New Meeting Room Procedures

Hi everyone,

Just a heads up.

We have a meeting room calendar on the blog. We will no longer be printing out daily calendars to put in the binder. The only paper going in the binder is the Room Reservation form.

Staff in charge of programs will have to keep updating the calendar with any programs they will have. There is a blank template that may be changed if the program will be recurring. At the top of the template it tells you what you need to add for a patron which includes time, name of group, name of person, phone number, if a room reservation form is needed and staff initial and date. The reservations are color coded so take a look and try to keep it the same. You are able to edit the form as long as you are logged in under oak or acres staff names.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Pedro Fonseca

ILL is Back

Customers are able to place ILL items on hold as they have done in the past. The system is back up and running.

Pedro

SMM Computers

Good day Team,

Some issues have been identified with Smart Money. According to the Financial Services Department, Jeff Robin is working on the problem. The expectation is that most of the issues that have been identified have been fixed; however, some updating will be done tonight.

We are requesting that you leave your computers that have Smart Money on them on after you have exited Smart Money so that Jeff can update them tonight.

Please let me know if you have any questions or need more information.

Take care.

Theodora.

Sirsi Update

From Syma:

We’ve just completed our 2^nd week on Symphony and many of our initial problems have smoothed out. 

·        Customer concerns and confusion about accessing their accounts online have declined. 

·        Some customers are still upset about the change in how the system renews items and we appreciate your efforts to explain how the new system works. 

·        We continue to work on database clean-up issues, particularly related to uncataloged paperbacks and periodicals. 

·        We successfully transmitted two small orders to Baker & Taylor and hope to have new title orders appear in the catalog and new materials start to arrive by the beginning of August.

·        The Enterprise catalog software is scheduled for an upgrade on Monday night that should solve the problem for customers trying to place holds on a particular volume of a series. 

·        We are working on removing the personal customer information that has been printing on the receipts.

·        Felicia Brisco sent out detailed instructions on how to place circulating items in “discard” or “repair” status.  Please be sure all staff are familiar with these procedures.  There is a slight difference in dealing with reference materials and Felicia will be getting that out to you next week.

·        Felicia will be sending detailed instructions for Item On the Fly procedures.  This was covered in training but we realize that written procedures will be useful to everyone. 

·        Final testing is going on for Interlibrary Loan so we hope that will be live sometime next week.

Enterprise Catalog Features:

·        We have tried to make the language in Enterprise a bit more customer friendly.  For example:

·        In Transit = Being Transferred Between Libraries

·        On Hold = On Hold for Someone

If you have suggestions to improve other terminology, let me know.  It may not always be possible but we can try.

·        When an item is checked out to “Discard” or in another lost/missing type of status, it is automatically shadowed (suppressed) in the catalog so customers do not constantly see them.

·        The new titles lists are generated automatically and actually update daily (while we are still in start up, don’t expect to see much change).  Because of this automatic updating, they are not sorted by author or title.  Once you have pulled them up, you can change the sort.

We will be posting a revised version of the hold wrapper to the Intranet.  It is an improvement from the current version but it is still not as good as what we had in Millennium.  This is on our enhancement request to Sirsi but, it is not likely to happen soon. 

Let me know what concerns and issues you are facing and continue to contact the IT Helpdesk for assistance.  Thank you for your hard work every day.

Pedro

Symphony Running Slow

Symphony is running very slowly today.  We believe this is due to the fact that data from other libraries (Pasadena, Bellaire, Pt. Neches, Pt. Arthur, and Nederland) is being loaded into the system.  We are checking with Sirsi to see if they can make some adjustments to improve response time.  Thank you for your patience.

Syma

PEDRO

Sirsi Procedures Update

I’ve got lots of procedural updates today so please read this email carefully and if you do not understand something, let me know.

On Shelf Holds (Paging) list:  Fred is working with IT to develop a report that you can download from the staff Intranet on a daily basis.  He hopes to have it in place by the end of the month.  In the meantime, if you are comfortable using the On Shelf Items wizard to retrieve your paging list, please feel free to do so.  However, Fred can email you a report on a daily basis with this same information.  Since we do not have email accounts for each Neighborhood Library, he needs an email address (or two) for each location to send the reports to.  If you would like to get these reports emailed to your location, please identify one or two individuals that these reports will go to.  Send that information in an email to Fred Schumacher with the Subject Line:  [your NL name] send holds report.

Clean Holds Shelf:  Items on the hold shelf have been extended through July 25 so these reports will not run until that date.  These reports will also be downloaded from the staff Intranet on a daily basis but until that solution is active, Fred will email them to the same person/s he sends the On Shelf Holds list to.

Felicia Brisco will be sending out detailed instructions on procedures using Workflows to discard items or put items on the “repair” shelf.  Look for that email Tuesday.

We have discovered that the set of barcodes sent to each location to use with the Google Docs spreadsheet to handle periodical check-ins while offline (and which you should continue to use until notified differently) did not migrate into Symphony properly.  We are working on a temporary solution and should have it out to you shortly.  In the interim, you can circulate them as an Item on the Fly.

I’d like to remind you that when you are checking in an item and you are notified that there is a hold on that item, if that item needs to another location for pick up, select “PLACE IN TRANSIT”.  Do not select “make hold available.”  If you select “make hold available,” the system automatically generates a message to the customer that their hold is ready for pick-up when it is actually still in transit to their pick up location.  This procedure is the same as we had in III Millennium; it’s only the way the screen looks and some of the words that have changed.

Lastly, please do not give out PINs to customers over the phone.  This is a security issue.  Provided we have their correct email address in their account, it is quite easy for them to go online and select “Forgot PIN?” which is visible when they click on “My Account.”  They will be asked to enter their library card number.  An email will then be sent to them with a link to re-set their PIN.  I’d suggest you try it yourself so you can better explain it to our customers.

We continue to work on finding a solution for the holds wrapper issue. 

It has been suggested that we create a blog where staff can share their experiences (good and bad) and maybe find solutions from other staff members.  Let me know what you think of that.  I believe we could set that up fairly quickly if there is interest.

Please continue to notify us of problems you find.  And thanks again for all you do.

This email has been approved by Meller Langford, Deputy Director of Customer Experience

Thanks,

Syma

Syma Zerkow

Chief of Library Materials Services

Houston Public Library

832-393-1484

Pedro

New Items Received

From Felicia Brisco 7/19/13:

This is to inform you that with the new SIRSI system you will notice a couple of changes in new items received. New items received will have one of two designations for Current Locations:

Items processed by vendors will have a Current Location designation of “INSHIPPING.”

Items processed by Inventory Control will have a Current Location designation of “INPROCESS.”

Please proceed to “DISCHARGE” (formerly known as “CHECKING IN”) new items as you normally do. Contact Inventory Control if you have questions.

Pedro