NExpress Shared Catalog

Kim at Bonner sent this request today: “I have a reporter with the Cheiftain who is wanting to know the 10 most popular children’s books at our library–is there anyway to run a report like that?”

The answer is YES (sort of).

Logged in with a TECH or DIRECTOR account, we went to the Reports page and used the Top Lists > Most-Circulated Items report.  We limited by Library (Bonner Springs) and Item Type (Book) and got a list of the top 50 circulated items.  From here, Kim was able to look through the list and find the children’s books.

It’s an interesting report, especially for collection development purposes.  You can re-run the report using different Item Types and change the list size from 5 to 100 or several intervals in between.

HINT: Limit by YOUR Library…or risk timing out the quest because our catalog is TOO big to give us a list of the top 100 NExpress-wide.  Sad, but true.

We have tested our newest Enhancement – email holds notification.  Today, we asked LibLime to move this enhancement from the TEST server to our PRODUCTION server.  Your patrons should be sent an email notification when a hold is CONFIRMED ready for pick up at your library!  Exciting times.  These messages are sent out every nine minutes.

Also, if you weren’t able to attend the Kansas Koha Summit (former name, you have to read to find out what PJ and Patti renamed it) – I blogged about it: blog.nekls.org

This post will change as new Patches and Fixes are added to Koha.  Stay tuned!

December 10, 2008 – these are currently only on TEST, not production.  Please log in and test TEST!!!

Dec 10, 2008 8:34 PM posted by David Bavousett  [updated Dec 10, 2008 9:11 PM]

November 17, 2008

Nov 17, 2008 6:43 PM posted by Ryan Higgins  [updated Nov 17, 2008 6:53 PM]

November 4, 2008

Nov 5, 2008 8:29 AM posted by Ryan Higgins  [updated Nov 5, 2008 8:31 AM]

• bug 2707 – overdue rules not being deleted
• Allow SIP checkout to pre-empt unfilled holds.
• bug 2729: Efficiency / performance improvement
• Standardizing opac/circulation note terminology; Adding hint to opac/circulation note entry
• Terminology and spelling corrections. Fixes Bugs 2724 , 2730
• Add fine amount to display on circ pages.
• Fix for Bug 2682 (“Approving Multiple Tags – Doesn’t Work”).
• Bug #2709 Cannot add from Search to New list
• fix for bug 2543: report output by tabulation error resolved.

October 6, 2008

Oct 24, 2008 1:44 PM posted by David Bavousett

The Northeast Kansas Library System is hosting a “Kansas Koha Interest Group Day” conference for libraries interested in the Koha open source integrated library system next Wednesday, December 10th at the NEKLS system office in Lawrence, Kansas. The conference is open to anyone interested in open source ILS systems, and Koha in particular.

Libraries that have already experienced a Koha installation will report on their experiences and the remainder of the day will be “un-conference” style discussion groups with the content determined by the attendees.

There is no charge and lunch will be provided. However, there will be space for a maximum of approximately 60 participants, so please register in advance. Additional conference and preregistration information is provided in the attachment to this message. I hope many Kansas librarians will join us for the day.

Jim Minges
Director
Northeast Kansas Library System

We are working to update the Known Issues to include several of these support calls we have in at LibLime.  Here is an overview of outstanding issues:

• 863 Fwd: Overdue cron job – Under Review - Oct 22
  “I will ask a support tech to make these changes to your overdue notice cron jobs. – Emily”
• 862 NExpress Monthly statistics - Open - Oct 22
  The library where the circulation transaction takes place gets the circ stat. Need clarification about how exactly circ stats are determined (IP address, log in, or URL). (Stats are determined by the Library Setting) Still need assistance setting up New Items divided by Shelving location (age) for monthly circ reports.
• 818 Till Reconciliation Report – Assigned - Joe Atzberger – Oct 23
  According to Joe, this report won’t be functional until 3.2, and “If it was up to me, it would have been deleted outright, but there was some argument that a future version of the report may want to draw on the previous code.  I’ll draw up a patch to block direct-link to the page.”
• 603 NExpress Catalog Staff account… – Joe Atzberger -CLOSED Sep 10, 2008
• 817 Potential magazine-related bug… – CLOSED – unknown patch fixed it as of Oct 21, 2008
• 616 No SAVE or SUBMIT button after… CLOSED – Related to customizations made to the new patron form (moving the barcode to the bottom).  When the default template was restored, the Save buttons reappeared.  LibLime has asked for a list of changes we would like to see as permanent changes to the new patron form.
• 767 Offline Circ -Liz is on this!
• 726 Fwd: SIP Holds Issue – Assigned – Enhancement, awaiting patch modifications and testing – Oct 22
• 725 Item checked out but appears on pick list -  Unassigned - Open - Sep 4, 2008 (still an issue?)
• 697 Monday, Sept. 1 upgrades-  Unassigned - CLOSED – Access to upgrades at LibLime wiki
• 679 NEKLS SIP issue – Enhancement, awaiting patch modifications and testing – Oct 22
• 665 Possible incompatibilities with Firefox 3-  Emily investigating further - Open - Sep 17
• 647 Priority – Hold Issues – Investigating to see if issue is still unresolved – Nov 14
• 949 Conflicting Holds Information – 9-8-08 – Trying to determine if error was procedural – Nov 14
• 908 Basehor Self-check – Assigned – Enhancement, awaiting patch modifications and testing – Oct 22
• 1127 Fatal error in test environment after framework changes – Oct 14 – unable to reproduce
  
• 1152 Overdue notice bug patch 2660 applied to Production – Open – Oct 22
• 1176 Basehor Self-check – Item 3 of the enhancement specs not yet fulfilled “If the item would fulfill a hold, but is not on the hold shelf itself, the charge will be allowed to proceed, as if the charge took place in the staff client and a staff member chose “Yes, Check Out” (without canceling the existing hold) in the staff client.”  Awaiting patch and further testing, Oct 22
• 1222 Setting Test to mirror Production server nightly - Assigned to Ryan – Weekly updates are feasible, nightly are too resource intensive.  Ryan will ‘make it so’ – discussion 11-13-08
• 1265 - More info on receipt slip. Patch pushed to our system?
  
• 1327 When trying to place a hold, opac-reserve.pl does not show a submit button to complete the hold – Closed – Oct 29, 2008
• 1338 Overdue notices still received nightly, rather than once when the notice is triggered – Oct 28
• 1384 – Patch needed that will fix overdue notices.  Done 11-4-08.
  
• 1569 Holdings Table missing Item Type data – 11-10-08 – Known bug 2747, may temporarily be fixed by turning on Item Type icons.  See post for full explanation.
• 1580 – Carriage return on spine labels.  Bug 2691.  Still unresolved.
• 1598 We discovered that some patrons were being debarred because they had received 3 overdue notices.  The debar is set automatically, but must be removed manually.
• 1611 – Changes to the overdue notices to include due date, call number, title, author, barcode
• 1643 – ILL Statistics SQL statement needed. Nicole created one and PJ looked it over.  We will run the report for each library and compile a single report to send out to everyone in NExpress for the State Statistical Report.
• 1676 – Repeat request for support for 616, which was resolved.
• 1684 – patron DB for Offline Circ.
• 1701 – Another repeat request for support for 616, which was resolved.
• 1703 – The TITLE and PATRON sort doesn’t work in the HOLDS AWAITING PICKUP
  report.  Emily submitted a bug.
• 1734 or 1732 (both references found in email responses) – Koha normalized classification for sorting.
• 1760 – Biblios.net to test.  Still in beta-test, will be added in January (12-3-08 response from Cookie)
• 1805 – Once a MONTH updates.  Response from LibLime regarding what they are currently discussing for December:  “On one week, we update your test instance and notify you…then, unless we hear something negative, the production server will update the next week, or the week after.”
• 1868 – customized staff client templates loaded to LOAD server for training purposes.
• 1916 - Searching issues. Indexing disrupted while LibLime moved Zebra Indexing to a different server.
• 1930 – SQL statement to divide New Item stats by Shelving Location for each library.  In process.  Emily emailed 12-3-08.  Joe or Nicole will need to write the statement.

We have instituted a few changes in the Test server (http://nekls-staff.test.kohalibrary.com/)
that we would like feedback on:

• News! This feature allows us to post notices, bug reports, tips, etc. on the Staff Client Home page.

• Item Type Icons! As you know, there is a BUG associated with how the Item Type information is displayed in the holdings table – it’s pulling from the MARC record instead of the Item record.  If we turn on Item Type Icons, the correct information appears, pulled from the Item records, just in picture form.   This would be a temporary ‘fix’ until the Bug is corrected.

ALSO:  Just another reminder to review your patron’s Suggestions for Purchase.  To access the list, go to More > Acquisitions > Manage Suggestions.  Then you can Accept, Reject or Delete them.  You are also given an opportunity to create a message to send back to the patron, updating them as to the status of their suggestion.