LINKcat News

News Summary (3/1/2018-5/31/2018)

News (in case you missed it!)

• 5/23/18  The minutes from the May 16th PAC Meeting are available online.
• 5/23/18 6,880 bibliographic records were added and/or updated in the database between 4/3/18 and 5/22/18.
• 5/23/18 19,712 items and 2,117 bibliographic records (with only withdrawn items attached) were deleted in the monthly batch deletion of withdrawn items.
• 5/22/18  The minutes from the May 8th CSC Meeting are available online.
• 5/21/18  The Mid-Year Serials Clones 2018 Memo is available online.
• 5/16/18 The minutes from the May 9th CMS Meeting are available online.
• 5/10/18 At the Tuesday, May 8, 2018 Circulation Services Subcommittee meeting, members recommended and approved text changes most of the notice templates we use.  Please read the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post for details.
• 5/7/18 A Linking Manual revision to the Books section is now available. See the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post for more details.
• 5/4/18 The monthly LINKcat.info and LINKcat Mobile reports for April are posted.
• 5/3/18 Older Don't Miss Lists will be removed on an annual basis (keeping two years plus the current year). See the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post for more details.
• 5/2/18 The monthly Koha reports for April 2018 can be found online.
• 4/27/18 841 bibliographic records with no items attached (that were created before 1/1/18) were deleted from the database.
• 4/27/18 47,996 items and 4,752 bibliographic records (with only withdrawn items attached) were deleted in the monthly batch deletion of withdrawn items (includes both March and April).
• 4/25/18 A Circulation Overview Workshop has been scheduled for June 7th from 1 - 4 pm at the Lodi Woman's Club Public Library.  Register
• 4/13/18 The minutes from the April 2018 ILS Committee Meeting are available online.
• 4/13/18 There is a full Cataloging Moratorium this weekend, April 14 and 15. See the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post for details.
• 4/5/18 Three new collection codes for Bilingual Picture Books and Board Books are now available in Koha: PBJFIBI, PBJNFBI, PBJBBBI. See the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post for more details.
• 3/28/18 A list of recommended uniform Highway designations and Road abbreviations has been posted on the Codes web page.  Please read the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post for more details.
• 3/27/18 The minutes from the March 21st PACC Meeting are available online.
• 3/26/18 The minutes from the March 13th CSC Meeting are available online.
• 3/21/18 The minutes from the March 14th CMC Meeting are available online.
• 3/14/18 Three new collection codes for Video Games are now available in Koha: VGA, VGJ, and VGY. See the LINK 2.0 Koha blog post for more details.
  
  

Reminder: Policy regarding Adult Staff privileges and use of Internal Patron Category

I was recently asked to remind library staff to follow a particular SCLS ILS policy.  Amy and I review policies at the New Director ILS Orientations that we provide,  but we don't have a regular forum to review and discuss policies with all library staff.  So every month or so I'll try to get a "Reminder" blog posted that will address a particular policy.

This month I will remind you all about the SCLS ILS policy "Adult Staff [ADS] privileges and use of Internal [INT] patron category".  I

The best way to summarize this policy is the third paragraph which reads:

"All employees of SCLS ILS libraries who have an ADS Patron Category for their personal record are expected to abide by the parameters set for it. Employees of these libraries should not use an Internal patron record to place personal holds or check out items for personal use. If an employee uses his/her staff privileges to provide special treatment for himself or herself, family, or friends that wouldn't be allowed for other patrons, it will be regarded as an abuse of the privilege."

This is also true of library staff that have a patron category of AD, SR or JU in their personal patron record.  The parameters that the policy is referring to are the Maximum number of holds, Total Checkouts and other parameters specific to these patron categories.  The parameters for all Patron Categories are posted in the Circulation Manual, Section X, Circulation Codes and can be easily accessed by going to the ILS Support/Codes web page and clicking on the Patron Categories hyperlink  

Please read the entire policy as it also contains examples of what constitutes special treatment.  

Thank you for your attention. 

 

Text changes to notice templates

At the Tuesday, May 8, 2018 Circulation Services Subcommittee meeting, members recommended and approved the following text changes to the following notice templates:

Notice of Unresolved Charges aka Billing notices :

There are two templates; one for libraries that are contracted with UMS and one for libraries that are not.  The text change was to add this phrase to the paragraph in both notices: "Returning lost materials may reduce your charges.

 

Any notice templates that might be delivered via email:

In order to reduce the number of responses that were returned to and lost in bounced email accounts, these sentences were added to notice templates that are delivered via email  "If you received this notice via email, it was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming mail. Please Do Not Reply to this message but contact your local library directly."

Linking Manual revision to Books section now available

We have posted a revision to Section V of the Linking Manual, which deals with Books. The revised section is available at https://www.scls.info/sites/www.scls.info/files/sv-books.pdf.

With this revision, the Books Searching and Matching information and the BSE information are all in one section. Previously, the Searching and Matching information was included in Section III of the Linking Manual. Section III has now been removed, because the searching and matching information has been distributed among the format-specific sections.

Older Don't Miss Lists to be removed annually

At its March meeting, the PAC Subcommittee made some changes regarding how long older Don't Miss Lists are kept. Going forward, monthly Don't Miss Lists will be kept for two years, plus the current year. This means that currently we have monthly archives of the Don't Miss Lists from 2016-present. Also, the following out-of-date and little-used lists have been removed: Fiction Best Sellers (2009-1881), Oprah's Book Club (2003-2011), Oprah's Book Club, Through April 2002, and AFI's 100 Years 100 Movies 10 top 10 (from 2008). The PAC Subcommittee will continue to review statistics and make adjustments to the Don't Miss Lists as necessary.