LINKcat News

New Don't Miss Lists posted online

The Don't Miss Lists page has been updated with new titles for August 2011 and the NY Times and Publisher's Weekly best seller lists. The new titles lists are still a work in progress and will continue to be refined in the coming months. Also, there are some lists that we had in Dynix (such as new Overdrive titles) that are not available yet but we will add those lists when they are available.

In addition, we now have the ability to offer archived lists of new titles. We were not able to do this in Dynix but we have developed a process for generating and publishing the lists that allows us to store old lists. We will be adding archived lists back to April 2011 soon (starting with new titles added after the Koha migration). When the archived lists are available we will make an announcement.

Change to Claims Returned procedure

I've modified the Claims Returned Workflow document posted on the ILS Support site, Circulation page.  The significant change to the workflow is only for items that have not already converted to Lost; items that are still checked out to the patron. You must change the item's Lost Status to Lost + Charge; then you convert the item's status to Claims Returned when the item is listed in the patron's Lost Item tab.  It is a bit of extra work but makes for a cleaner transition in statuses and a clear trail in the patron's record.

New Census Bureau website and possible new Census tracts

The U.S. Census Bureau is discontinuing the current version of American FactFinder this fall and will be implementing a new American FactFinder.  SCLS ILS libraries use the Address Search feature on this website to determine a patron's census tract.  We use that information to determine which Sort1 (PSTAT) code to put in the patron's record to indicate legal residency.

Along with the new website there are new Census Tracts for municipalities.  You should check the new U.S. Census Bureau website and with your municipal board to determine whether or not your municipality, or any of the municipalities that you service, received new census tracts from the 2010 Census.  If you find that your municipality has new or changed census tracts please submit any change requests via the Circulation Support form.

The older site's URL is still active and still listed in our website. If you access the older website though a bookmark, you can go to that site's Home page to access the 2010 site.  The old URLs on the SCLS web pages will be updated soon.

Thanks to staff at Madison Central for sharing the information about the new Census Bureau website.

Weeding Report Form Available

We are pleased to announce that you are now able to submit requests for weeding reports.  The form is available on the ILS Support/Forms page, but here is a link to it: http://www.scls.info/ils/forms/weeding-report.html

You may notice that we do not include average use or date status set which were fields that we were able to provide in Dynix.  Those were highly customized fields using our reporting software on Dynix. We may be able to develop these in the future, but for now we are able to generate reports with all of the other fields that you are used to getting.  One other issue is that you can only ask for either Total LINK copies or Total LINK holds, but not both as we have problems with printing both fields.

We expect to receive a lot of report requests and will do our best to meet the demand.  Please be patient as we cannot guarantee a turn-around-time just yet.

Limited Use - Juvenile patron category

All of the circulation rules for the new patron category, Limited Use - Juvenile, have been entered and confirmed in each library's set-up.  You can now assign this new patron category to a patron record and place holds or check out to the patron.  Remember, this patron category is only allowed 3 check outs and 2 holds.  If you encounter any problems using this patron category please submit the problem via the Koha Comments and Questions form.