Koha-US SIG - Circulation Special Interest Group, 5 Jul 2022

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From YouTube: Circulation Special Interest Group - 7/5/2022

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00:12:27 George Williams: https://pastebin.com/Fck0VugW
00:19:19 Daniel: HoldsNeedProcessingSIP
00:31:10 Jason (SEKLS): https://koha-us.org/events/conferences/kohacon22/

A

This is the quahog u.s circulation meeting and it is july 5th 2022 and welcome.

A

I'm everybody playing up the agenda, don't have much but figured definitely take questions. If anybody has any.

A

So, first off the top.

A

Has anybody done anything new with circulation.

A

So anything any new ways to check out check in um notices that they're working on or sending out to users. Anything like that.

B

I've been, uh I started poking at the logs the circles with reports, but I don't have anything to show, but I've been um I've been getting a lot of questions about that sort of thing. So I want to get like a because the the log viewer is okay, but I want to make it simpler um for people just run a report and figure out what happened with the book when it got checked in when I got checked out that sort of thing.

B

So that's been my current circulation project.

A

Well, have you ever seen? Have you found any logs with uh with purchase suggestions so like who submitted it? What time? Because we've had some purchase suggestions being submitted and then the I think the the account's been deleted just wanted to see if there was any way to track that back.

B

um I'm not sure I know that the version that we're coming up on has acquisitions logging, which is something that um was missing before so that might actually let us track that sort of stuff. With suggestions I haven't looked though,.

A

Yeah, I was briefly playing with it on our test server yesterday or last week. Sorry, but I didn't get to to play with it very much because our test server is updated to 2011. So.

C

The closest I've ever come to uh coming up with a good way to track suggestion. Stuff is to uh have the notices turned on.

C

With the suggestions, so when somebody submits a suggestion, there's a notice that goes with it and then you can uh and then the notice is you'll find those in the message queue.

A

Thanks, so take a look at that.

C

It means you have to make sure that you have messages set up so when somebody submits a suggestion, there's a message and all that stuff, and so that takes some setup. I've been messing around with some notices too. Specifically, on the one hand, I like the.

C

The circulation notice, for what is it hold.

C

uh What's the name of that notice whole reminder I like the idea, but the practical reality of it is that if somebody.

C

You can only really it's gonna ke. It sends the message every day um that the hold is over. So if you something comes in, it goes to the hold shelf and then when it hits that uh the hold reminder date is x number of days before the hold is set to expire.

C

uh Coha will start sending a message to that borrower. An email saying you have an item still waiting, um but it sends it over and over and over and over again it sends it every day until it's picked up or cancelled um and that I don't like I'd like you to send it once and then never again.

A

Yeah, it sounds a bit like spamming and I'm not quite there yet.

C

It would be great if we had people that were clearing the expired holes from their hold shelf every day, um but we don't have that so.

A

So with your trapped holes they can cancel. uh Users can cancel.

A

You're you're, muted george.

C

Sorry, I'm I'm eating lunch. That's why I'm keeping my camera off gotcha um the users can't cancel the hold, but the staff is supposed to go in every day and cancel the holds that are expired off of their hold shelf and they don't.

A

Right so so that's.

C

That's the issue.

A

Yeah, I was thinking if the the person doesn't want to hold anymore and they can't cancel it. Then they're just going to continue to yeah yeah, okay,.

C

Yeah then they're going to continue to get the message over and.

D

C

And over again, until somebody cancels it.

A

A

That's an interesting notice. Anybody else have anything else, anything new that they've been working on or tried out.

C

All of that being said, I having this notice this new notice um available. I went through and completely uh redid I I used.

C

I rewrote a whole bunch of css. I I completely made a new notice from the ground up with new css and uh all in template toolkit, and uh I made a really nice looking hold reminder notice.

C

That um that actually looks really cool.

C

Well, it's too big to put into the chat box.

C

Oh there, it goes yeah, it's too big to put in the chat box. It.

C

Doesn't like that, let me find a way to share with everybody.

C

C

There you go so that's the code, I'm using.

A

C

The in that link.

C

But I uh went through when I um I'm trying to create one set of css that'll work for the slips or the notices, whether it has a a notice class or a slip class.

C

That way, I don't have to keep uh that way. I can. I can move to a situation where I've just got one set of css for all the slips and all the notices, that's kind of the direction. I want to go with that. So there's the code for that.

A

Wow you're way too organized what are you a librarian or something.

C

But yeah I'd really be interested to know what other people are doing with their notices and slips and if anybody is doing anything, fancy or new um lizette was kind of the expert on template toolkit and I asked for her advice a couple of times, but now she's gone so.

C

But I have no idea what other people are doing there.

B

My current my current strategy for notices and slips is to ignore the fact that I have a problem because I have too much other stuff to work on, but I need to do the same thing I need to go through and redo. Everything in templates will get it so and teach myself tempo toolkit because I haven't even you know, I introduced the topic.

C

I had a similar issue to what I had with circulation rules, where I just I spent uh about uh three weeks just going through and get getting rid of all the duplicate entries, because the way that the notices and slips is supposed to work, um and that generally it does is you know the trigger, like the code for hold reminder, is hold underscore reminder, and so what coho is supposed to do? Is it's supposed to go in and look and say: okay?

C

Is there a hold reminder notice for the branch that's sending this notice and if there is, then it's going to send that one and if there isn't, then it's going to look and say? Is there a default? System-Wide hold underscore reminder notice and if, if there isn't one at the branch level, then it's going to go and look at the default system? All libraries won.

C

And the situation I had here is we had um we have uh three kind of groups of patrons um and there's an so. I've got odoo, odoo1 and odoo2 are the codes for our three major overdue notices, and what had happened is my predecessors had created a separate individual branch level notice for every branch out of 50 branches and so and the the thing, and then there was a default one for all libraries, and so coho would look first and would say: okay, atchison odu one.

C

It gets this notice for this type of patron and and so there were nine atchison overdue. One notices um over or nine atchison overdue notices, three different odoo1 three different odoo2 and three different odoo3, and they were all exactly the same as the all libraries one. So I went through and just ran a report to kind of identify which ones were duplicates and I spent about. uh It was about three weeks.

C

It took me to get rid of all of the unnecessary um overdue one overdue, two and overdue three messages um to try to to get me to a point where I could start making some changes that made sense, because, instead of having to over to go in and modify 50 times, 9 overdue notices, I I've been able to cut it down to where I've got. I only have like three or four branches. I think three right now that have customized overdue notices. So that's something where I really wish that we only have one library.

B

Yep I have the same problem. I just pulled out my notices. I've got 233, every library has three overdue notices, and most of them are using the same verbiage.

C

Yeah, if they're exactly the same, you can just make that text. The all libraries one and delete the the unneeded ones and they'll all use the same template anyway. Yep project.

B

A

Date, uh notices just they're kind of never ending they've always got something new going on with them, so anybody got anything else new that they're working on that they found.

A

Well, if nobody has anything else new, I was going to go into this one topic. I was asking around and looking for a solution for a problem I had and it was.

A

We changed the location of our amh so that we had users coming into the library, because they've been notified that their hold was available. However, the the whole the material was down in the basement where the new amh is, and we didn't, the staff hadn't been able to get down here to pick it up and put it on the whole shelf, and so I was looking for a delay note a way to delay our hold notifications and uh specifically through email.

A

Fortunately, our phone notification. It's like a day to go through so that wasn't a problem. It was the emails and a little bit with the people. Looking online and saying: hey, there's a hold available on my account. I'm gonna go grab it, so that was, you know, kind of like step two, but the email notification was the first one and I did a little poking and I found this feature or this system's preference and what it did was it.

A

It didn't trap any holds when the whole notification was sent or the item was trapped through a sip process and it appeared to work. But then.

A

What happened was is that the staff that were having trouble with it, they actually solved the whole issue using changing the staffing. But I just thought I'd share it with you and it's a pretty interesting little feature.

A

It's just fulfill or don't fulfill, and basically what it will do when I was playing with it was, is that the item would go through the amh it would be checked in, but the hole would not be trapped and the item would be set to the um exceptions bin, and so you know our staff would pick it up out of the extension bin and entrap the check the item into it again and the hole would trap that time.

A

So that was pretty cool and it was very helpful, but we didn't wound up, didn't need it, but I thought I'd share it with you and hopefully, if somebody's having the same exact problem, then they'll find this useful.

C

I think it's a really interesting feature. I never looked at it before because we don't have anybody that has uh an automated materials handler, so we don't have any checking going on through sip, but that's actually really. I can see there would be a good use for that.

A

Yeah I was really stoked when I found it and worked with bywater on it a bit, and then I got the the crushing news that they had fixed. It was just staffing reuniting staffing, so, but it was just something interesting. I found.

A

Does anybody else have any topics or anything that they they'd like to discuss with the circulation.

B

I have a question, I guess.

B

The I think I asked this as this admin about how people handle replies to text messages, um but I'm gonna ask it. Here too, uh it seems like a lot of places. Just don't accept replies to text messages we currently are because we're using the email, the text and then the patron replies back to the email, but we've been looking at twilio and from what I can tell it's not going to be a simple thing to accept replies back to twilio. So I just wondered: if other libraries do it that way too they just don't.

B

If you're using text messages, do you not accept replies or are you able to because you're a single location and that works for you, but.

A

Not for me, so we have text and very few people use it, but we don't accept any replies, so I imagine that's probably going to change if we start doing start using text more. We might want to look into that and I would say even if the the prime contact information that that's coming in 2011, if that starts being. If that allows for text, we might actually start getting more use of that and might have to actually start looking at that. So, if you hear anything, definitely let us know.

C

Our libraries, I don't think any of them- excuse me, respond to text messages, but I'm not 100 sure about that, because each library is kind of handling it differently.

C

When I started here, one of the things that most libraries had done before I even got here, which has been six years now and some still do- is they have their outgoing um messages? Say? Don't we we? Don't we don't we don't read our emails, we don't read our texts, you know if you want to contact us phone us which.

B

C

B

I think that's what they do. My my struggle is that I do have some libraries that are responding back and if we switch to twilio and cut it off, then we're like removing a service that some patients are expecting, um but I yeah I'm struggling with it there. You can set up like back-ends on twilio, for it to do things, but the problem is from what I can tell like. I can gather those replies in a google sheet, but it doesn't really tell me what they're replying to so.

B

I don't if they say please renew and that's all they say, and I don't know who they are or what they want renewed um and that all filters back to me, because we only have one number for the entire consortium.

B

So I'm thinking the viable option really is to just put a little thing on there or do an auto response that says messages aren't monitored. Call the library if you need help or something like that, um but I wanted to exhaust my options before I did that so, and I'm still not sure we're going to move to twilio, yet we're still using the email.

B

The sms on our live server, but I do think using a number to send text messages versus email will probably increase our success rate because we do get a lot of bounces on those still. So that's something else. I'm working on that's tangentially circulation related.

B

C

On the one hand, I think it would be valuable for people to answer their texts and their emails, but I can't make them do that, but um that's one of the things I'm interested in stealing seeing the presentations about twilio they're going to be at the koha us conference, because the ability to set up an autoresponder that when you text back to the library it says something because right now, I think what a lot of people do.

C

Is they text back to the library and they're just shouting into the void so having something there that says either you know phone the library at this number instead or or contact us by this other method or go to your account and renew online.

C

um I think, is a better option than just what I think is happening now, which is nothing. People are just saying. Please do this and nothing is happening.

D

Hi, I'm juliet I'm the systems uh librarian for us consortium in south dakota. I mostly just do support for our library, but I work with the consortium a little bit and our biggest thing that we're having is we don't want to switch to twilio because our library would be the only one who would be using that. So I don't know if anybody has looked into how we could you know only have one member of a consortium use the texting. That's why we're still on the text to email with us.

C

I think I don't know if template toolkit works with texting or not that's something I'm not sure of, but uh if the default in quahog, like I said, there's the all libraries notices and slips and then there's the individual libraries notices and slips and if coho won't send an empty message.

C

So if the default text message is blank and then the one for the individual library has data in it, the one for the individual library will get sent, but the one for the all libraries won't get sent. If it's a blank message- and so I think that would be the way to use twilio with just one library, but I'm not 100 sure about that, because I'm not 100 sure about.

C

Although it wouldn't be hard for me to test whether or not template toolkit works, I think it might actually because I think I do have some messages that use some sms messages that use template. Toolkit.

D

That would be something to look into, though we use library help to talk to our patrons through chat and through texting, and I know that uses twilio. So I wonder if that also would be an option is if you were using a chat service already, you might be able to use that to respond to their messages. I'm not quite sure how that would work, though.

B

Yeah- and I saw they have some like canned back-ends, which the google sheets was one, but they also had one that you could use trello and the. um If you responded in the treble board, then it would shoot a text message back to them, um but I I come back to the fact that we're doing this consortium wide and that means that all that's coming to me and not the libraries themselves, so there's a whole lot more work on my plate.

B

If we do it that way um so yeah but yeah, I like that idea, george of using template toolkit to kind of branch limit things. I hadn't thought about that.

C

I guess um one of the things that concerns me about template or not template toolkit about sms messages is that there was that some of the bigger cell phone providers are talking about dropping their email to text services, because there was a court case where it was potentiality that they might be forced to drop email to sms services. That's when I started looking at twilio, um but that's something that I would be concerned about with going forward with the email to sms is that some providers are are looking at dropping that service completely.

C

So so it might be the kind of thing that becomes a service that some people can use and some people can't so.

B

And it might start costing us a lot more money, because emailed sms is free. um Twilio is not, but it's pretty cheap uh relative to how many text messages we send uh it's pretty affordable.

A

Yeah twilio we've been, we had some trouble with a tiva, keep calling it itevia but aitiva. So we were thinking about twilio, but aitiva has been pretty stable recently. So it's always interesting to hear what what's going on with that and uh yeah. Is there any other topics that people want to bring up.

C

I'll bring up a reminder that uh the quahog us conference is in lawrence kansas in september, and if you go to coho dash us.org conferences, right jason, I don't know um I'll.

B

Put a link in the chat to the registration awesome of that.

C

So uh I've never met juliet before, but you're welcome to come to lawrence kansas and spend five days hanging out with other coho people.

D

Our state library conference is the week after so I'm not sure I could get a swing going to two conferences in a month, but I might do the online part of it, which would be really cool.

C

Yeah, the on it's 100 free, the the thing that's better about this conference than a mere simple statewide conference is that this is the international quahog conference. So so you would get to hobnob with people from outside of the us too.

B

If you haven't registered yet we do um even if you're just attending online we'd like to have that so feel free to register. And if you need to change your registration because you decide, you do really want to come see us. You can just email the conference committee afterwards and let us know.

A

All right well plug for conference. That's always welcome and any other topics. People want to take a look at.

B

I've been out so much. I can't think, like. I don't even know what I was working on last week.

B

Does anybody is anybody using google analytics? This is circulation related right, um google analytics on their opac.

B

D

We we do, or we did in the past- um I'm not too familiar with it. I just know that we've we've had it set up on the opec in the past.

B

Mine was working, then it stopped working and I fixed it. But then I realized they're changing how the how it all works. So I was trying to see if I could find some sample code on how the new tag thing works, but we.

D

Have it set up on our new website? That's um with the new version and we've just still been using the old version as long as we can, because it's kind of hard to figure out the new way to do it.

B

That's where I'm at right. Now too, I got the old version working again and I set up the new tag, but I haven't done anything with it. So I thought I'd ask.

D

Yeah, I'm not much help with that.

A

So just out of curiosity, what would you use analytics on your using it on your opac.

B

Yeah just to see traffic, see um uh usage and see. If there's anything, we can do to increase traffic and usage. Basically, all it does is track um page views.

A

We have discovery and they do have some of the the statistics usage on like ebooks and stuff like that and page hits, but I'm just kind of curious. So we haven't been no one's really asked about having analytics on our our opac. So we're just kind of curious.

B

I I had it set up way back when, because I do a lot of customization on our opaque, so I like to see like the heat maps and see what people are actually using and what they're um what's needs taken off that sort of thing, so it helps inform design decisions, mostly that's what we're using it for, um but, like I said it hasn't been working. So I don't really know where we're at.

B

I have to build up a new data set, um but it is nice to sort of kind of watch and see like if I make a change. Is it positively received that sort of thing.

B

That's mostly, why why we set it up.

A

Okay, any other questions comments.

A

Well, nobody has anything else to to talk about. Then we can close up this meeting, but uh had some interesting topics and thanks for everybody showing up all right I'll see you next month see you later yeah thanks.

B