1. NEVER include punctuation of any sort in a catalog search. Commas, colons, semi-colons, question marks, exclamation points, and periods should always be omitted.  This issue is fixed in Community Koha 3.2, but at this time special characters may cause faulty results.
2. Since a Keyword search looks at all the data in the record, feel free to MIX SEARCH TERMS from author and title fields. You can even include publication information if you know it. So entering the words “peters” and “bathrooms” would return your item. Just those two words alone.
3. Look for UNIQUE or less common search terms. Presented with a title like Bathrooms : moneysmart makeovers by Rick Peters, you would want to find a UNIQUE or uncommon term:  moneysmart certainly qualifies in that regard. So using that single term moneysmart is all you need to put into the search box. If you know the author’s name, you could put that in your search as well.
   
4. Avoid TOO MUCH detail in Keyword searching. No need for complete titles. Omit articles the and a, an and conjunctions or and and.
5. Remember that Koha uses a fuzzy logic search, and will return near-matches and “mystery” matches because is doesn’t stick with exact search terms. So don’t be put off if you get more hits than you think you should from Keyword searches in Koha. Look at the top 5 hits to see if your desired item is there. After the first five, most of the items below are fuzzy matches. If you don’t see what you need in the first five items, re-try your search using different terms.

Happy Searching,
Sharon

Explanation: This is a known bug 1807.

Solution: Re-execute the search without the : (colon) or ? (question mark).

This has been pushed to version 3.4 – guess it is going to be difficult to fix.

Scenario 1: The item is checked out to AND on hold for the same patron.
Reason: A Bug, sometimes associated with the SIP (4063), but other times just a bug..

In this instance, the item used to fill the hold has a restricted item type of Local Hold. It showed up on a pick list and was sent to fill the hold, even though it shouldn’t have (a bug).
Resolution: The hold will have to be manually removed from the patron’s account. Go their holds tab and select Delete or go to the Holds Priority list and change the hold from ‘Waiting’ to ‘Del’ (delete).

Scenario 2: The item is checked out to one patron and on hold for a different patron
Reason: An Item Level hold was placed for a patron by a staff member, instead of a Title Level hold. Patrons who place holds using the OPAC can only place Title Level holds.

Resolution: Remove the item level hold and replace it with a title level hold, that way the patron will get the Next Available item instead of waiting for one specific copy to fulfill their hold.

Scenario 3: The item is checked out to one patron and on hold for a different patron.
Reason: Simultaneous Holds Bug where Two copies of the same Title arrived for the same patron, but only one of the two is actually ASSIGNED to the patron to fill the hold and, when scanned at check in, prompted the Holds Conformation box (the other one, when scanned at check in, said “Not checked out.”)

Resolution: Check out the copy/item that triggered the Holds Confirmation to the Koha-assigned patron. Route the other copy back to the home library or scan it to see if it triggers another hold for transfer.

We understand that these scenarios and issues have been occurring more since December. All of these issues have been reported to our support vendor and several others have been reported to the Community, via Bugzilla.

Holds bugs and enhancements we are watching closely include:

• 2655 – Items on the Holds Shelf appear as “Available” in the OPAC (patches in 3.2, still some bugs)
• 2830 – Hold not removed when “trapped” item on hold shelf is checked out to a different patron in the holds queue (Critical, still open)
• 3270 – Canceling a hold request after transfer initiated orphans item (Major, still open)
• 3287 – Cancel Hold script makes unjustified assumption of Home Library return (Major, still open)
• 3288 – Transit prompt not immediately triggered after hold is canceled (Normal, still open)
• 3344 – Hold priority list needs additional status for items assigned but not waiting (Critical, preliminary patch)
• 3345 – Return All items on patron detail does not initiate transfer of holds (Normal, still open)
• 3536 – Checked In item requiring transfer does not consistently trigger transfer prompt (Patch sent 12-26-09)
• 3595 – Items seen at checkin should always go to 1st priority hold
• 3792 – Checking out on-hold item to someone else replaces item-level hold with next available (Jane wants a different behavior than we do, but still an interesting bug)
• 4063 – SIP Returns sometimes cause items to have dual statuses
• 4224 – Holds queue report includes items already allocated
• 4373 – Placing and Processing Items Simultaneously causes multiple issues

While the original checkout period is correctly taken from the transacting library’s circ policies,  the renewal is incorrectly governed by the owning library’s circulation rules, which may differ from the transacting library’s rules.

The only remedy for this situation right now is to check the item in, and then check it back out, using the “sticky” calendar to adjust the due date.

A Koha patch for this bug has already been written, and will be applied to our install as soon as our upgrade schedule has been determined by PTFS.

This five-minute video shows a number of problems that can occur when items are picked, holds are placed and transfers are initiated at about the same time on different copies of the same item.

This three-minute video shows what happens when you receive an item routed to you to fill a ‘phantom’ hold.

Unfortunately, to fix these issues we will need to have an enhancement written.  With our catalog in limbo at the moment, we cannot say when such a fix could be written and applied to our Koha installation.  I hope that being aware of how this happens will help decrease the frustration and confusion somewhat.

In the recent past, several libraries have been using these cataloging specs:

Not for loan: Ordered
Collection: On order
Shelving Location: Cataloging
Item type: On order*

*We suspect that Koha gets confused when assigning holds on materials cataloged this way when/if the item type designation on the items are changed from On Order, which is completely unrestricted, to Local Hold.**

**I created an elaborate test video to recreate this scenario, but of course Koha worked just like it was suppose to!  Figures, eh?

The Best Practice is this:

• Go find a Bibliographic record from the ether
• Catalog your items as you would normally (Local Hold as Local Hold, Walk in as Walk in, Book as Book)
• Set the Not For Loan status to “Ordered”
• When you are ready to start circulating these items, edit and change the Not For Loan status back to ‘blank’

Sort of related – There is an outstanding support request regarding the “New Moon” fatal error – search for new moon in the OPAC and see what happens.  A work around for patrons and a faster way to get to the new DVD in the Staff Client is to search for “twilight saga new moon”.   A note has been posted on the Patron Catalog home page.

Adding a repeatable holiday creates holidays retroactively for Koha’s calendar
module.  fines.pl balks when it sees an overdue fine calculation where amount
!= amountoutstanding (it assumes a payment was made, so tries to adjust the
amountoutstanding appropriately).  This fails if the calendar module reports a
smaller number of fine-inducing days on one run of fines.pl than it did on the
previous.

Symptoms:
Overdue charges appear on patron accounts with Amount Outstanding > Amount.

This problem only occurs after a library has changed its calendar settings.  Adding Sunday as a repeatable holiday, for example,  makes Koha erroneously added the retroactive fine amount ($1 per day for movies, .05 per day for other items) to the maximum total, resulting in nutty fines like $3.25 (for books and other items) and $7.00 (for movies).

When you run across these kinds of fines, just charge the patron the $3 maximum and “write off” the remainder by paying the whole thing off regardless of the actual amount. The bug will be fixed eventually.

Mickey

Let’s say a patron or staff member cancels a hold that has already been confirmed and transferred from Library A and is on it’s way to Library B with a transit slip.  When the item arrives at Library B, and the staff scan it, nothing happens – there is no message saying to Send the Item Back to Library A or a message saying that a Hold Was Found for Patron X.  The clue that lets you know this nasty little black bug has crawled to your Circ Desk is the message Not Check Out.

What do you do??

At Basehor, they simply check the item out to a staff member and immediately check it back in.  This triggers a transfer prompt and correctly updates the Current Location.

Your reward for this work around is a circulation statistic.

Other clues that this bug present:

When an item has a status of Available, but the Current location and Home branch are mismatched.  This item belongs to Bonner Springs, not NEKLS HQ:

To fix the bug, determine with a shelf check where the item is physically located and manually update the Item Record:

- Sharon

Step 1:

Step 2:

]]> http://www.nexpresslibrary.org/known-issue-barcode-searching/feed/ 2 http://www.nexpresslibrary.org/web-site-upgrade/ http://www.nexpresslibrary.org/web-site-upgrade/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:00:33 +0000 Sharon http://www.nexpresslibrary.org/?p=1118 Hello…we had an unexpected Web site upgrade and will be methodically replacing information, forms, documents and images over the next few weeks.  Please contact the nexpresshelp team with individual requests for documents and we will send those to you via email.

Thank you for your patience.

Sharon Moreland