CSC Meeting

March 10, 2015

Present: Jeff Kauffeld (MAD), Margie Navarre Saaf (MAD), Barbara Henderson (MID), Zach Ott (BAR), Gerri Hanson (MCF), Deb McCabe (STP), Pearl Mosier (SUN), Emily Harkins (WAU), Erica Kersten (PIN), Heidi Oliversen (SCLS), Recorder: Michelle Karls (SCLS).

  1. Call to order at 9:32 am.
  2. Introduction of guests/visitors. None.
  3. Changes/Additions to the Agenda. Heidi added an Action item, on behalf of MTH, for a proposed new Item Type. Erica proposed the Discussion item “Regular schedule to copy/save Messages on Check out screen. Erica proposed the Discussion item” Granular, Monthly Payment reports.” Pearl proposed the Discussion item “New release items being checked out before release date”.
  4. Requests to address the Committee. None.
  5. Approval of previous meeting minutes. There were a few typos that will be fixed. Michelle will re-post the revised minutes. The committee approved the minutes with these changes.
  6. Action Items.
  7. Proposed new Manual (local) invoice types: AV rental, book rental. (JK) Jeff K. proposedadding one or two “rental” types of Manual invoices. Would like to enter these charges on a patron’s record and record precisely what they are being charged for. Also, when/if patrons pay for these charges online, a charge for DVD or Book rental is more specific than “sundry”. And do we need more than one? Discussion. M. Navarre Saaf proposed adding one newmanual invoice type for “Rental Items” to the local invoice types. D. McCabe seconded. Vote: motion carried. Send as recommendation to ILS Committee meeting April 8, 2015.
  8. Proposed new ITYPE from MTH. MTH would like to add an ITYPE for Juvenile walk-ins. Their current 28 day Walk-in item types are 1.00 per day and they would only charge juvenile patron 20 cents per day. The committee agreed that this would be a good addition and also proposed add an additional juvenile walk-in items type with a loan period of 14 days. J. Kauffeld proposed the creation of two new item types “Book, Walk-in, Juvenile, 28 day loan [BKWIJ28]” and “Book, Walk-in, Juvenile, 14 day loan [BKWIJ24]”. D. McCabe seconded. Vote: motion carried. Send as recommendation to ILS Committee meeting April 8, 2015. If approved, an email will go out to all libraries stating that these nee items types would be created by copying each library’s existing Walk-in rules. Libraries that wanted to charge a different amount for the juvenile codes, than for the original (now Adult) codes would need to submit changes on the Circulation Issuing Rules form.
  1. Discussion Items.
  2. Ecommerce. There was a smallpoint release that fixed the display of the transaction library in the patron Account and Account History screens. Will be announcing the new LINKcat online payment launch date as April 1st. We created instructional handoutsfor Madison’s pilot program and they are ready to be sent out to the libraries. However, the workgroupnever finalized other possible PR materials. Would bookmarks be helpful? Yes. Heidi will send out a draft of possible text for the bookmark to CSC and Ecommerce Workgroup today. Please give Heidi feedback by Thursday afternoon, March 12th. Discussion: Staff should not handle patron cards for enter data when patrons are using this service; if patrons inquire tell them it is the rule for this type of online payment. If libraries have another option for accepting credit/debit card payments the rules may be different and may lead to some confusion.
  3. Reports: changes to webpage, report frequency, on-demand reports. At the last meeting, we discussed the upcoming changes. Cindy is working on modifying the Reports page to make it more user-friendly. She will be sending a mock-up to the Reports Committee for review. Cindy will also be sending out two report proposals to the Reports Committee for review.
  4. One family – many, many holds on single item. SUN staff noticedthat one family had 12 holds, for a variety of family members, numerically in order and placed within seconds of each other. Some were duplicates for individuals in the family. They would have had the item for 24 weeks. SUN staff havecancelled the duplicate holds. No other libraries own a copy. It is possible that the patrons know how to place multiple holds by clicking the mouse several times while placing the holds but these holds aren’t just for one patron, there is one set of holds for each family member and then another set of holds for each member. How can the patrons do this? Is it possible that another library is doing this for the patrons? After discussion i was agreed that SUN will first talk to the library director at the pickup location. Then if this practice seems to continue she can escalate the issue appropriately.
  5. Limits onLost/Damaged Items under $20. MAD wanted to get committee feedback. Madison has long had an internal procedure to debar a patron if they a charge for a Lost, Damaged or Part Missing Madison item; even if the amount in under 20.00 and even if the patron checked out the items at a non-Madison library. Debarring stops the patron from checking out and placing holds. Because of some feedback, Madison is reviewing this procedure, at least with patrons from other libraries, and would like feedback from the other committee members. Discussion. Some libraries manually block their patrons from checking out at an amount lower than the circ and hold thresholds but do not debar those records. WAU staff require patrons to pay any Damaged charges before checking out , but they haven’t debarred patrons. Other committee members said their practice was similar at their libraries. Do we want to propose a procedure/policy to all libraries that require staff from all libraries to get payment for Lost, Damaged and Part Missing charges before allowing checkout? Regardless of where the charge was generated and if the charge is under 20.00 and the patron is not automatically blocked? This would require staff training. Perhaps a progressive procedure: Staff could start with putting a note in the patron’s record, requiring that payment be made before being allowed to check out. If that is ignored, talk to the library director. If that is ignored, debar the patron? Something like that? put a note on the patron record. If it keeps happening, talk to the library about debarring. We do have very old development requests to add aLost block and a Parts Missing block to the Checkout screen. Margie will review theircurrent policy and look towards modifying it based on the discussion today.
  6. Reports from February CIRC/REPORTS User Group Meeting.Issues/Topics from the meeting: If you set your PC to accept automatic updates from Firefox, that may be why libraries continue to get the pop-up stating that your “page has expired”. Turn OFF the automatic updates from Firefox and see if you still get the message. If yes, call the Help Desk. Holds Queue report discussion. Midwest tape has a release date rule that requires librariesto wait one month after the new release date to start circulating new movies. Seems to be only a Universal Studios restriction. Cindy’s Basic Excel training session was so popular that we many include it after all CIRC User group meeting this spring and summer. Then we can do the Intermediate this fall and winter.
  7. New items being checked out before release date. SUN and MID have noticed that new books come in to fill holds prior to the release date. It is a LINKcat policy to not send items out to fill a hold or check out to staff or patrons and items that have a strict release/street date. The policy is posted on the ILS Support/Policies/Cataloging Policies Publication Date (Street release). Please provide us with item and library information; ILS staff will send out a reminder email and blog post with a link to the policy.
  8. Copying the Massages from the patron’s Checkout screen to their Patron Block History tab. Can we set this up to do on a regular basis? Very nice to be able to clear most of these messages from the checkout screen. We do have a Development project that will provide two links next to Messages on the Checkout screen, the (existing) Delete and a new History (or something like). That way individual staff will be able to clean-up messages while they are there in a record or after the problem/issue is resolved. Until then, we will continue to ask LibLime to copy these Messages from the Checkout screen to the Patron Block History. The committee thought that quarterly would be a good plan; Heidi will ask for quarterly schedule.
  9. Detailed payments report: Cindy has attempted to create a very granular Payment report but it has been taking an enormous amount of time to generate, and sometimes times out. At this point the script is trying to extract too much data so Cindy will send the report to the Reports Committee to review the fields and see if we can reduce the information on the report so as to speed things up.
  10. Next meeting – May 12th, 9:30 am at SCLS-Headquarters.