LINKcat News

Resuming the Long in Transit report

In the spring of 2020 ILS staff conferred with the Circulation Services Subcommittee and we agreed that due to the pandemic and the unknown length of individual library closures, we would postpone running and posting the Long In Transit report.  

 

Since all of the LINKcat libraries are now open to some extent ILS staff have run and reviewed the current report  and we  think that that increasing the end date of the report to 2 months would be enough to cover possible multiple quarantine periods as well as taking into account reduced delivery periods and staffing at libraries.

 

However, when we ran the report, we saw that there are 1577 entries put into transit between 1/3/2018 and 2/28/2020.  We would like to give the libraries the opportunity to clean up these older entries before we start running the report on a regular basis.  

 

Today Michelle ran and posted a Long in Transit report for any items that were put into transit prior to 3/1/2020.

 

Libraries will have 3 weeks to clean-up the older entries before we run the next report.  The generic Long In Transit workflow is located  in the Circulation Manual, Section XII Circulation and Statistical Reports .  If you have a local library workflow for your staff, please use that.

 

Michelle will run and post the next Long in Transit report on Sept. 8, including all entries placed into transit prior to 6/1/2020.  If your library was not able to clean-up the older records they will remain on the report.

 

The next report after that will be run and posted on Sept. 22, entries prior to 7/24/2020.

 

Then we are back to the regular report run, on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month.  But instead of the previous parameters of 2 weeks the report will include entries for the 2 months prior to the date the report was run.

Curbside Pickup workflow and new report to assist in filling Local Holds

The Pandemic Support for ILS webpage has been updated to provide new curbside workflow information about check-ins, filling local holds and checkouts.

A new report, Local Holds for Curbside, has been added to the list of On Demand reports in Bibliovation. This report may be run after you’ve filled the local holds from your regular Holds Queue report. It will list active holds for pickup at your library where your library owns an available copy of the item, but may have been already trapped for a hold at another library on your Holds Queue Report. You can fill more holds at your library with local materials while delivery is running a reduced schedule.

For more information about the report and a link to the report workflow, click on the Local Holds for Curbside link on the main Reports page. https://www.scls.info/ils/reports

Replacement for Crystal Reports

We will be using Bibliovation’s built in reports instead of Crystal Reports for on demand reports. The reports module was updated with Bibliovation and now we can use it to recreate the reports that had only been possible through Crystal Reports in Koha. This is good timing as our Crystal Reports server needed to be upgraded and we would have had to buy an updated version of Crystal Reports as well, so we are saving money as well. 

The Reports link should now be showing on the main Bibliovation page.  If it isn’t showing on your page, please let us know.

 

There are some things that will be different in the reports. In general, you may need to do more formatting work with your report when you open it in Excel. Barcodes will need to be formatted and so might call number fields.  Depending on the report, you may also have to use Excel to create any subtotal columns that might have been in the old report. Other changes are listed in the documentation for the report.

 

Directions for running the reports can be found on the main page for the report. Click on the report name in the On Demand section of the main ILS Reports web page (https://www.scls.info/ils/reports). The directions include a section on making the formatting changes for the reports.  There is also a link to a Bibliovation Reports FAQ.  

2019 Change to Annual Batch Deletion reports

Twice a year, November and May,  we run cumulative reports of items that have certain problem item statuses, with a timestamp one year old or older,  that are eligible for batch deletion according to SCLS ILS procedure.  The batch deletion occurs each July.

This year, the Circulation Services Subcommittee recommended, and the ILS Committee approved a change to the reports.  As of May 2019, items with ALL problem item statuses will be eligible for annual batch deletion.

The following reports for the May 2019 ABD reports will be posted on the Reports page, under “Batch Deletion Reports”:

• ABD Damaged. Items with status of Damaged
• ABD Other . Items with status of AV Repair, Defect Reported, In Processing, Lost in Transit, Mending, Missing Inventory and Parts Missing.
• ABD Lost.  Items with status of Claims Returned, Lost, Missing and Trace.

We will send out another email with the regular ABD report information and links to updated documentation next month.

Thank you for your attention.

New monthly report - Unallocated credits

As of March 26, 2019 SCLS staff will be running and posting a new monthly report - Unallocated Credits.  Unallocated credits [UC] are credits on a patron's account that are generated when a Lost and Paid item is returned.  UC can also be generated when an overpayment is applied to a patron's account.  This report is scheduled to be run every fourth Tuesday of each month.

Explanations about and instructions for handling and resolving UC are located in the Circulation Manual, Section VII Fines and Financial transactions, Part F. Unallocated credits and Part L. DATABASE CLEAN-UP: Reviewing and cleaning-up Unallocated Credits.

If you have any questions please contact Heidi Oliversen via phone, email or submit a Help Desk Support ticket.

Changes to the report calendar

We’re going to be simplifying the reports calendar for some of the regularly scheduled reports. Starting in March, we will be running the weekly, bi-weekly and mid-month reports during the day on Tuesdays instead of spread throughout the week. All reports will be available by Wednesday morning. The reports that are being changed and their new days are:

• Purchase Alert: now run on Tuesdays
• Claims Returned: now run on 2nd Tuesday
• Problem Item reports: now run on 3rd Tuesday
  
  • Not for Loan
  • On Order > 6 Months
  • Other Item Statuses
• Fast Adds: now run on 3rd Tuesday

We’re not changing the frequency of the reports, just the day when they are run, if the day wasn’t already Tuesday. So reports run twice a month will still only be twice a month, they’ll just be run on a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday or a Thursday.

Annual Batch Deletion reminder

Just a quick reminder that the deadline for libraries to review the items on the May Annual Batch Deletion reports and either:

1. Decide they are going to keep the record and re-save the item record to update the timestamp OR
2. Delete the record from the database OR
3. Leave it and let the batch deletion process remove the record from the database

is July 20th.  Items on the May Annual Batch Deletion reports that have not had their timestamps updated will be marked withdrawn after July 20th and deleted with the regular monthly deletion of withdrawn items. 

Items with a status of Claims Returned, AV Repair, Defect Reported, Mending, In Processing and Parts Missing are not included in the Annual Batch Deletion.

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.

Updated instructions for Assigning PSTATs and the complete 2018 list of PSTATs for Wisconsin municipalities.

In January 2018 SCLS staff completed the multi-year project of updating and converting the PSTAT codes in Koha to county-based codes.  The project was initiated in 2015 when we added granular codes for adjacent counties that had high circulation numbers and progressed to additional counties each year.  Our intent was to eliminate the Generic System PSTATs and provide county-based codes for all counties in Wisconsin.  All counties adjacent to any SCLS county have PSTAT codes/descriptions down to the city, town or village level.  Counties that are not adjacent to SCLS counties have only a "COUNTY" WITH LIB, a "COUNTY" NO LIB and an ILL-COUNTY code/description.  We have also eliminated the X-ILL code and created individual ILL codes for all SCLS counties.

The updated instructions for Assigning PSTATs have been posted to the SCLS website and are linked from two locations: Member Resources & Services/Library Management/Day-to-Day Library Management/Assigning PSTATS and ILS Support/Codes/Patron Statistical Classes (PSTATs)

The 2018 list of PSTATs for Wisconsin municipalities is linked from within the instructions and also as a separate link on the CODES web page.  Feel free to download this spreadsheet to your PC and sort it according to your needs.

Please have all staff that enter library card registration forms and/or staff that update patron addresses read this updated information. When staff are populating or modifying the sort1 field (PSTAT) in a Koha patron record, all of the municipality choices  available to you will display in the pull-down list.  Do Not enter the actual codes, either from a printed list or from memory.  A large number of old codes are slated for deletion and will cause problems in the monthly PSTAT reports if used.

 

If you have any questions please contact Heidi Oliversen.

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.

The addition of all of these codes will make your pull-down list enormous. However, the sort1 field is a responsive field so you only need to start typing the name of the municipality to get to the section of the list that you want.

DO NOT ENTER CODES or NAMES OF MUNICIPALITIES DIRECTLY INTO THE sort1 FIELD IN THE PATRON RECORD. THIS IS A FREE-TEXT FIELD AND IF YOU OR YOUR STAFF ENTER OLD, INCORRECT CODES OR MISSSPELLED NAMES THE SYSTEM WILL ACCEPT THEM. USE THE PULL-DOWN MENU TO SELECT THE MOST SPECIFIC MUNICIPALITY; village, town, city or county; BY NAME.

AS ALWAYS – if you are uncertain about which municipality to select, choose the UNDETERMINED option and make sure you go back later and update the patron record with the most granular and correct PSTAT possible.

UPCOMING CHANGES:
For those counties that are not adjacent to SCLS Counties, we will be replacing the generic System codes and descriptions, like these examples
    O-IFLS Indianhead Federated Library System
    O-IFLS-I ILL-Indianhead Federated Library System

with county-based codes and descriptions for each County in that system.
    BA-LIB BARRON COUNTY-WITH LIBRARY
    BA-ILL ILL-BARRON COUNTY
    CH-NOLIB CHIPPEWA COUNTY-NO LIBRARY
    CH-ILL ILL-CHIPPEWA COUNTY
    CH-LIB CHIPPEWA COUNTY-WITH LIBRARY

For those counties that are adjacent to SCLS Counties, we will be replacing the System-based codes with County and Municipality-based codes and descriptions, like the following examples:

Old code            New code          Description/Municipality
O-ALS-ROCK       RO-AVON-T           Avon, town (Rock county examples)
O-ALS-BEL-C       RO-BEL-C             Beloit, city
O-ALS-ROCK       RO-BEL-T              Beloit, town
O-ALS-ROCK       RO-BRA-T             Bradford, town
O-ALS-ROCK       RO-CEN-T             Center, town
O-ALS-CLI-V       RO-CLI-T               Clinton, town
O-WVLS-CKNL    CL-BEA-T               Beaver, town (Clark County examples)
O-WVLS-CKNL    CL-BUT-T               Butler, town
O-WVLS-CKNL    CL-COL-T               Colby, town
O-WVLS-CKNL    CL-CUR-V               Curtiss, village
O-WVLS-CKNL    CL-DEW-T               Dewhurst, town
O-WVLS-CKNL    CL-EAT-T                Eaton, town

Municipalities that are in multiple counties or municipalities in different counties but with identical names will have a County identifier in the Description field ONLY if they are in an SCLS or adjacent county. For example:

The City of Wisconsin Dells is in 4 counties so multiple options will display in the list, like these examples
WISCONSIN DELLS, CITY (ADAMS)           A-WID-C
WISCONSIN DELLS, CITY (COLUMBIA)     C-WD-CC
WISCONSIN DELLS, CITY (SAUK)             S-WD-CS
WISCONSIN DELLS (JUNEAU)                 JU-WID-C

Similarly-named municipalities in non-adjacent counties will not have their own descriptions or codes so the County description/code will need to be used. Some examples are
Lafayette, town (Chippewa)             CH-NOLIB
Lafayette, town (Walworth)             WA-NOLIB
Lafayette, town (Monroe)                MO-NOLIB
Or
Lac La Belle, village (Jefferson)         JF-LLB-V
Lac La Belle, village (Waukesha)         WK-NOLIB

We are in the process of updating the entire list of municipalities in Wisconsin and will update the link to the PSTAT codes on both the Assigning PSTATs page and the ILS Support/Codes page.