June 2004 System Circulation Heads Meeting Minutes

Absent: Nancy Fletcher (PI); Stephanie Ralph (LEG); Casandra Fitzherbert (USM); Dale Kuczinski (LAC); Barbara Higgins (BPL)

I. Janet Brackett (FAR) called the meeting to order.

II. Minutes from the May 25, 2004 accepted with requested changes to items IV and X to be made by Laura. (Done and posted 6/23/04 LG).

a. At this time Laura told us that she had brought up at the most recent Directors’ Meeting the fact that governance of the Maine InfoNet system was a growing concern to this group. She told us that the Directors were going to make this more of a priority and hope that an interim solution can be found until they can get the money to hire a director for the system.

III. Borrowing libraries and overdues tabled.

IV. Student Extract Dates tabled.

V. Your library’s books on reserve at another campus tabled.

VI. Circ on the Fly: Greg (LAW) wanted to know who was using the Circ On the Fly (COF) functions in Millennium Circulation. He was told that the staff but not the students at Farmington and Fort Kent use this feature.

a. Greg’s issue was that students are not passworded to use the Millennium Circulation COF functions and as a result, the Law school was required to use the Telnet version of COF, where students don’t need a special password for COF, because there are many hours that the Law Library is open and there is no staff with passwords working those hours that can do the Millennium Circulation COF functions.

b. Greg asked if the group could offer any solutions for this problem.

i. Laura said that the list of new authorizations for Mil Silver did not have anything on it that would password students for COF. Laura said she would ask III what plans, if any, they have to add this to authorization to the list and if such an enhancement would not be available in the next year, then she would ask them for an enhancement to address this issue. (No plans to address, looking for workaround. LG 6/04)

ii. Stephanie (FK) suggested that we allow the students change the login in settings to one of the staff’s passwords and that only trusted students workers be allowed to do COF functions.

iii. Janet (FAR) suggested that we have a login for the students that are working when staff is not working that has the authorizations for COF functions. Greg liked this suggestion. Laura was going to look into what other functions are allowed with the COF authorizations and get back to Greg so that he can decide whether this is a feasible option. (Suggested adding several permissions to existing auth, Greg currently testing to see if works. 6/04,LG)

VII. Online Training: Laura told the group that she had only received two suggestions from the group regarding online training and how to break up Mil Circ so as to offer logical training modules. She thought that she may not have gotten some suggestions due to a glitch in her email. She told the group to send any suggestions directly to her and not to a list of the group.

a. Louise (MSL) suggested that a training session consist of showing us keystrokes we can use rather than the mouse. Laura said that macros were a good option for this but that they are hidden under the login manager permissions. She said that Millennium Silver will give staff permission to edit the macros.

VIII. Addition to Standards: Laura wanted to add a statement to 5c of the Standards that would include the fact that we want to generate statements during the summer for books that have not been returned. The group agreed to this. (Added 6/04 LG).

IX. Making Sure Non-requestable items are non-requestable in Maine InfoNet: Laura mentioned that a majority of the items in URSUS are items that the URSUS libraries do not want to have circulated in Maine InfoNet. For some reason, some of these materials will come up in Maine InfoNet as being able to circulate.
a. Laura said that she had a fix for this from Ohio Link that she was going to test in mid-July in hopes of cutting down the number of hold cancellations for InfoNet.
b. Laura said that the fix was not as complicated as she initially thought it was going to be and FAR, FK, LAW and MSL said that they would be interested in learning what the fix was once tested so that they could implement it in their libraries.
c. Laura indicated that the block in the fix needed to be by item type but that the block employed by URSUS is by item location. The fix is a combination of the two blocks.

X. Determiner Table: Laura mention that Bangor Public had notice some strange things happening as to the way some items in their collection was circulating, how patrons were being fined and how patrons were being billed. They decided that the Determiner Table was out of sync and need to be tweaked.
a. Laura said that Fogler, and FK also noticed that their determiner table hadn’t been tweaked in a while and wanted to have that done. She wanted to know if anyone else in the group was having similar problems and whether we wanted to tweak our Determiner table.
b. Laura said that if anyone was interested she would send the necessary documents for the libraries to review and then she would work with us to fix the table as needed and make the necessary edits. Stephanie (FK) said that once you read and understood the documents, the fix is not as scary as it sounds.
c. Laura indicated that the items Greg sent for this meeting would be added to the agenda for the next meeting.

XI. Phone Numbers on Paging Slips: This was moved up in the agenda as it was a hold over from our last meet me call. It was noticed that some of the paging slips come with phone numbers and some do not. There is a toggle switch in the system that turns this feature on to print the phone numbers. The default now is set to not print the phone numbers. Laura was to call III and see if the default can be changed on their end to allow phone numbers to be printed. (Update, III says setting the default now is not possible, but in release Silver, the Circ module will remember the settings the user chose from the last time, in effect setting the telephone number default. 6/04, LG).

XII. Review Millennium Silver Enhancements: Laura mentioned that we were running short on time and that we could review the Silver enhancements on the library support page.

XIII. InfoNet Lost and Billed Book Policy: This item is going to be taken off the agenda in hopes of dealing with this issue when there is governance in place for the Maine InfoNet system.

XIV. Turn on System option to display hold notes: This was suggested by Stephanie (FK). Laura told us that this is a system option and that if it is turned on it is turned on for every library in the system. Laura suggested that it be turned on and we test it to see if we like it and address any problems we have with it in a month. (Turned on 5/04 LG).

XV. Checking in Requestor Items when Received: Louise (MSL) said that she was checking in the items when she gets them because this allows the patrons to check their records to see that the material has arrived. She wanted to know who else was doing this and what the advantages and disadvantages are of doing it this way.

a. It was determined that there was some inconsistency amongst the libraries in how this was being handled. Laura with the help of FAR, FK and MSL were going to test this out and see what happens.

XVI. Other: Stephanie (FK) brought up that she tried to recall a Maine InfoNet item and couldn’t do it in Millennium or in Telnet. She wanted to know if anyone else has had a problem doing this too. She eventually emailed the patron to get the book back.

a. Laura said that the recall needs to come from the library the material was borrowed from.

b. Stephanie said that when she looked at the records the Maine InfoNet record had one due date and the Patron Record had a different due date. Laura said that it sounded like there was some mix up in the loan rules which would effect when and if an item could be recalled.

c. Another issue was brought up by Janet (UMA). She wanted to know if the other libraries would have an issue with loan books to out of state patrons involved in the distance education programs. Stephanie (FK) wanted to know how many students were enrolled in those programs and Janet wasn’t sure of that number. Laura suggested that Janet bring this to the Susan’s attention so that she could bring this up at a directors meeting as she thought that they would be the ultimate decision makers on this issue. She also suggested that we think about the pros and cons of this so that when our directors came to us on this issue we would be ready to discuss it with them. (Put on agenda for August Director’s meeting, 6/04 LG).

XVII. Meeting Adjourned: At this point the meeting was ended. The group was polled as to who would be available for the July meeting and it appeared that most of the group would be there. The next meeting was scheduled for July 15, 2004, from 9am-10am. It was also stated that our regular meetings would be the third Thursday of every month.