An Introduction to the NExpress (Koha) Staff Client

Part 1 – Checking items in:

• Video – Checking Items In (8/10)
• Video – Checking Items In with Holds (8/10)

Part 2 – Checking items out:

• Video – Checking Items Out (8/10)
• Video – Patron Account features in Staff Client, with Checking out demonstrated (11/09)

Part 3 – Issuing new cards and editing patron records:

• Issuing Library Cards Handout (step-by-step)
• Editing Patrons

Part 4 – Managing Holds

• Managing Holds in NExpress (.pdf) – Complete instructions
• Run and Pull Pick List (video 9/10)
• Check in and Confirm Holds (9/10) – for more examples, see the Checking Items with Holds video
• Homework Posts:

• • Transfers to Receive Report – How-to instructions for using this Circulation report to see what items are in transit to your location. Useful for tracking items mis-routed on the Courier.
  • Managing the Holds Shelf - How-to instructions for using the Holds Awaiting Pick Up circulation report to clear out expired holds from your shelf.  The Holds Awaiting Pick Up report is not yet working as expected.  PTFS is working on the issue.

Part 5 – Searching

• Overview of the keyword and advanced search features of the Staff Client
  • Keyword searching hints -
    • add “leavenwrth” or “leavenworth” to improve results
    • Look for and use UNIQUE terms.  Is the author’s last name unusual, like “Evanovich”? Is there a term like “playaway” that will improve results?
    • As in Google, use a combination of keywords from the title, series and author name
    • Keyword searching looks at All fields of All attached items, even mis-cataloged ones
  • Advanced searching hints
    • Title, Author, Series Title searches are exact, so spelling counts but you get faster results
    • Look for unique or unusual subject headings to help narrow your search – “cookery for two”
    • Koha can’t find what is NOT in the record.  If a series title isn’t in the record, no amount of searching will find the book.
  • Use Amazon, use ISBN numbers, use What’s Next in the Series, use NoveList (if available)

Part 6 – Placing  a Hold:

• Video and Post – Known Issues: Placing Holds (3/09)
• Placing a hold in the OPAC
• Placing holds in the Staff Client (silent videos from 9/10)
  • Placing  hold from the Search results
  • Placing a hold from the Details page
  • Placing a hold Using “Search to Hold”
  • Placing multiple holds from the Search results, starting with an Advanced Search

Cataloging Training Materials (reminder: they are permanently located on this page)

• Cataloging and Classifying Items in Koha (includes itypes and ccodes) – Revised 8/10
• Cataloging Overview Presentation (view online) – Revised 8/10
• Adding an Item to an Existing Bibliographic Record – Revised 8/10
• Koha Cataloging Check List – Revised 8/10
• Finding and Importing Records from the Hybrid KLC – Revised 8/10
• Staging MARC Records for Import – Revised 8/10
• Creating Fast Add and Brief Records for ILL

Advanced Training and Homework Posts:

• Managing Suggestions for Purchase - overview video 9/10
  • Must be logged in as TECH or DIRECTOR
  • Step-by-step instructions post, with a video from Royce at Tonganoxie Public Library
  • Patrons are alerted the next time they log into their account of your decision
  • Currently, there are 245 requests!  Patrons DO use this feature.

• Searching and Search Training and Search-related Bugs and Barcode Searching-  These posts include videos and exercises to familiarize yourselves with the search capabilities of Koha’s Staff Client.
  NOTE: Do not include the special characters ( ! ? & ) in searches, it may skew results.
• What to do with Agent Interlibrary Loans – Best practices
• Tags and the Tag Cloud – Ideas from Susan at Hiawatha
• Handling Patron Accounts and Fines – Best practices
• NExpress FAQs

Note: There is one extra step that you all will need to take for the near future. As you add your items to the batch, you’ll notice that they will start appearing in duplication or even triplication. There’s an easy fix for this. Once you’ve added all your items to the batch, click the Remove Duplicates button (see below) and this process will remove all the duplications. Then, proceed to export your batch of labels.

Video is licensed as Creative Commons 3.0 Non-commercial Share-a-like

Finally, with the upgrade, the label batch list was cleared as of Sunday. In the future, please keep this public service announcement in mind.

The list (reordered – new on top, fixed at the bottom):

• Wrong Holds Deleted when Using Patron Details > Holds tab. To delete a patron’s hold from their patron record, use the Check Out Tab and Holds sub-tab.
  Do Not use:
  
• Suppress Feature – Another new feature of PTFS is “Do not suppress” -  if you have an item you want to HIDE or SUPPRESS in the online public access catalog, you can.  Say you have a professional collection, COMPUTERS, equipment or books you have behind the desk just for storytime – you can hide those from patrons by Suppressing the item.
• Dual Prompts – Update: If you check in an item that is already ‘Waiting’ for a patron, you will trigger dual prompts and initiate an unwanted transfer of the item to it’s homebranch.  We have received multiple reports of dual prompts, leading to dual status messages.  We have investigated this and reported it to PTFS. We do not know if this is an ‘artifact’ of a bug that they fixed earlier this week, or a new issue.  If it’s an artifact, we may have to just work through the affected holds until we are dealing with ‘new,’ post-migration holds.
• Z-target searching in the Cataloging module is slow.  Heather deleted the NYU target, as it was unresponsive.  We sent in a support ticket for the slowness.
• Cancel Holds in Transit bug – This is STILL AROUND.  In case you want proof – here’s the video.
• Duplicate Overdue Notices – We have reports of duplicate overdue report emails – today’s match yesterdays.  We sent copies of Ottawa’s emails to PTFS.
• Renew from OPAC bug – When I renewed an item I had just checked out, the renewal date went backwards…which leads us to believe that it wasn’t accessing the correct library circ policies.  Please explain to your patrons that we are going through an upgrade and to be patient with us.  We have sent this to PTFS.  FYI, after I refreshed the staff client, as show in the video, my OPAC account said I had renewed the book twice and the due date changed again from 9/15 back to 9/23.  Very odd.
• Set to Patron Guarantor Bug - When searching for a Parent or Guarantor to set to a Child, you get 0 search results.  We have reported this PTFS. Update: A work around for this is to search by the guarantor’s patron barcode number, not by name. (hb)
  
• PRIORITY – Inconsistent Cataloging Behavior – sometimes your work is saved, sometimes it isn’t. We are looking for more examples to find any underlying source for this incorrect behavior.
• Partially FIXED as of Aug. 25 – Overdue notices cron job – we have asked PTFS to look into this.  A library reported NOT receiving their daily email of overdues.  We are investigating reports of ‘really long’ reports (25+ pages).  We have seen examples of “Items Due” notices, along with Overdue notices, in the emailed report.  Those can be disregarded, but we are still trying to determine why they are included in the report at all.
• PRIORITY – Problems with Restricted (LOCALHOLD and WALKIN) Item Types Walk-in and Local Hold items are appearing on Pick lists (THIS may be fixed, we are still investigating), even though their Circ Rules are correctly restricted to Home library only and No holds allowed.  NEW: Restricted Items are being asked to fill holds when scanned at the Check in box.  Ignore hold, if this is incorrect behavior, for example the hold is for a non-local patron or it is a Walk-in item.
• PRIORITY – The Holds Awaiting Pickup Circulation report times out.  We have reported this bug to PTFS.
• PRIORITY - If you try searching for a patron using their full name (ex, David Lee Allen, Adam James Smith, or Alan Michael Smith), you get no results. If you search using only their first, first name (David Allen, Adam Smith, or Alan Smith), you get results. All patrons that have two or more names in the first name box have to be found excluding the middle name.  Patrons with two-part last names are also problematic and this has been sent to PTFS. (8/24/10 – SEM)
• Long overdue/assumed lost display bug – We saw this in our Leavenworth LOAD server but now we see it in our Production server.  Harley hiccups with it sees an item that is Long overdue/assumed lost and mis-displays information in the search results (search.pl).  We have told PTFS about this issue.
  
• After using the “Search to Hold” feature and you close the ‘shadow box’ – you will need to Refresh your browser to see the newly-placed hold on your patron’s details page.
  Update: Search to Hold does not work if there is only one Bib that matches your search term.  The results have to show on the Results list.
  Update: Search to Hold feature does not work if you re-sort the search results.  The “Hold for Patron” button disappears.
• When doing an advanced search using the https link, the Back button clears all previously entered data (this is related to the new secure URL, not PTFS Harley 1.1).
• Misleading wording – In the Holds Priority page, the wording of “item waiting to be pulled” on items that we just pulled and put in transit is Misleading – maybe we can change that wording to simply “Item is in transit”.  Reported to PTFS, still not fixed as far as I can tell (8/24/10 – SEM)
  
• FIXED – Edit Item Bug – If you try to add a new item by filling out the form shown at the “Edit > Edit Item” screen, your changes will NOT be saved. Instead, you will be redirected to the Add Item screen.  Please use the New > New Item path to add an item OR use the Cataloging module and “Add Holdings”
• FIXED as of Aug. 25. Hyperlinks on the Bib Record Details page do not work.  Liz has disabled the hyperlinks. We turned on a System Preference called XSLTDetailsDisplay so that Subtitles, parts, numbers and medium information (245 $b, h, n, p) displayed.  Unfortunately, this is a buggy preference that tries to execute an OPAC search in the Staff Client when you click on an author hyperlink or Subject hyperlink…which leads to an error screen.  We have reported this bug to PTFS.
• FIXED  Patron name searching is still slow…scan a barcode when possible.  Some slowness will always occur, as it’s the nature of the Internet.
• FIXED with re-indexing. Holds Priority Lists may look odd – the upgrade team at PTFS had to adjust all of our existing Holds to add the new “In Transit” Status to holds already pulled and on their way from Library A to Library B.  I think this fixed itself after today’s Pick list ran.
• Heather removed two problematic z-targets – please let us know if you have issues cataloging.
• Liz Fixed This!  Woot.Dubbed, “The lying yellow box bug” – When placing multiple holds for a patron in the Staff client (by doing a search and selecting several titles from the results list), you may need to scroll down to see the real priority level.  Please ignore the misleading message “No copies are available to be placed on hold.”
  
  
• FIXED with the reindexing Aug. 24. Search results (search.pl) in both the Staff Client and OPAC may show inaccurate availability status information.
  
• FIXED with the reindexing Aug. 24. The Holdings table on the details.pl page has missing Status information.
  
• FIXED with the reindexing Aug. 24. The catalog is Not Indexing Correctly, as some catalogers have discovered.  We also noticed that the Search results list shows ‘old’ information about items recently checked in (or out).  The Items tab of the Bib record should be correct.
• FIXED as of 1 pm, Aug. 24. URGENT: Editing the Holds Priority List for a title from the Holds Tab of a Bib record in the Staff Client causes unwanted changes to existing holds.  Please edit Holds through the Patron account or have the Patron edit their holds through the OPAC.  We may hide the offending drop-down menus until this is fixed.
• FIXED with the indexing fixed Aug. 24 Transfers to Receive Circulation Report is incomplete – the “Reserved by” information is missing, that tells you which of your patrons has a hold coming. We have reported this bug to PTFS.
• FIXED “In Transit statuses are incomplete in their wording. As of Aug 30, 2010.  Patron name and information about if the item is still “on hold (in transit)” or “waiting” for a patron with a hyperlink to the patron account was missing.
• UN-FIXED – Not sure when, but it seems to be working now. Please send us screenshots or screencasts of this when you see it.
  Where’s the book, really?  Dual prompts – the scenario:

When Eudora’s book “The Help” was returned to Bonner and a hold came up for a patron in Baldwin City – Koha gave 2 messages:

“Please return “The Help” to Eudora” AND

“Hold found (item waiting…) send to Baldwin City”

The status of this item in the Holdings table says it is in transit to Eudora. The Holds Priority table says the item is In transit to fill a hold at Baldwin City. The Item information has the current location as Bonner Springs. Only the Holds Priority table is correct.

• FIXED as of Aug. 25 – Cataloging issues addressed today were also fixed with the indexing fix.  If you have items cataloged yesterday that you cannot find by searching, check them in.  That process should add them manually to the index (or something similar).

We will add more as we find them.  Please email nexpresshelp@nekls.org if you find an issue or chat with us on Monday.

PTFS-Master 1.1 Release Notes (.pdf)

New or Enhanced Features

Turn Off Item Type/Collection Code Search Section in Advanced Search – We will leave the Collection Code Advanced Search sections ON in both the Staff Client and OPAC.  This, with the addition of the Shelving Location limits, should assist in all of your searches.  Read and Watch more about Searching.

Add XSLT Support for Staff Search Results and Record Details – We have turned on this feature, which will display the 245 subfields h, b, n and p in the Search Results list in both the Staff Client and OPAC.  However, due to some ugly looking code, we will NOT turn on this display in the Staff Client Details Display.  So, make sure you selected the correct Go Diego Go or Naruto before going to the details page, because the sub-title will magically disappear.

Use Slave Database for Reports – We have asked PTFS to setup our system to run Koha reports against a backup database rather than the primary database.  We are still trying to determine if this means running MySQL command line (uber geeky) reports, or just using the Circulation Wizard, which is what we want.

Fixes and Functionality Enhancements

Written by PTFS or picked from “other Koha codelines,” with details available in the Bugzilla report.

• Translate ampersand (&) in XSLT title display. (Note: You still need to remove punctuation from searches). But, now titles display will go from this:
  
  to
  
• Bug 3344 – Hold priority list needs additional status for items assigned but not waiting. We made this enhancement request, which Galen Charlton picked up and ran with.  So, when an item has been confirmed and is “In transit” to fill a hold, that item will no longer be a numbered hold in the Holds priority list, but will be down with those ‘waiting’ holds!
  
• Bug 4224 – Holds queue (Pick List) report includes items already allocated.  This fix should remove extraneous entries.  We need to wait until we are ‘live’ to really test this.
• Bug 4372 – Transferring an item does not update date last seen. Adds a date update to the Circulation History table for items when transfers are initiated, items are checked out AND when transfers are completed.  This was a bug we reported and our good friend Chris Cormack fixed!
• Bug 3299 – Sticky calendar renew date doesn’t work.  The calendar gadget in the patron checkout/renewals column should work now!  Thank You to Galen Charlton for patching this for us.

Thank you Claudia!

Reports

Bugfix to Allow User Specified Limit in SQL – This is more of a back end fix that we are excited about, but it does mean that we can run a report on your Shelflist, say for the Insurance agent or City auditor.

Patrons and Holds

Patron Batch Edit and Batch Delete (Bug 3468) – Sorry, but until there is a granular permission that allows us to limit this feature to TECH and DIRECTOR accounts, we will suppress it.  Too dangerous – we’d rather not tempt fate and accidentally delete a group of patrons we meant to just change from Child to Adult.  Anyway, it’s a bit buggy – the “Select All” link within the Cart doesn’t work.  But we wanted you to be aware of this functionality, which we can turn back on if there is a pressing need.

Patron Improved Searching (Bug 3468) – PTFS added email, phone number, and borrower number to the standard search.  They also added an optional SQL search, but we thought it best to suppress that for now.  For email or phone number, use an asterisk (*555-1212 or *.rainbow.net).  Note that searching (212) 555-1212 and 212 555 1212 are NOT equivalent, you have to search for the phone number as entered, or truncate to just a part (like *1212*).

Predefined Borrower Notes (Bug 3472) – Diana and her staff at Atchison are excited about this feature.  It allows us to have predefined “canned” messages in a drop-down menu that are visible on the checkout tab.  For example, “Proof of Address Required” or “Email Correction Requested.”  Still testing this, can’t get any of the canned messages (or free text notes) I created to actually show up on the Checkout Tab of my patron record!  Hmmm….

Allow Multiple Holds on Items for One Title (Bug 4239) - This is the “I need 4 copies of the same book for my book club” feature.  We have set up this feature to allow patrons to place multiple holds on items with the Item Type of BOOK and NEWBOOK, but nothing else.  Unfortunately, we have not been able to get this feature to work, even though we set up the system preference.  We’ve sent a support request….

Place Hold Option on Checkout Tab (Bug 3659) – We’d like you all to test this “Search to Hold” feature and see what comments, suggestions and changes you’d like to see.  We think this is a good feature that can get better.

Fines

Calculate Fines on Claims Returned Items (Bug 4236) - PTFS wrote a feature to stop fine accrual on claims returned items.  When a patron says they’ve returned an item, but it’s not on the shelf – instead of marking it lost, you can mark it “Claims returned”.  The item will stay on their account, but fines won’t accrue and the item will show up on the Patron details page AND Fines page.  This message stays until the item is marked LOST and charged to the patron for replacement or found and returned to the library.  In this example, I am using one of our testing patrons…

Pre-Defined Fee Types (Bug 3476) - This is another feature we need feedback on…what standard fees are typically used when you create manual invoices for patrons?  Photocopies? Replacement cards? Debt collection fee?  We can add these to the Manual Invoice Type drop-down menu.

Circulation

Change Checkin Date (Bug 351o) – We call this the Snow Days check in feature – you can back-date the Check in feature, in case you were closed 2-3 days because of weather or flood…something that wasn’t expected and recorded using the Holiday Calendar.  You can also choose to Forgive overdue charges AND backdate the check in, in the name of exceptional customer service

Check In Damaged (Bug 4242) – If an item’s status is set to damaged while it is checked out (say the called over the phone or you noticed the missing front cover while clearing the drop box), and there are existing holds on the item, checking the item in will NOT trigger the next hold.  Instead, you’ll get a message like:

Item Damaged: Title of Book
Hold will remain on item until repaired

Clear Borrower Record After Checkout (Bugs 3485 and 3486) – In the name of patron privacy, there is now a built in “Circ Timeout – Are you finished with this patron?” prompt after 300 seconds AND a Clear Screen button.  New habits!

Cataloging

Batch Item Edit (Bug 3509) – After further review and discussion, we discovered that the TOOLS permission needed to view this feature has to be reactivated for every TECH account.  Also, this feature needs additional training before it can be widely used – it’s that powerful.

Adding Additional Items Copies Item Data (Bug 3480) – We want to bring this to your attention because this is NEW behavior when adding additional items to a Bib record (from the Bib record, not the Cataloging Module).
So, you Search the Catalog, find a title, click New, and click New Item on the title display page will open a new item screen WITH DATA (except barcode and other fields such as number of checkouts) COPIED from the FIRST item attached to the record.  So, you will need to be very careful when editing your new Item record, or your call number scheme may look a lot like Basehor’s or Atchison’s or whichever library cataloged the first item attached to the record!

Step One: Search the catalog and select New > New Item:

Step Two:  Edit, fix, update

Save Import Profiles (Bug 4247) – Heather will create MARC Import Profiles that have pre-defined fields set up to make importing easier.

OPAC

Bestseller’s Club and Email Notifications (Bug 4245) - We are still trying to test this feature, but hope to make the E-mail Lists work this way – Patron subscribes to a list and receives an email notification when new materials matching certain Item Type or Call Number scheme criteria are met.  For example, when new DVDs (‘MEDIA’  item type) are added to the collection or items that match a specific call number scheme (F QUINN or SF %).

OPAC Inactivity Timeout (Bug 4238) - An OPAC session will time out after 300 seconds (5 minutes) of inactivity and return to the main OPAC page.  We will need to craft a warning about the inactivity timeout to the OPAC’s main page – if you have any suggestions.

NOTE: The only guaranteed way for a patron to ensure that their “My Account” information can’t be accidentally seen is to CLOSE the BROWSER.  Logging out is not enough.

OPAC “Did You Mean” FEature (Bug 4240) - This new feature uses an open source dictionary to suggest five terms if an OPAC search term is misspelled or not found.  This does not work with some author names, but does work with commonly misspelled words that may appear in a title or subject.

OPAC and STaff Advanced Search Changes (Bug 3665) - A Search button has been strategically placed higher on the Advanced Search page, so you don’t have to scroll to the bottom of the page!  PTFS also moved subject, title and call number/barcode search options higher int he pulldown list.

Sorting of Item Holdings in Staff and OPAC (Bug 3702) - One of my favorite new features, the default sort order for the Item Holdings table will now be ALPHABETICAL by BRANCH LIBRARY DESCRIPTION, “so that a library’s holdings display together.”
NOTE: We are also working with PTFS to maintain our current CUSTOMIZATION of the Items holding table.  Our Catalog displays the items Permanent Home Branch in the Staff Client, rather than Current Location, which is the default behavior in Koha.  We needed a way to see how many copies were owned by a library at any given time for collection development.

Search by Shelving Location (Bug 4239) – NEW to the Advanced Search pages – You can limit to any of the following shelving locations!

Coming next…PTFS-Master 1.1 Release Notes

]]> http://www.nexpresslibrary.org/harley-highlights-continued/feed/ 0 http://www.nexpresslibrary.org/harley-ptfs-developed-koha-features/ http://www.nexpresslibrary.org/harley-ptfs-developed-koha-features/#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:36:06 +0000 Sharon http://www.nexpresslibrary.org/?p=1431 Release Notes (bits and pieces)

(Complete set of Release Notes in .pdf from May 2010)

Patrons and Holds

Borrower History Retention – Under the Circulation History tab, there are sections for Reserves (Holds) and Sent Notices history.  This will begin working once we upgrade, rather than retro-actively.

Place Hold Option on Checkout Tab – There will be a new “Search to Hold” section with a search link that opens a popup window for searching and placing holds.  A silent video demonstration.

Copy Patron Record – So, you have a family who needs 6 separate cards? No problem!  This feature takes an existing patron record and copies most of the information, except for First Name, date of birth and barcode.  This is an alternative to using the Set Guarantor feature or Add Child function, which assumes the new patron is a child.

To use: Find a patron, select More > Copy Patron

Then, update the record and save.

Fines

Partial Fine Payment - Patrons are now able to make partial payments of fines!  Click on the “Pay” button, insert the amount collected from the patron and Koha will automatically calculate the amount remaining.

Billing Notice and Debt Collection – We are still investigating this new feature, especially the new option for printing patron billing notices.  The Debt Collection piece is designed to work with Unique Management Inc, but could be adapted to work with other collection agencies.

Other Fines features worth looking into: Pre-Defined Fee Types (p. 34) and List Fines by Type on Checkout Tab (p. 36)

Circulation

Print Option for Hold and Overdue Notices - “PTFS has added an option to print hold and overdue notices for patrons who have no email addresses in their records.”  We will need to create a new notice template, then Koha will generate the notices and send the file to a web-accessible directory (that we’ll need to work with PTFS to get set up).

Renewal Source - Curious to know if an item was renewed by the Patron via the OPAC or by a staff member?  It shows up now!  An example…one guess who read all those romance novels…

Cataloging

Batch Item Edit – This new Tool allows you to select and edit Library, Item Type, Location, Permanent Location, Current Location, Not for Loan, Damaged, Lost status, Withdrawn status, Use Restrictions, and Collection Code.  So, say you want to find “Books” from Bonner Springs with a Collection Code of “New” and update that to “Fiction,” you can do that as a batch (all 610 of them).
Oops: Make sure you know what your search criteria is because this tool makes the changes to the item records without letting you preview the results and some of those 610 books should have been changed from “New” to “Nonfiction”…
Note: You can also scan the barcode numbers into a Text file, set the criteria you want to Change, upload that file, click Proceed and be done!  That was easy.

Other Cataloging Features that you might want to explore: Other Item Statuses (p.46), In Processing/Shelving Cart (p. 48) and Save Import Profiles (p. 49)

OPAC

Bestseller’s Club and Email Notifications – This is an expansion of a feature developed by Kyle Hall.  The part that I think is great is where patrons can self-enroll into a ‘club’ and then receive an email notification when a new item, for example by a favorite author, is added to the collection.  More information on pages 52-55.  Definitely something we will need to explore and probably discuss at an upcoming Users Group meeting.

Clear Reading History - Patrons can Opt Out of the Reading History, if we turn on the system preference “AllowReadingHistoryAnonymizing.”

OPAC and Staff Advanced Search Changes – PTFS moved the subject, title and call number search options higher int he pulldown list and added a Search button near the top of the screen.  Good thinking.

Sorting of Item Holdings in Staff and OPAC – The default sort order for items is accession date in the Staff Client and item type in the OPAC.  This new feature “forces the primary sort in both staff and OPAC to be by branch library description, so that a library’s holdings display together.”

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

Hello everybody.

As Jim mentioned in his July 13 email, big changes are (finally) coming to NExpress. LibLime, our support and hosting company, is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of PTFS, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. We have been working with the PTFS transition team over the last few months, and have negotiated an upgrade path that allows us to continue with our fall migration of Leavenworth Public Library into the NExpress Shared Regional Catalog.

Our current Koha installation will be upgraded with a newer code base which includes over a year of changes and improvements in both functionality and features, including some PTFS software enhancements.

We have a schedule now for this upgrade process, which will occur on Saturday, August 14 & Sunday, August 15. LibLime will do a database backup, and then run the upgrade scripts, which take about 2 hours. Once LibLime has confirmed that the scripts have run successfully, the last step is the reindexing, which will take 6-7 hours. LibLime is planning on doing the upgrade after hours on Saturday and Sunday, so there will be no need for offline circulation. It will take approximately 10+ hours to complete the upgrade over the weekend. Please do not do any catalog work during this period.

We should have a test instance of the new PTFS Master Koha available for our use very soon. LibLime will refresh our test instance with an up-to-date copy of our production database and upgrade it to PTFS Master. We should have several weeks to “play” and get used to the way it works in a test environment.

We are working now on developing training and support materials highlighting the many new features of the upgraded PTFS Master Koha. We think you’ll be very pleased with the changes!

We have already had a successful preliminary upload of Leavenworth’s data into an upgraded instance, which we are busy testing. Leavenworth Public Library is on track to join NExpress “live” on September 8. Leavenworth will bring almost 100,000 new items into our shared catalog.

Thank you all for your patience. We are very pleased to be moving ahead with this major Koha upgrade, and will do everything we can to make the process a smooth one.

The Calendar (under Tools in Koha) will affect your circulation (and overdues) based on how it is set.  The Director account has permission to update the Calendar. There are basically three ways you can set your Koha Calendar, which is done individually for each library:

1. No holidays

• Koha counts every calendar day when determining a checkout period.
• An item with a 7 Day checkout that is checked out on Monday Nov 23 will be due seven days later, on Monday Nov 30.
• It doesn’t matter if the library is open or closed on any of these days.
• Overdues are determined in the same way — an item that is 7 Days Overdue will get a First Notice.
• So, to use the example above, the unreturned item checked out on Nov 23 will trigger a First Overdue Notice on Dec 7.

2. Holidays only (Yearly and Unique)

• Koha counts every calendar day when determining a checkout period EXCEPT for specific holidays “blocked out” on the calendar, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Independence Day, etc.
• Koha just skips the holiday in determining checkout periods.
• Using the example above, a Koha Calendar with just yearly Holidays set would skip Thanksgiving Day on November 26.
  • The item checked out on Nov 23 would be due on Tuesday Dec 1.
  • The First Overdue Notice would be sent on Dec 8.
• The benefit of setting your Calendar to skip holidays is that items won’t ever be due on days like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

3. Recurring weekly holidays (days library is closed)

• Koha will skip every day the library is not open for business when counting checkout periods.
• For a library that is closed on Saturday and Sunday each week, an item checked out on Monday, Nov 23 would be due Wednesday, Dec 2.
• HOWEVER, if the Thanksgiving holiday is also “blocked out” in addition to the regular days the library is closed, then the item would be due on Thursday, Dec 3.
• So a 7 Day checkout period could, in this scenario, encompass 10 actual calendar days, since the Calendar settings tell Koha to skip counting Thursday, Saturday and Sunday as checkout days.

Right now, libraries are using all combinations of 1, 2, and 3.  You do not HAVE to use any holiday settings whatsoever.

Mickey