LINKcat News

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:

Batch delete of Withdrawn items on 2/6

Items that have a status of Withdrawn will be deleted on Monday, Feb. 6. If you have items that you want deleted that do not have a Withdrawn status, then you must change the status by the end of the day on Feb. 5 in order to include them in the batch delete. On the flip side, if you have items with a Withdrawn status that you do not want deleted, then you must remove the Withdrawn status by Feb. 5. A report of all items with a Withdrawn status (as of today, 2/1/12) is posted on the Reports page.

If the last item on a bib is deleted and there are holds on the bib, then the holds will be canceled. Also, if the last item on the bib record is deleted, then the bib record will be deleted as well. Checked out items will be excluded from the batch delete.

Going forward, we will be doing a batch delete of Withdrawn items every month, on the last Friday of the month. We will no longer be running a report of Withdrawn items; instead, we will run a report of deleted items shortly after the monthly batch delete date. It is important that only items intended for deletion are marked Withdrawn. The Withdrawn status should not be used for any other reason than to delete items from the catalog.

Batch delete of Withdrawn items on 12/22

Items that have a status of Withdrawn will be deleted on Thursday, Dec. 22. If you have items to be deleted that do not have a Withdrawn status, then you must change the status by the end of the day on Wednesday, Dec. 21 in order to include them in the batch deletion.

A report of all items with a Withdrawn status (as of today, 12/16/11) is posted on the Reports page. The report is an Excel spreadsheet with three tabs. The first tab is ACL-MID (excluding MAD), the second tab is MOO-WYO, and the third tab is MAD. Also, please note that there are a few items included on this report that are checked out (the due date is listed in the last column, if the column is blank that means the item is not checked out). That means they have a Withdrawn status and are checked out to a patron. Checked out items will be excluded from the batch delete, but you might want to investigate these items because Withdrawn items should not be checked out.

If the last item on a bib is deleted and there are holds on the bib, then the holds will be canceled. Also, if the last item on the bib record is deleted, then the bib record will be deleted as well.

This will be the last batch deletion of Withdrawn items in 2011. For 2012, we plan to do a monthly deletion of Withdrawn items. We will notify you of the monthly dates when we have that information.

Batch change request forms available

Forms for requesting batch changes to items are now available on the Forms page of the ILS web site. There are two forms dealing with batch changes to items:

• Batch Change Collection Codes/Shelving Locations/Item Types
• Batch Change Status

Please use these two forms for all batch change item requests.

 

FAQ updates: Part 4

Please take a look at these temporary workarounds for features that aren't working correctly right now:

• How do I do a Direct Check Out to non-ILS SCLS libraries?
• If a patron is picking up another patron's holds (with permission), how do I handle that checkout?
  

Other additions:

• Is there a way to set defaults in serials? We always circulate our current issue of our magazines.
• Why does a patron receive multiple emails if multiple holds arrive on a given day... even if the patron is set up to receive digests?
• How do I change an item’s status to “on display”?

 

Behind the scenes: making progress with serials

Kerri here.  Joanna mentioned this in our Monday morning meeting, and I was a little amazed by the numbers.  They are doing work on 1000+ titles and were excited to finally be past the halfway mark.  Here's a peek...

There are over 1000 active magazine titles.  There are more than 6000 active subscriptions to those titles.  Existing magazine subscriptions migrated from Dynix to Koha, but the publication patterns did not. 

What does this mean?
Each of these active magazine titles must have a periodical record entered into Koha.  This record tells you how often the magazine is published and when to expect the next one.  Starting before migration weekend, ILS staff updated as many of the popular weekly magazine titles as they could so they would be available after Go-Live and libraries would be able to link new issues when they arrived.  Since then, Joanna and Michelle have been working hard to get the rest entered.

What's good?

• Detailed records that are all entered with the same pattern help patrons (and library staff) search for magazine issues.
• New publication patterns for the most popular weekly magazines were already entered in Koha for Go-Live  (good because the next new issue of People could be linked right away when it arrived-- that's my "guilty pleasure" reading!)
• And.....today, the list of magazine title records already-entered is bigger than the list of title records yet-to-be-entered.  Yay!   (gotta celebrate the milestones)

If you are in charge of serials receiving at your library, you should have received a link to a document that lists which titles that are set up and which titles are waiting to be set up.  If you need this link re-sent to you, please contact Joanna (jmesser at scls.lib.wi.us).



Serials Copy Record Maintenance

We will be migrating the data in your serials copy records to Koha. Now is a good time to make sure that they are in good shape.  If you haven't done so already, complete the January/February tasks in the Serials Annual Cycle of Maintenance Activities*. To assist you with this, I will be generating the Union List of Serials Report* for each library over the next few days.  We will be migrating both inactive and active copy records.  The goal is to delete as many inactive copy records* as possible prior to the migration. The following are steps to be used with the report in hand to help make sure inactive copy records that no longer need to be retained will be deleted.

• Any inactive copy record that does not have holdings associated with it will be deleted by SCLS ILS staff without further action from you.
• Look for straggling or stray items associated with a copy record. Can they be deleted so that the copy record can be deleted?
• Look for stray Special Issues. These need to be deleted from the copy record.
• Do you have holdings that go beyond your library's retention policy? Is it time to delete them?
• If you have a lapsed or cancelled subscription that is still Active, mark the copy record inactive* and mark any predicted issues you will not receive as "Not Available".

You may wish to take a look at the copy records (both active and inactive) that you will be retaining because they have holdings attached or represent a subscription with no holdings such as newspapers.  

• Check that the Collection Codes are correct on all copies for the same title.
• Check that Public Notes (if any) are accurate and appear on all copies for the same title.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this report or any of these procedures.

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