LINKcat News

A patron walks into a library ...

and decides to check out an item from your collection.  When you scan the item barcode a pop-up appears that looks like this:

This means that there is already a copy waiting for this patron on a hold shelf.  If the patron wants to go ahead with checking out the copy in hand AND wants you to cancel the hold sitting on the hold shelf, you must select the Cancel Reserve option and then click the Yes. Check Out button. That way the patron gets the item right away and you have ensured that the item on the hold shelf will be included on that library's next Hold Shelf Action report.

Recommended Uniform Highway designations and Road abbreviations

Since the fall 2017 Address Verification project, Circulation staff and the Circulation Services Subcommittee have been talking about creating a uniform set of highway designations in order to provide consistent information in the database and to reduce the number of possible "non-deliverable" addresses during future address verification processes.  After comparing results from the NCOA vendor, the USPS (US Postal Service) and the US Census Bureau's database, committee members agreed on the following uniform highway designations for use in our patron database:

COUNTY HWY

COUNTY RD

HWY

STATE HWY

US HWY

We will continue to use the USPS  list of road abbreviations as the standard for non-highway designations.  Both of these sets of nomenclature are posted on the ILS Support/Codes web page.  Please share this information with any staff that enter patron registration forms or update patron records.

Three new Koha monthly reports

There are three new monthly reports. The first one is "Total Checkout by Shelving Location". This is the same as the other monthly circulation reports, just broken out by the shelving location instead. One thing to keep in mind, the shelving location is going to be coming from the shelving location of the item so items that came from other libraries may have shelving locations not in use at your library. This report has been run and posted for both January and February so you will have those numbers available from the start of the year.

The next two reports are both item count reports. One is "Item Count by Collection Code" and the other is "Item Count by Shelving Location". This will give you monthly item counts by both collection code and shelving location instead of just an annual count by collection code. Both item count reports have been posted with the item count from this morning. In the future, these reports will be run and posted with the rest of the monthly reports.

Video Games Collection Codes added to Koha

Collection Codes for Video Games are now available in Koha. There are three new codes:

• VGA (VIDEO GAMES AD)
• VGJ (VIDEO GAMES JU)
• VGY (VIDEO GAMES YA)

These new Collection Codes were approved by the ILS Committee at its March meeting. The Collection Codes can be used by any LINKcat library. 

For a full list of Collection Codes (as well as other codes), see the ILS Support Codes page at http://www.scls.info/ils/codes.

If you would like SCLS staff to batch change a group of items from an existing Collection Code to one of the new Video Games Codes, please fill out the Batch Change Collection Code/Shelving Location/Item Type Request form, available from the ILS Forms page.

News Summary (1/1/2018-2/28/2018)

News (in case you missed it!)

• 2/28/18 Updated instructions for Assigning PSTATs and the complete 2018 list of PSTATS for Wisconsin municipalities has been posted to the SCLS website.  Please read the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post for more information.
• 2/27/18 4,260 bibliographic records were added and/or updated in the database between 1/31/18 and 2/26/18.
• 2/27/18 28,812 items and 2,553 bibliographic records (with only withdrawn items attached) were deleted in the monthly batch deletion of withdrawn items.
• 2/20/18 A Linking Manual revision to the Sound Recordings section is now available. See the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post for more details.
• 2/16/18 Information and documentation about the ILS Evaluation process has been posted on the ILS Evaluation 2017-2018 page.
• 2/2/18 The monthly Koha reports for January 2018 can be found online.
• 2/2/18 The monthly LINKcat.info and LINKcat Mobile reports for January are posted.
• 1/31/18 1,408 bibliographic records with no items attached (that were created before 10/1/17) were deleted from the database.
• 1/30/18 6,180 bibliographic records were added and/or updated in the database between 12/20/17 and 1/29/18.
• 1/30/18 37,584 items and 3,127 bibliographic records (with only withdrawn items attached) were deleted in the monthly batch deletion of withdrawn items.
• 1/24/18 The minutes from the January CMC Meeting are available online.
• 1/24/18 The minutes from the Janaury CSC Meeting are available online.
• 1/17/18 The 2017 annual statistics report for the Syndetics Solutions LINKcat enhanced content is posted.
• 1/17/18 The 2017 annual statistics report for the LibraryThing for Libraries LINKcat enhanced content is posted.
• 1/16/18 PSTAT changes for 2018: This month, SCLS staff will be replacing existing, generic System-based PSTATs with more granular county or municipality-based PSTAT codes and descriptions for all of Wisconsin. The primary reason for doing this is to provide granular information to adjacent counties during the Adjacent County reimbursement process. The other is to remove system-based codes and replace them with County-based codes.  Please read the full detail in the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post.
• 1/2/18 The monthly Koha reports for December 2017 can be found online.
• 1/2/18 The monthly LINKcat.info and LINKcat Mobile reports for December are posted.