YEEK! This week's blog is going to be all about technology, not Cappy Dick's area of expertise, but live and learn I guess, and this week its heavy on the learning. Of course we have a couple of days off for Thanksgiving to do the living part too and to give our addled brains a rest.
We have now officially be running the new Evergreen 2.3 for a week and hopefully most of the glitches are worked out. If you encounter anything strange do let me know so we can inform Lit if need be. Last week we discovered a few anomalies that were NOT supposed to be occuring and that Lit was unaware of, so we shouldn't be shy about reporting strangeness if need be.
Firstly, please take the time to look at MY ACCOUNT on our home page and familarize yourself with the various screens and options that are available to patrons. This will be helpful when you encounter questions about the new format.
If a patron reports that the MY ACCOUNT is not working, be sure they are NOT trying to access it from a bookmark to the OLD homepage or the old MY ACCOUNT page as these look similar but are now disabled. Recommend that they try to get in by typing in the library url instead and accessing it that way, and if that works they can bookmark the newer version.
Please also look over the new registration form in EG. You will quickly discover, if you haven't already that it is necessary to use a different format to put in the birthdate and expiration date then we have been previously using. There are examples by each, of the new correct format (and EG won't let you complete a registration with the old formate). For the expiration date, the easiest way is to click the correct date on the calendar, and then it will self-fill for you.
There is new User field on the registrations now which we do not fill in, but it is a good idea to encourage patrons to access it with MY ACCOUNT and to populate the pick up location with the branch of their choice. I believe that if they do not do this, the item will continue to show up at the home branch that we fill in when we do the registration but there is some speculation from higher ups that this may not necessarily be the case.
Richard is working on new procedures that will allow branches to share their CLAIMS RETURNED buckets with other branches so we can do system wide searches. When he has set it up he will be emailing all of us with instructions as well as putting it in the Green book.
UPDATE: As of Monday, 11/19/2012 Richard has published the changes in the Green book. Please take the time to read them and refer to them until you are familiar with this process.
Capitola has its own claims returned bucket and this is where we should be listing any items that a patron says they returned, that are still showing checked out to them. Please remember when you are marking an item claimed return to enter the return date within the loan period even if the patron says they returned it after the due date. (see item 2.4 in the Green Book: Marking items claimed returned and also Work Flows section 4)
If you check in an item that has a status of claims returned, please check our bucket and remove the item.
It will not remove automatically. If you are unsure how to do this, you can leave it on my desk with a note and I will take care of it.
Currently I am searching our claims returned bucket once a week but if any of you are lacking for something to do, please feel free to search it yourself.
Our claims returned bucket is found under cataloging/ manage copy buckets/ CAP_ClmRtn_month.
If you have any questions about how to access the bucket or do any of these steps please ask and I will do the best I can to walk you through the steps. We are all learning these procedures so no worries if you are not clear on this. Soon you will be an expert and then we will have another upgrade just to keep us all from getting stale.
If people wish to know donations the friends of the library accept, please direct them to the friends website
FSCPL.ORG where there is a handy button they can click that says DONATE. From there, if they click on Book Donations it spells out what the library will and will not accept. Explore this yourself as its a good idea
to be familiar with what kinds of donations we can accept at the service desk.
Patrons can also access the Friends page from the library home page. There is a Friends selection on the top of the home page.
Janis O'Driscoll is sending out a What's New once a week list of things happening in the system.
I am posting that on the clipboard behind the service desk, as well as any new procedures and Evergreen information that comes out, so feel free to flip through all those papers when things are slow. If you find something wildly out of date, don't hesitate to liberate it from the clipboard. I am trying to keep things current but I can use all the help I can get.
The theme for story hour this week is Families so look for those books at my desk and feel free to take or add items as per usual.
Ok, my fingers are tired and I suspect your brains are too, by now so I say, Happy Thanksgiving. Have a wonderful week and enjoy your time off!!
Cappy Dick
P.S. Welcome back, Barbara. You were missed by all!
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