SRG

February 11, 2009

Meeting Minutes

Attendees: Brenda Muhlbaier (GCLS), Judy Ballard (GCL/MHB), Carol Baughman (GCL/EAS), Kathy Capobianco (WDL), Carolyn Green (GCL/LGB), Flo Rosenberg (GCL/MHB), Carol Wolf (GCL/GLA), Pat Woodruff (GCL/GRE), Bunny Jacobsen (DPL), Jean McGowan (DPL), Marge Dombrosky (GCL/SWE), Debra Rosner (HEG), Jacki Moore (NEW), Ann Kohn (GCIT), Karen Shiles (GCLS), Ralph Bingham (GCLS), Margaret Ware (MCC)

While everyone was reading over the minutes, we took turns introducing ourselves. No corrections were made to the minutes.

Karen wanted to remind everyone about Margaret Heggan’s patrons being required to use a PIN when accessing iBistro (OPAC) either from inside Heggan or from home. This causes a problem when their patron visits another LOGIN library and wants to place a hold or access their account in iBistro. Sirsi is not able to recognize that other libraries do not require a PIN; so even though the PIN field does not show, Sirsi is requiring the patron’s PIN to access their account. The only work-around for this is to either assist the patron in accessing the catalog through Heggan’s library link, or to place holds or access patron records ourselves through Workflows.

To access the catalog through Heggan’s library link, you can click on the ‘LOGIN Library Websites’ link at the top of the page and select ‘Margaret E Heggan Free Public Library’ and then select the catalog link from their library page. You can also go directly to the LOGIN page at: www.login-libraries.org and select the Heggan catalog link from the list.

If a Margaret Heggan patron comes to your library and can not remember their PIN, you can look the number up in their record by looking them up in the Modify User wizard and looking in the Privilege Tab. The PIN is listed on that page.

Marge discussed the transit report that is generated every Friday (‘transits from’ report). She checks her shelves for the items on this list every week and calls the library a transit item was being sent to for them to check their shelves and set to Missing, if it is their item. West Deptford stated that they do the same thing. Marge feels that not everyone is keeping up with transit items that have not arrived at their destinations, as the same items are coming up on her report for months at time.

Karen showed everyone the weekly report that is generated on Fridays. Kathy asked about an old set of instructions for transits she had that had been handed out a few years ago. It was agreed that we should all be keeping up with old In Transit items and copies of the instructions were made and passed out. A copy of the instructions will also be made available on the LOGIN blog.

It was brought to our attention that Woodbury does not use Claims Returned and does not want other LOGIN libraries using it on their items. Heggan does not want their items set to Claims Returned either. Please call them if a patron states they have returned an item belonging to them that is on their record.

Ralph shared the lending statistics that Bob Wetherall creates for the directors. The most relevant information is on the back of the page in the ‘Total LOGIN Activity’ section. It is interesting to note that, as a group, LOGIN has loaned over a million items amongst ourselves.

The column marked ‘Total Reciprocal Loans’ is of items each library borrowed from another LOGIN library. The next column is for items each library sent out to another LOGIN library. ‘Total LOGIN Loans’ is the combination of those two columns. If your library has a higher number in items borrowed, you are a ‘net borrower’; if your library has a higher number in items loaned, you are a ‘net lender’.

Carol noted that this information is useful for PR, when people ask why we belong to the consortium. We can point out how many additional items our patrons are able to access (if you are a net borrower), or how many items we own that are unique to the consortium (if you are a net lender). Even just pointing to the million items loaned is an impressive number. Carol felt we should be using this information to market ourselves now, rather than waiting until our funding is on the verge of being cut.

Comments:

Heggan staff discovered a potential problem when searching for items while in the check out screen. A staff person was checking items out to a patron, when the patron asked about a title. The staff person used the ‘item search’ gadget at the top of the checkout screen. Not even clicking on the button ‘check out’, but just selecting a record to look at, the item was checked out to the patron – even though the item was on GCIT’s shelf. Please remind your staff that it is best to use the ‘Item Search and Display’ wizard for looking up titles. Karen will look into the Properties for the search feature to see if she can make it more difficult to accidentally check out an item you do not have in your hand.

Ann asked about the possibility of LOGIN sharing the cost of group training on the Reports module. Karen stated that she had looked into the training for other modules. It is $300 dollars for a training session over the phone lines, and any large group would likely have difficulty with this method of training. In person training is more expensive.

Margaret asked about lost, damaged, never returned items; who is responsible for the cost of these items. For example, a patron at McCowan wants to pay for a lost Woodbury book. This has been discussed by the directors: the borrowing library must reimburse the owning library for the lost or damaged item. Margaret asked about items that are never returned; when do we call the owning library about the long overdue item. This issue has not been discussed by the directors.

[Paragraph above to be corrected in April 1, 2009 minutes.]

Deptford asked about what to do with patrons who have a card with a library and then move into another community. Are we allowed to modify the record, or do we create a new card and delete the old one? Pitman stated that they do not touch another library’s patron records and just issue a second card to the patron. Karen stated that we should try to never create a duplicate record for a patron. We can certainly change the library, profile, and any other relevant information in a patron record to match their new primary library. If you can get the old card away from the patron, you can issue them a new barcode.

West Deptford has seen the message ‘Inactive ID’ when looking up patron records and wondered what that is. Karen showed us the ‘User ID Manager’ that adds a gadget to add more than one barcode in a patron’s record. There is a column for Inactive ID, and Discard ID. She stated that Discard does not work as we would expect; the ID does not actually go away. You must select a primary ID if you issue more than one ID to a patron record. Karen will look into this feature more closely so we can discuss this further at the next meeting.

Judy asked about any word on Westville’s reopening. Karen did not have a date on when they will be reopening to the public. Monroe will be coming online next month, and Paulsboro is in the process of purchasing barcodes and barcoding their items.

The next meeting will be April 1^st at 9:30 at the Mullica Hill Branch.