This how-to is based on our experience with using Ebsco Subscriptions as our vendor. The procedure on the vendor side may be slightly different if you’re using a different vendor, but the Millennium side of things should still be the same.
Setting up for Electronic Claiming of Missing Issues
In the Acquisitions Module
- Set up a Vendor Record for your serials vendor
- Click on the Vendors button. You will be prompted for vendor information:
- A short vendor code : This code should identify your library and the vendor. For our Ebsco vendor record, we chose tcy e .
- Vendor name (ex. Ebsco Subscriptions)
- Vendor address, telephone, fax number, etc.
- Skip anything else that you are prompted for (ex. claim cycle).
Eventually you will insert a field for Email Address which is reserved for electronic claiming. We will revisit this later.
With Your Vendor
At this point, you will need to let your vendor know that you are setting up electronic claiming.
If you use Ebsco, your customer service representative needs to fill out a form internally to set you up through their department, ILS/EDI Services. After the form is completed, you will work directly with ILS/EDI Services. They will provide you with the special email address you need for electronic claiming. They will also provide you with the Customer # field codes that you need to enter into each serial record. More on that later.
Their contact information
ILS/EDI Services
EBSCO Information Services
P.O. Box 1943
Birmingham, AL 35201-1943
205-991-6600
ILS-EDIServices@EXCHANGE.EBSCO.COM
In the Serials Module
For each serials title, bring up your serials record and click on the Record tab. Select your serials vendor from the drop-down list in the Vendor field.
For each serials title, insert a Customer # field (f) and enter or scan in the 20 letter/digit code for the serial title. For Ebsco titles, this consists of your customer ID plus a unique title identifier. For example:
- RB7956400AA159923002
Contact your vendor for a list of these codes. Ebsco’s ILS/EDI department can generate a sheet of barcodes that you can scan into this field. You can also enter them in by hand if you have a small collection.
With Your Vendor
After you have entered in all of the title codes for each serials record, you will contact your vendor. With Ebsco, ILS/EDI Services will guide you through a test run of some sample claims to make sure things are set up properly. They gave us a test email address which we entered into our Vendor record using the Acquisitions module. This is a special email address that looks like this:
- $EDI|eRB79564|fILTEST@ML.EBSCO.COM
Once the test is completed successfully, you will receive a different email address to send real claims to. Tweak the email field and you will be able to begin claiming electronically.
Claiming in the Serials Module
There are two ways that you can do claiming.
- Claim as you go.
As you check in issues, the serials module will identify “late” issues. When you save a record, Millennium will tell you that “You have issues to claim. Claim them now?” If you choose YES, the issue box will indicate “claimed” and will be transferred to the Claims file. - Claim after the fact, on a weekly or monthly basis
With this method, you need to use the Cataloging module first.
Create a list:
- Type: Check In Card and Card
- Location: your five-letter periodicals location code
- Then go back to the Serials module.
- Click on the Claiming button.
- Click the drop-down on the left and select Review.
- Choose the list you just created in the Cataloging module.
Millennium will now begin scanning the review list for “claimed” and “late” issues. You will be asked to verify each one before moving on to the next card. This can take some time to work through.
Once you are done, all claimed issues will be transferred to the Claims file.
Sending Claims
Once your missing issues have been transferred to the Claims file, click on the Send Claims button.
Limit by Location to your five-letter location code.
Then look for the button that says something like “477 claims to print”. This is a drop-down. Click this drop-down and select the other option for claims to “send via email”.
Your missing issues will be on this list, since they have been set up for electronic claiming. You can now click Send and send them all or you can select only specific issues to send. You can also remove issues from the list.
After you have sent your claims, you will be asked if you want to delete the Claims file. We click YES , otherwise the file gets huge and confusing and you will end up sending duplicate claims.
Setting up electronic claiming is labor-intensive and a little confusing, but once it’s set up, it works very well. If you have any questions about this how-to or the procedures described here, please feel free to call or write Amber Tatnall. Phone: 207-646-9282×229; email: atatnall@yccc.edu
