library; Diana Currier, Windham Public Library; Kevin Davis, South Portland Public Library; Frank Dehler, York Public Library; Darcel DeVou, Gray Public Library; Joshua Fecteau, York County Community College; Lisa Gallant, York School Department; Katie Lyons, Rice Public; Jackie McCann, McArthur Library; Megan McNichol, Eastern Maine Medical Center — Hadley Parrot Health Sciences Library; Judi Moreno, Central Maine Community College Library; Lynne Morgan, Topsham Public Library; Leslie Mortimer, Patten Free Library; Charles Prinn, Wellehan Library- Saint Joseph’s College of Maine; James Rathbun, Baxter Memorial Library; Liz Soares, Augusta School District; Courtney Sparks, Lithgow Public Library; Susan Taylor, Edythe Dyer Library; Katherine Webber, Bailey Public Library; Joyce Wiebe, Orono Public Library; Cynthia Young, Eastern Maine Community College Library
Lynn Uhlman, Technical Report: Lynn reported that the Users Council in Oct. was a valuable meeting but not well attended. She reminded the group that these meetings are important and worth attending; everyone should send at least one member to have a voice. At the Users Council system maintenance and upkeep were discussed, as was the necessity of keeping up on routine tasks.
A November upgrade to Sierra fixed the billing issue that some libraries were seeing. This fix is not retroactive so some patrons may still have those lingering charges and libraries will have to deal with those as they surface. The upgrade did not fix a Create List issue with scoping. That fix will come in a new upgrade which we’re not going for just yet. As a workaround, when in Create Lists you can change the record view while in a list but will have to do that every time.
Lynn is running lists and reports on notice history to ensure people are running their notices. She is comparing this data with stuck holds that libraries have. If you don’t hit send when running notices, which some libraries don’t, the face that the notice was run doesn’t register. This is okay but Lynn is tracking stuck holds to make sure that the appearance of un-run notices does not actually mean the notices aren’t being run. Another reason for stuck holds is not properly marking items as missing when they’re not found on a paging list. Run your notices!
James Rathbun, Circulation Standards Committee Report:
The issue with libraries blocking portions of their collections from circulation through
Interlibrary Loan that was discussed at the last Circ Roundtable is being investigated by the Executive Board and remains on their agenda. A letter was prepared by Steve Norman and sent to libraries that are withholding collections to find out why they are doing this and gain more information on the practice in order to address it properly.
James will be contacting Katherine Morgan of the Cataloging Committee to determine the best way for the Circulation Committee to hold members accountable for attendance and to establish more formal rules in that regard.
Lynn Uhlman:
Clear holdshelf needs to be run, no less than once a week but could be done daily. If you don’t run it, that’s a problem. Clear holdshelf gets rid of lingering holds that have been on shelf too long. It also clears lingering processes of holds in our system and INN-Reach. Not running this can cause system weirdness like INN-Reach holds sticking around on patrons accounts after they’ve been returned, or the number of checked out items not corresponding to the actual items on a patrons account.
Hold cancellation notices need to be run as well. Don’t need to physically print these, can just send to email and delete, but they have to get done.
Lynn is happy to help any libraries that haven’t done this in a long time. Some libraries don’t run this in order to avoid cancelling holds that will be picked up soon but after the date hold through date. If you have a patron request more time (one extra day) you can send in a ticket and Lynn will extend the date. It is better to do this than not run the cancellations regularly. Permissions have not been put out for libraries to do this on their own but the Standards Committee and Executive Board will discuss that option.
Question: Is it okay to do some other workaround on those soon to be picked up items like simply checking it out to the patron or to a staff account? General consensus is yes, just run those notices!
Cancellation notices are equally important. When you cancel a hold it’ll ask if you want to print the notice. Say yes! It’s not actually going to print, it sends the notice to a queue where it sits until a library runs their notices at which point the system lets the patron know that the hold was canceled. Lynn demo’d this.
III has said that they can’t help us until we get this cleaned up. Only 0.2% of the holds table is composed of actual active holds, something like 80,000 lines of lingering processes remain. This can only be fixed by running these notices regularly.
Title paging lists aren’t being run consistently either. They should be run every day, certainly no less than every 72hrs because that’s the timeframe on a hold and it might move on after that or it might just get stuck and never send another notice. INN-Reach and Item lists don’t have the same 72hr period but they are important and should be run every day as well, if only to prevent patrons waiting and to avoid stuck items that don’t get pulled.
Regarding INN-Reach reports, there are several useful ones.
Institutional Overdues lets us know when those items have gone overdue.
Paged Too Long lets you see those holds that didn’t get printed and shows stuck items that won’t re-page.
Requested Too Long is another good one to look at.
In Transit Too Long also good.
Received Too Long means it’s been sitting on a hold shelf forever.
Picked Up Too Long is a problem. Items on the hold shelf that have a long past picked up by date.
Question: Regarding patrons cancelling their own holds, how are we notified? Clear Hold Shelf will tell you that those items have been cancelled.
Do not touch another libraries item without first contacting them. Don’t renew a billed item without contacting the owning library first.
Question: Regarding libraries renewing items that are already billed. That can be done with an override but policy states that you can’t do it without contacting library. Also, when you check a book back in from the delivery if it’s a formerly billed item it doesn’t let you know. You could put a message on the item manually so you know.
Visit create lists, sort alpha on saved searches, go down to OTP, and there are some helpful example lists.
INN-Reach requests on unavailable copies. Generally this happens when the item was available at the time of request and then it was checked out before the INN-Reach paging list is run. If you see this, though, send it to Lynn so she can investigate further.
Conflict resolution is on Maine InfoNet site under Minerva Billing process between libraries, a reminder: also on Maine InfoNet site; there’s a chart and everything.
How should we enter a name suffix (Sr., Jr., III) to the name field so that notices and bills print out in name order?
Whatever works for you
Regarding the cell phone field in the patron record, if that’s used what phone number will print on notices and bills?
“T” is point of contact, “P” is secondary, “O” is like “P” where it’s treated as secondary info and won’t appear on notices
If we have a patron, we have phone number and email, is there a way to say what they prefer as a contact. Can email be removed from printout? No. Does notice preference do anything? Yes, when you print notices it puts them in the print or email queue.
Some INN-Reach libraries are going out for 8 weeks, some are just going out for a few weeks, Portland and MSL. Any reason for that? None Lynn knows of. Kevin has also heard of this from staff.
When notices are run but don’t appear is that being worked on? Lynn thinks it’s related to the routine tasks which aren’t being done creating a backup.
Running auto pickup notices for everything, can you set a different time for some? The system sets the timing. Lynn could change certain times but it’d be a system wide change.
Items in Tech Services are requestable but that should be a very short timeframe. In Repair is indefinite, not requestable. You can do it in Sierra but probably shouldn’t.
The next meeting remains TBA but will likely be held in April 2016
Respectfully submitted,
James Rathbun
Baxter Memorial Library
Circulation Standards Committee
1/7/16
