NExpress Shared Catalog

NEW – The Revised Vision and Values Statement (draft) for the Koha Community

NExpress Users Group Meeting
March 25, 2009
NEKLS

Introductions

Vision and Values Discussion – Sent via email

Vision – We spent time defining and clarifying terms, such as the use of “comprehensive” to emphasize the fact that NExpress is a shared collection of all libraries and all material types. The term “direct” refers not only to the ability of patrons to place requests without librarian involvement, but also covers the NExpress courier that facilitates the ‘direct and rapid’ access.

Values

Statement 1 – The term ‘administers’ goes beyond training and support to include decision making, problem solving and communicating with LibLime.

Explaining NExpress to patrons is difficult, especially when various wording is used: NEKLS, NExpress, shared catalog, shared collection and regional catalog, for example.

Statement 2 – The NExpress team will find and share details about material replacement using the State’s ILL reimbursement program.

Statement 3 – The key priority for development is “does the catalog serve the patrons?”

Statement 4 – We discussed collaborative collection development practices using the nexpresslibrary.org site and funds provided by NEKLS.  Librarians use the Holds Ratio circulation report to guide purchasing decisions.

Statement 5 – OK as written

Statement 6 – Joining NExpress requires an openness to change. The wording was changed to reflect that NExpress shares expertise at every level – participants help each other.

Statement 7 – Terms were clarified.

Additions & Suggestions -

The concepts of professionalism and quality were suggested, so we added “in a professional manner” to Statement 4 about bibliographic maintenance and added “high quality” to statement 1.

The group unanimously approved the revised statements. Jim will share them with the Executive Board.

Enhancements Discussion
The ranking document was sent via email. More information about future enhancements at the Koha Developers Wiki.

Mickey explained that in Koha, enhancements are improvements or changes in the software created by programmers, based on specifications developed by us and LibLime.

Enhancements were ranked based on patron-impact, staff-impact and look and feel. NEKLS has dedicated $50,000 for enhancements.

Receipt printing was identified as a priority issue. A re-write of the Fines module is a candidate for state-wide or Koha-community wide development. The module needs to include accounting features, which it currently does not.

Sharon demonstrated how to place holds in the Staff Client, stressing the difference between placing a hold on the “Next Available Copy” versus on a specific item.  By adding the library location, for example “lyndon” to a keyword search using the simple “Search the Catalog” box, the results are *somewhat* limited to the owning library.  A search for “grammar” pulls up 180 results.  A search for “grammar lyndon” pulls up 11 results.

NExpress Committees:
Policy – Mickey will chair
Collection Development – Sharon will chair
Cataloging – Diana will chair

Another How-to Video for you all about the Holds Pick List.

How To Mange the Holds Pick List (shockwave)

Managing Holds Presentation (pdf) (to be reloaded

The process in brief…

Printing and pulling the pick list:

1. If you want to print out the pick list, open Internet Explorer (or your non-Prism Koha client application)
2. Log into the Staff Client and Log In
3. Verify the “SET” library is your home branch
4. Go to the Circulation page
5. Go to the Holds Pick List link
6. Select your library from the drop down menu and Submit
7. Print the list
8. Take it to the stacks
9. Pull the books
10. Bring them back to the desk for processing

Processing the Holds you have Pulled:

1. Open and Log into the Staff Client in FireFox (especially if you have a receipt printer, as it won’t work properly from IE or in your Prism Koha Client application)
2. Activate the Check In tab or go to Circulation > Check in
3. Scan the first item
4. Read the dialog box to see if the hold is for a local patron or if it should be Transferred to another library
5. Select a button: Confirm/Transfer Hold or Print Slip and Confirm
6. Scan the next item and repeat until finished
7. Put the items in a courier bag or a bin for transfer

NOTE: If you cannot locate an item from the pick list in your library, skip it.  If another library owns a copy, the hold will move on automatically.  If you own the ONLY copy of the item and you are sure the item is missing, mark it missing in the item record.

As a courtesy, you may want to contact the home library of the patron requesting the item so the librarian can try Agent ILL or another avenue to fill the request.

(Videos reactivated 1/14/10)

Placing Holds, A Frank Discussion

Time for a frank discussion about how Holds work in Koha.

The NExpress system will fill a hold by FIRST looking for an available copy at the Home Library of the patron and THEN it will look for the next available copy that IS NOT a Local Hold Only or Walk-in Only copy.  This works when a Title-Level hold is placed.

The logic behind how Koha assigns items to patrons will automatically assign a Local Hold Only item type to the first person in the Holds Queue who belongs to that library – you don’t have to do anything different.  When looking at the holds queue,  what we want to see is a lot of ‘next available’ notes in the Details and NOT ‘only item BARCODE.’

Why?  Because those ‘only item BARCODE’ notes indicate that the Patron has been forever linked to THAT specific copy of the title, instead of the next available copy.  What happens if that specific copy is weeded?  What if it’s lost?  What if the last person to check it out never brings it back?  The patron waiting for that copy to fill their hold will NEVER get what they want.  Dramatic, but true.

The Title-level hold is like the single line at the bank where you get the next available teller.  The Copy-level hold is like many little lines at each teller and if you happen to get in the wrong line and reach the teller when he goes on break…sorry!

There are legitimate uses for a copy-level hold, such as putting a hold on a specific item that needs to be repaired or for example, if  a patron calls and while you have the phone in your hand, you walk over to the shelf and pull the book and put it on hold for that patron to come pick up that evening.

Please take a few minutes to watch this (pollyanna good cop) video on placing holds in the system from both the OPAC and the Staff Client as a review and further explanation.

Placing Holds in the OPAC and Staff Client Video

- Sharon

Please review these Staff Client Advanced Search videos and let me know if you find these useful for staff.  We can create similar videos for the OPAC to share with patrons.  These cover the basic parts and pieces of the Advanced Search page, series searching, and format searching.

TIPS: The wildcard character in Koha is “%” – use this as a substitute character.

Staff Client Advanced Search Video

Staff Client Series Search Video

Staff Client Format Search Video

-Sharon – Videos from March 2009 reactivated on Jan. 14, 2010

Hello,

We discovered a ‘canned’ Koha report on the Reports page called “Lost Items” that we would love some feedback on.  I have created a short TRAINING VIDEO about it (because they are fun, I admit it).  Please let us know if you already use this report, think you may use this report, or don’t give a flying fig about this report.

ALSO, I created two OPAC Overview training videos that I hope some ambitious KLOW user will incorporate into their Web site.  Again, these use Adobe Shockwave and run 3-5 minutes long.

NExpress Catalog Overview Video AND NExpress Catalog Account Overview Video

Thank you, Sharon “the tour guide” Moreland

Scenario:

You find a book that doesn’t belong to your library on a table and you want to find out if it’s checked out, in transit, lost, stolen, etc.  What do you do?

Solution: Go to the staff client.  Go to the “Search the Catalog” search box.  Type in an asterisk “barcode: ” and scan the barcode.  This will give you the status of the item WITHOUT accidentally checking it in.

Updated Nov. 2009 – the “*” feature was removed after one of our upgrades and you have to type in ‘barcode: ‘ now – boo hoo, but we’ll live

One last tutorial about managing all of the saved reports listed on the Saved Reports page.

Managing and Deleting Saved Reports

Recommendations (there are mine, feel free to discuss):

• Put your initials and the date in the notes of ANY report you create, so we know who created the report (and is be responsible for deleting it).
• If you created a TEST report and it didn’t quite work – Delete it
• If you created a report that is used for a single instance – it won’t be necessary to run the report again in the future – delete it when you are done with it.

-Sharon

Materials loaned and borrowed through the Shared Catalog count as ILL statistics for the State report. You will need to ADD these numbers to your traditional Agent-based ILL statistics to get a complete picture of how many materials you lend and borrow to other Kansas libraries.

Monthly Interlibrary Loan Statistics Video Tutorial

Finished Product:

Feb 2009 ILL among NExpress Libraries in Excel

While we do not necessarily NEED to have a breakdown of New Patrons added to the catalog by Patron Category for the State report, it is still fun to see.  It also helps us identify data entry mistakes, so it’s sort of a database maintenance report.

New Patrons by Patron Category Tutorial Video

The Final Product:  Feb 09 New Patrons by Patron Category (xls)

Using the guided Reports Wizard and the process we followed with “Identifying Bounced Email Patrons,” we can find out how many New Items were added to a collection in a given month, divided by Item Type or Collection Code and Shelving Location.

New Items by Item Type Tutorial Video

New Items by Collection Code Tutorial Video

Finished Products:

Feb 2009 New Items by Item Type (in Excel, with sample grids to help organize the data)

Feb 2009 New Items by CCODE (in Excel, with grids to help organize the data)