NExpress Shared Catalog

OK, I made two drafts, you all can vote for your favorite.

These videos highlight some of the new features of the Public online Catalog, including the new holds features and the item call numbers that now display on the first set of search results.  When we had to turn off the Amazon.com book jackets, we also temporarily lost access to the reviews and other enhanced content Amazon provided.  Too bad they provided some nasty bugs along with that great content! – Sharon

These videos require the shockwave plug in.

May 09 Public Catalog Overview (take 1)

May 09 Online Public Catalog Overview (take 2)

A Catalog Search Training module is now available for booking!  Contact Sharon.

The ‘pilot’ took place yesterday at the Bonner Springs City Library and was broken into two one-hour sessions.

Self-paced Search Training – Videos!

Agenda (with the majority of what I’d be saying at the training included):

• Definitions – Simple search, Advanced Search, Staff client, OPAC or Public catalog, and Keyword (Zebra) searching
  • Koha uses the open source Zebra software search and retrieve queries from a keyword search.
• Simple Search options in the OPAC - Keyword (Library Catalog), Title, Author, Subject, ISBN, Series or Call Number
  • Keyword searches are the most forgiving of spelling errors.  All other searches (Author, title, subject) are ‘exact’ searches.
• Advanced Search options in the OPAC
  • Multiple field searches with default boolean of “And” (Add more by clicking +)
  • Additional MARC field search criteria, including publisher, standard number and notes
  • Limit by location and availability
  • Determine relevancy sort (Date, Author A-Z/Z-A, Title A-Z/Z-A, etc.)
• Simple Search options in the Staff Client
• Advanced Search options in the Staff Client
  • More Boolean options (And | Or | Not)
    Example: Say you wanted to find an item by someone named “king” who wrote something called “carrie” and you don’t want to sift through any bloody horror books/movies.  You can search for
    Keyword: Carrie AND Author: King NOT Keyword: Stephen
  • Limit by Collection Code - Selected CCode over Item Type
    Which is more valuable to a patron, to search for a Book on CD or an Audiobook?  Would they rather look for a VHS or DVD or just a Movie?
  • Limit by Years and Language
  • Subtype limits based on MARC record
  • Also limit by location and availability and determine the sort of the search results
• Limit by Library Code – Include in a Simple Search :: ATCHISON, BONNERSPGS, NORTONVLLE, OTTAWA, etc.
• Using the WILDCARD character – % – A wildcard is a substitute for letters or numbers
  Example, search for “King, Ste%” to find Steven or Stephan or “Qui%” for books by Quinn or Quick
• Call Number searching – Most libraries have unique, distinctive call number schemes that often indicate collections and locations within the library.  These prefixes can be used as a keyword in a Simple Search.
  Example: FRPB Qui% would find paperback romance books by authors Quinn and Quick at Bonner Springs
  EB Boy% tonganoxie (not case sensitive) would find materials with “EB” and “Boy%” and tonganoxie in the catalog record, including Sandra Boynton Board Books at Tonganoxie Public Library, such as Moo, Baa, La, La, La!
• Why MARC matters – Searching relies on information pulled from the Bibliographic record and Item records.
  • Fixed Field information – the Subtype Limits in the Advanced Search in the Staff Client pull from here
    • Target Audience – The OCLC definitions
  • 2XX – Title and author information
  • 4XX/8XX – Series information (sketchy and unreliable) – Use NoveList or Amazon
    • Examples: ‘Bedwyn’ – search in the catalog, then in NoveList
    • Library of Congress stopped including series information in records their records in 2006!
  • 6XX – Subject headings – Want Greek cookbooks?  Look for “Cookery, Greek”
• Tips for getting more out of the Simple Search
  • Include the branchcode, ex. BONNERSPGS – pulls your materials to the top of the results list
  • Include the call number prefix to help limit the results
  • Include Collection Codes, Item Types and Location codes to limit:
    • BOOKONCD for Audiobooks on CD
    • BOARDBK for Board Books
    • NONFICTION for Non-fiction
    • INSPRATION for Inspirational fiction – Even if your library doesn’t use a Collection Code, other libraries do and including the CCode can help limit the search results
    • SF-FANT | PAPERBACK | EASY | DVD | GRAPHIC | LARGEPRINT, etc.
    • LOCALHOLD1 item type for a Local Hold Only Movie
    • YOUNGADULT shelving location code to limit to YA materials
    • NEW: Do NOT include a “?” in your search string, or you will get no results.  This is a known bug in Koha, slated to be fixed in 3.4
• Strategies
  • Begin b r o a d, then narrow
    • Start with a keyword search, then find and use the exact subject headings, names, etc.
  • Start with what you DO know and use the Wildcard % for what you DON’T know, ex. Grish% for Grisham/Grishim
  • Know where to look for what you need
    • NoveList for Series information
    • Amazon to help with correct spellings (Zebra indexing in Koha is good, but Amazon’s search is better)
  • Let the Catalog do the searching for you
    • On the Search Results list, use the highlighted/hyperlinked Call Numbers to do ‘exact’ call number searches
    • On the Detailed View of a record, use the highlighted/hyperlinked Subject Headings, Author Name, and publisher to do further searching with one click!
    • NOTE:  For now, subtitles DO display in the Public Catalog (OPAC), but NOT in the Staff Client.  So to find that Go, Diego, Go! video your patron wants, search in the OPAC.
• Fun Search Scenarios:
  • What YuYu’s you you have? Uh, yeah, it’s a graphic novel.
    • bonnerspgs graphic – 307 results
    • bonnerspgs graphic YAGN – 238 results
    • yuyu – 93 results
    • bonnerspgs yuyu – 20 results
    • bonnerspgs graphic YAGN yuyu – 16 results
  • I’m trying to get excited about this trip I’m taking, can you help me find something to listen to in my car about travel?  Oh, I have a CD player.
    • bookoncd travel basehor – 72 results, including Bill Bryson!
  • I want the newest Naruto.  Do you have it?  If not, I still want it.
    • START AT NoveList
      > Search for Naruto
      > Sort results “Date Descending”
      > Scan the results
      > On page 2, you should find the latest: vol. 44, “Senjutsu Heir”
    • Hardest: Search for “Naruto” > sort by publication date
    • Medium: Search for “Naruto vol. 44″
    • Easiest: Search for “Senjutsu Heir” – 0 results

Cheryl Morisse of Bonner Springs discovered a way to speed up the process of deleting a years worth of magazines all at once. She writes:

Go to “Edit Items”

Find the group of magazines you want to delete. (example 2006′s)

Click on Delete to left of first magazine

Pop up box asks “do you want to delete” Click on “OK”

You do not have to wait until this magazine is deleted. You can just continue one with the next magazine and the next until you have done all of the ones on the screen. The system will continue and delete all of them in the same amount of time as it takes to delete one.

Our system is so slow that this really speeds things up for me. Hope it helps you too.

Thanks, Cheryl, for sharing!

How To Mange the Holds Pick List (video available upon request)

Managing Holds in NExpress (.pdf created May 2010)

The process in brief…

Printing and pulling the pick list:

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

Processing the Holds you have Pulled:

• 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)
• Activate the Check In tab or go to Circulation > Check in
• Scan the first item
• Read the dialog box to see if the hold is for a local patron or if it should be Transferred to another library
• Select a button: Confirm/Transfer Hold or Print Slip and Confirm
• Scan the next item and repeat until finished
• 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

Update: Video content lost January 2010. Out of date, so will not be re-created at this time.

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

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)