LINKcat News

Newly revised Circulation tutorials

Jean A. has completed recording 4 more of the revised Circulation Tutorials: How to make items Claims Returned, Renewing items, Applying Payments,and Applying Write-offs. They have been posted to Koha Circulation Tutorials, listed under the Koha Tutorials section on the ILS Support/Training page.

In order to shorten the length of the tutorials, we made them very task-specific.  Some of these topics lead naturally into other areas and tasks, but we were trying to keep length under 3 minutes.  Every tutorial refers to the specific section of the Circulation Manual where staff can find more information on each subject.

The next three scheduled for recording are Holds, Creating Manual Invoices and Searching for patrons.  If you have a topic or task that you would like to see made into a short tutorial, please send the information to Heidi Oliversen, hjo@scls.lib.wi.us.

Requesting reports - a chapter in reorganization

You may have noticed some changes to the face of the Reports page recently.  Most notably, we now have specific forms for the different types of Custom Reports that you can request.

The reason for the new forms is because there has been some behind-the-scenes reorganization.  In November 2012, Joanna, Michelle and Heidi attended SQL training in Milwaukee as part of a larger report transitions plan.  As of Feb.18, Michelle will be running the Daily, Monthly and Weeding reports. Joanna will be handling the Custom Item Report and Serials report requests. Heidi will be handling the Custom Patron Report requests.  There will also be cross training so that anyone can run the routine reports and the custom reports.  Cindy and Amy will continue to help with complex reports, back-up and SQL expertise.

New Problem Item Reports for Technical Services

There are three new problem item reports available today:

1. On Order Greater than 6 Months (On Order >6 mo.)
2. Fast Add Report
3. Problem Items: Not for Loan Status (PI: Not for loan)

Each of these reports concerns items that have some kind of status that needs to be addressed. All of them will be run and posted to the Reports Calendar on the second Thursday of each month.

The first report, On Order Greater than 6 Months, captures items that have had a status of On Order ACQ, On Order Non-ACQ, or Received ACQ and have not been updated in some way for greater than six months’ time. This report gives you the opportunity to check on the status of your order or item and decide whether or not to cancel the order or place a claim with the vendor. Please follow the workflow on the Reports page to resolve these items.

The second report, Fast Adds, captures bibs and items more than two months old that were added using the Fast Add framework. If the item is not re-linked to a bib record by the date that the next report is run, it will be deleted from the system along with the fast add bib record. Please follow the workflow provided on the Reports page to resolve these fast add items.

The third report, Problem Items: Not for Loan Status, captures items that have a status in the Not for Loan category and where the item has not been updated for more than six months. Please follow the workflow to resolve any problems with these items. This is especially important for those items marked In Processing and for magazines that have a status of Current Issue/No CKO, since those items cannot be trapped to fill patrons’ holds. We do not have a set schedule for a deletion process or other remediation for those items left unresolved. Also, in order for this report to print on a standard-sized sheet of paper, we have hidden a column with subtitle information. If you wish to unhide it, you can do so using Excel by going to the Home tab, Format Cells > Hide & Unhide > Unhide Columns. A screenshot of the menu selection is at the bottom of this post.

All of these reports are easily manipulated in Excel to change font size, etc. for easier viewing. We have formatted them to fit onto a single sheet of 8.5” x 11” paper. For more advice on using Excel, please see Brian and Greg’s excellent posts on TechBits with Excel tricks of the trade.

We will run and post these three item reports on a monthly basis. Other database clean-up reports will appear more infrequently. For example, we will post reports of items with no ITYPE or no collection code assigned. All of these reports are designed to assist with database clean-up and to keep your collection information current.

Thank you for your assistance in this important work to keep items available to our patrons at SCLS.

Excel Unhide Column:

Global Messaging Preference change: Hold Canceled notice

In November 2012, the Hold Canceled notice was removed as a default notice type for all Patron Categories and the CSC discussed having this option removed from all patron records.

At their January 2013 meeting, the ILS approved the recommendation from the CSC to remove the hold canceled Messaging Preference from all patron accounts retroactively.

As of Feb. 5, 2013, all patron records have had the Hold Canceled notice unchecked in their Messaging Preferences.

If you have a patron that wants to receive a notice when a hold is canceled, please re-check that Messaging Preference in their patron account.