LINKcat News

News Summary for 1/1/2013 through 2/28/2013

News

For the most current news, see the ILS Support Main page.

• 2/22/13 Shorter, task-oriented Circulation Tutorials have been recorded and posted to the Koha Circulation Tutorials page: Renewing items; Applying Payments; Claims Returned and Write Offs.
• 2/22/2013 New Report request forms; read the LINK 2.0 blog post.
• 2/14/13 Three new cataloging/technical services reports are posted to the Reports page: Fast Adds, On Order Greater than 6 Months, and Problem Item: Not for Loan Status. Read the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post with more details. Workflows are available on the Reports main page.
• 2/11/13 The January PAC Subcommittee minutes are available online.
• 2/6/13 Global change to all patron records - Hold Canceled notice option removed. Read the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post.
• 2/6/13 The monthly LINKcat.info and LINKcat Mobile reports are posted.
• 2/6/13 The Circulation User's Group is schedule for March 27th from 9 am - 12 pm. You may register online.
• 2/1/13 The January CSC Subcommittee minutes area available online.
• 2/1/13 The January ILS Committee minutes are available online.
• 1/30/13 Deleted today: 37381 withdrawn items and 4314 bibliographic records where the last item attached was withdrawn.
• 1/30/13 Revised options for printing the Holds Queue reports after the Firefox 18 upgrade. Read the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post.
• 1/29/13 Bug related to Public Note field in item Detail screen. Read the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post.
• 1/24/13 New Available on shelf facet added to LINKcat PAC and staff client.
• 1/22/13 The GetIt Acquisitions User's Group is scheduled for February 27th at 9 am at SCLS Headquarters. Please register online.
• 1/4/2013 The new Year End Rollover development and several bug fixes are included in this weekend's GetIT Acquisitions upgrade. Release notes are now available through this link and on the Acquisitions module page.

Known Problems:Recently Added & Updated

• 2/22/2013 New.Items with diacritics characters in their title are causing terminations of some Self Check sessions. LibLime has scheduled this to be fixed in the next point release. (SCLS Support ticket 44266)
• 2/19/2013 New. Bug with using multiple search boxes in the Advanced search. When you input search terms into multiple search boxes, Koha does not seem to correctly search and limit the search results. It appears that not all of the search terms are included in the search, so the results that you get are too broad. The problem only occurs when you use multiple search boxes. If you use one search box and then use the other limits, such as language, publication date, subtype limits, or library then the search limiting works correctly. This problem has been reported to LibLime. (SCLS Support Ticket 44225)
• 1/29/2013 New. Bug with Public Note field in Item Detail screen. Do not use the Public note field in the History section of the Item Detail screen. Using this field for an item with a Lost status strips the patron information from the Checkout status line. If the item is Claims Returned or Lost + Charge, it will also be removed from the patron's Lost Items list, but the charging entry will remain in the patron's Account screen. Use the Non-Public Note in the full Item record if you must add a note to the item record. (SCLS Support ticket 44076)
• 1/11/13 New. In PAC, using Back button to return to search results list always brings you to the top of the page, even if the last record that you viewed was at the bottom of the page. This is because the cursor is automatically placed in the search box. (SCLS Support Ticket 43950)
• 1/4/13 New. GetIt Cannot download Fund hierarchy to Excel. The file that is downloaded has header information but no fund accounts. (SCLS Support Ticket 44007)

 

New This Week list available April 1 in LINKcat

On April 1, we will launch the New This Week list. This list will show all bibliographic records added to Koha in the last seven days. The list will change daily, as new bibliographic records are added. The link to the New This Week list will be in the "blue bar," next to the link for the Don't Miss Lists. It will also be linked from the Don't Miss Lists web page.

The New This Week list allows patrons to more easily find the latest titles as they are added to Koha. It will not replace the Don't Miss Lists.

The New This Week list will show all bibliographic records in the order that they have been added to Koha. Placement of records may change as they are overlaid with full MARC records.

Patrons can use the facets on the left side of the screen to limit by format, author, library, etc. (Please note: BSE records will appear on the New This Week list, but they will not have all of the coding necessary to properly limit by format until they are overlaid by a full MARC record.)

New Owning Library facet

A new "Owning Library" facet is now available. The facet allows staff and patrons to limit by owning library, regardless of the item's status. The facet lists the library by code, not library name, so it's a feature that will be more useful to staff than patrons. However, it is available in both the PAC and staff client. At this time, we cannot limit it to the staff client, nor can we display the library's name instead of the library's code. It's the last facet listed in the "Refine your search" column.

Reporting Koha response time problems

If your library is experiencing ongoing Koha response time issues, please continue to record and report these problems to ILS staff. Response time problems have a variety of causes. Sometimes there are hardware issues at LibLime. Sometimes there may be a broader issue with the Amazon hosting service. Problems that originate at LibLime and the Amazon hosting service will cause response time problems for all computers and all libraries. Sometimes these problems start small and build up over the course of a few hours.

At other times response time problems are limited to one library or are intermittent. These problems could be caused by heavy network traffic at that library or in that region, or other hardware problems with library computers.

If you do experience a response time problem, check the SCLS Status Wiki to see if there is a widespread outage or slowness problem. If there is nothing on the Status Wiki, then try logging out of Koha and clearing your browser’s cache. If, after logging back in, Koha is still slow, then record the problem and report it to ILS staff. It can be difficult to report these ongoing or intermittent response time problems on the Koha problems and questions form. To record these types of response time problems you could keep a log of problems in a notebook at the circulation or reference desk. In the log, please record the following information:

• Date and time of day
• PC# (or note that it affected all staff and/or patron PCs)
• What you were doing (e.g. checking in, searching for an item, be as specific as possible)
• How long pages are taking to load*
• How long the problem lasted (e.g. 5 minutes, 15 minutes)
• Any action you took (e.g. logged out of Koha, cleared cache, etc.)

After you have accumulated a few pages of logs, please send the log to the ILS Help Desk via Delivery. The log will help us to see patterns in the response time problems so we can better understand the causes of these problems. 

Koha response time problems can be very frustrating in a busy library. We are working to gather as much information as possible in order to address these problems.

*You can install a Firefox extension that will show you the page loading time. Here are a couple of choices: Lori (life of request info) and Extended Statusbar.

Receipt or No Receipt - that is the question ...

Not everybody wants a due date receipt and to save us from having to ask so often we started adding Messages to patrons' Check Out screens. 

• Click on the "Add a new message" hyperlink.
• Don't choose a pre-defined heading.
• Based on the patron preference, enter either "NO RECEIPT" or "PLEASE PRINT RECEIPT".  

It's a quick to add and easy to see if you use capital letters.  The two word phrase vs the three word phrase helps to differentiate between the two messages as well.

--submitted by E. Kersten/PIN

Circulation documentation: a constant evolution.

Over the last 11 months, the Circulation Services Committee has been working hard on updating Sections of the Circulation Manual;  updating and streamlining the Problem Items forms and revising and developing other procedures and guidelines.  They are still working on a variety of projects and we post revisions practically every month. Please check out the updated documentation on the following web pages:

Circulation Manual

Circulation Workflows

and review the recently re-recorded Circulation Tutorials we wrote about in the 2/22/13 LINK 2.0 blog post.

 

 

 

Reminder: do not use the Manual Credit button.

Here's an updated reminder for you to share with your staff and co-workers:

When staff use the Manual Credit button to create a credit on a patron's account, the patron's balance is credited.  However, we are unable to apply the credit to a specific debit amount in order to resolve the account, which leaves both the original debit and the new credit as amounts Outstanding in the patron's record.  Both amounts also display in the patron's PAC account and on the patron's Check Out page.  In May 2012 the CSC recommended and the ILS approved banning the use of the Manual Credit button. 

If you have a question on how to resolve a debit amount without using the Manual Credit, please contact Heidi O. and she will assist you.  If you have patron records with manual credits and debits that you would like to see "resolved", email the patron barcode and the specific line numbers in the patron's Account screen to Heidi O. with a request to clear the Amounts Outstanding.