SRG Meeting Minutes

April 23, 2008

Attendees: Brenda Muhlbaier (GCLS/MHB), Jennifer J. Meister (MTPL), Anne Wodnick (GCLS/LGB), Laurie Cranston (WOD), Flo Rosenberg (GCLS/MHB), Judy Ballard (GCLS/MHB), Ralph Bingham (GCLS/MHB), Karen Shiles (GCLS/MHB), Ann Kohn (GCIT), Susan Mroz (FRA), Violet Valentin (Paulsboro), Carol Wolf (GCLS/GLA), Pat Woodruff (GCLS/GRE), Marge Dombrosky (GCLS/SWE), Sue Mounier (NEW), Anne Mathis (EAS), Bunny Jacobsen (DPL), Jean McGowan (DPL), Karen Boucher (WDL), Kathy Capobianco (WDL), Anne Zuber (WEN), Carol Lutner (PIT), Carol Atkinson (GCCL), Pat Hirsekorn (GCCL)

Karen opened the meeting by asking everyone to review the minutes from the last meeting. Brenda asked if everyone could put their email address on the sign up sheet, so she would know who to send copies of the minutes to, particularly for the new members of LOGIN.

Karen announced that the Symphony upgrade had gone smoothly – the best one she’s overseen yet. Some of the enhancements are: a new help key function that now lists upgrades for Symphony. Karen said that she has not implemented all of the enhancements; if anyone sees an enhancement they would like to use, let her know.

A question was asked about a new feature for renewals – ‘Seen’ vs. ‘Unseen’. The default is ‘Seen’ but does not default for ‘Renew’. Should ‘Seen’ be the default? Karen stated that the idea behind using ‘Seen’ is to track how often patrons are renewing items they don’t have with them. It does not matter what we use if we are not tracking that. Karen showed us how to uncheck the ‘Select all seen’ if we do not want to have that as a default.

MaiLit – GCLS will be implementing this service soon. Patrons may request to have their holds mailed to them free of charge, rather than come to the library to pick them up. We will only mail materials owned by GCLS, although we will allow patrons from any library in Gloucester County to use the service. Patrons will then have the option to pay postage to mail the material back, or drop them off at any LOGIN library. Karen warned us that she may have to change item location or item type for these materials to enable the service to work. GCLS will be able to start this service soon, since Symphony has a module for mailing holds.

There has also been a language upgrade. You can change a patron’s ‘native language’ in their record and have overdue notices printed in that language. However, we are not set up for multiple languages printing for overdue notices.

Ralph demonstrated accessing the LOGIN blog (http://blog.gcls.org/login/). He has been adding the training guides for Symphony, so that they will always be available. He will add the Acquisitions and Outreach training guides when they are available. He recommended anyone running reports to review the Reports training guide. The past minutes from SRG and the LOGIN Director’s meetings are all posted on the blog – going back from the very first meeting. He did warn us that the training guides are generic and do not have procedures that we have been using. We can adjust for our specific guidelines. Anne W. asked about a ‘Best Practices’ page, perhaps culled from past meeting minutes. We don’t have one, Anne will work on compiling one for Ralph to add to the blog. Brenda asked if a wiki would work for something like this. Ralph had considered it, but is not sure how to set one up, and does not have the time to maintain one. For those not familiar with what wikis are here is a brief description:

“The largest and most famous wiki, of course, is Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia, where thousands of contributors have compiled a global encyclopedia with more than 2 million English language articles (and even more than that number in other languages). Most other encyclopedias publish articles written and vetted by experts; Wikipedia entries are created and edited by anyone volunteering the time and effort. Accounts aren’t even required! Readers add information, correct typographical and grammatical errors, and contribute to a worldwide public-review process that is much faster than traditional peer-reviewed documents.” (Source: http://librarystream.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/learn-more-wikis/)

West Deptford asked about getting their overdue notices to print in the correct format. Ralph demonstrated setting up printing formats in Symphony. Go into Reports, and select the report you want to print. Then select ‘View’ and check the ‘Format Page’ option. You can also look at this in the Report Session wizard. GCL uses a ½ inch margin all around the document for printing their overdues. Ralph has found the best settings are 60-length (MSWord) or 68-length (WordPad), 80-width, 0-top, and 0-bottom. You may have to reset your margins in Page Setup (Word settings). Anyone with questions may call Ralph for assistance.

Marge asked if we had approved the minutes from the last meeting. We hadn’t, so Ralph motioned to accept the minutes and Marge seconded.

Laurie asked about the ‘Release Hold’ feature. It does not seem to come up anymore, unless it’s an ‘In Transit Hold’. It also does not work properly. They used to be able to release a hold from an item that’s not supposed to be available for holds, but someone forgot to catalog correctly. Now they have to check the item out, fix the cataloging, and then check back in to cancel the hold.

Wenonah discovered an interesting problem when they started seeing holds coming up for ‘Wenonah Public Library’. They did not know who the item was for, until a staff member recognized a title that a particular patron wanted. They asked her and then asked precisely how she was placing her holds. The patron was googling ‘Wenonah Public Library’ and the first website to come up was one for ‘librarytechnology.org’. They were linking to the catalog using an incorrect URL, and the holds were coming up for the library itself. Ralph was able to get the link fixed and checked for each of the GCLS libraries and had theirs fixed as well. He will look into the other LOGIN libraries URL links.

Woodbury asked if anyone is still using the old ‘C’ client. Apparently, although it still opens and seems to work for circulation purposes, they discovered a problem when in cataloging. They can not select correct item types for their holdings – they’re just not available to select. No one else seems to still be using the ‘C’ client and had not run into this difficulty.

West Deptford announced that they are no longer offering free cards to non West Deptford residents who work in the township. They will honor old cards, but will not be renewing them. Gloucester County Library is now offering free temporary cards to residents of the communities joining LOGIN, but they are not publicizing it. If someone asks about a card, they will give them one with a shortened expiration date.

The next meeting will be July 9^th at 9:30 at the Mullica Hill Branch Library.