Koha-US SIG - Circulation Special Interest Group, 7 Dec 2021

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From YouTube: Circulation Special Interest Group - 12/7/2021

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Chat logs:
00:17:48 Jason: https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/JQuery_Library#Add_Curbside_Parking_Slips_to_Patron_Checkout_Screen
00:20:17 Jason: OpacPasswordChange
00:20:49 Jason: OpacResetPassword
00:27:31 Jason: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=29411
00:40:58 Jason: opacuserlogin

A

So this is a co-op, u.s circulations meeting uh 12 december 7 2021 and got a few topics that we'll talk about, and definitely if you have any that you didn't send to me or just you thought of let me know I actually put the first one down and I was actually wondering how people handle their um discarding their materials.

A

Do you guys use your uh withdrawn status or do you use the damage status or the law status or something different to you know taking material material out of coha or you just delete it. I mean that's always an option too right.

B

I can speak on that for us um and it so I'm in a consortium, and I think other libraries do it differently. But if they're designated for withdrawal we just delete it. Some of us have the uh you know permissions to do that and if the coordinators are doing weeding or what have you, they say oh delete, but I think some other libraries might change it to was that the status withdrawn or something like that and then and then I don't know how they handle it from there. But we just delete it right away.

A

C

For us it depends on the library and some of them if they've been missing for a really long time, we just delete them. We finally delete them, um but we have things marked withdrawn, damaged, missing, lost.

C

um I need to run a report of all of those and find out okay. How much of all of these do we have and is it worth keeping or should we just go ahead and say it's been lost long enough? Let's just delete the record.

D

A

D

No, I was just gonna say that um it depends on the situation for us so like if it's a weeding project like they've gone out, they've pulled the card of books and they're ready to get rid of them. Then we use the batch deletion tool for that um for lost and missing items.

D

We kind of have a little sort of sequence of events so like if they can't find something on the holds queue they'll market missing for maybe a month, um and then we encourage them to look for those at the end of the month and if they find them check them in and take the status off. If they don't find them, then they transition it over to full-blown lost and then from there it's kind of up to our libraries. How long they wait to um go in and just delete everything um we don't.

D

We use the withdrawn status more for temporarily removable from circulation, so we use withdrawn for things that are damaged. We don't use the damage status at all because it seemed redundant um uh if a patron brings back a dvd without a disc, and it actually accidentally gets checked in we'll. Withdraw that because we need to take it out of circulation, but just for a little bit.

D

So uh we use withdrawn a little differently and we use sort of just the law statuses to keep track of things that eventually need to make their way out of the catalog.

A

Thanks, that's really interesting the withdrawn for for, like damaged, I'm gonna actually write that down, because what we do now is for, like anything that needs to be that's damaged or missing pieces. We set it to. We check it out too, um like an account. We call one review or one repair and the problem with that is that you know this stuff stays on there forever and so finds a crew on the account, and I have to go in there and wave it and it's just it's a big mess.

A

So that is not a bad idea and I might have to steal it or harvest it from you jason. So, thanks.

A

So our our thing is is that we use the the way that we're doing it right now and I'm just wondering if there's like a better way and uh we set everything's to discard using the damage status and the reason. Why is that? Sometimes things get missed on the shelves so that when someone tries to come and check it out, if it's set to withdrawn, they can't check it out, and so, if it's, if it's set to damage this card, they can check it out.

A

But when it comes back into our amh, it goes to our sword bins and that's kind of how we do it. The other thing is, is that we have, um I think, there's something about colorado law that we have to keep records of, lost or thrown away materials for a certain amount of years before we can delete them.

A

So we we do have a lot of stuff in our in our catalog, that's discarded, but it's you know two or three years old, so just trying to think trying to reinvent the mouse trap. I think with this project, but.

D

Yeah and I mean with koha- you still got that data even after you discard it, you can query that sort of thing in the deleted items table um the one issue we've run into with. That is that you don't get accurate times. No, the timestamps get reset, sometimes so, if you're you're relying on a time stamp to run your report on deleted items. uh If something changes in the upgrade that touches that table, then you can no longer rely on that timestamp, so withdrawing it.

D

First is an option because there's a withdrawn on date that gets attached to it so yeah. It gets tricky when you're trying to report on those those deleted items if you're taking them out entirely, but they're not entirely gone. I guess that was the point I was like um so so we do rely on that information to an extent for our annual reporting, we'll run lists of books deleted using the deleted items table uh where it sounds like.

D

Maybe you have that information still in your live catalog and it's probably easier to report on because it is in your live catalog just mark discarded.

A

Yeah, I'm thinking about next year, seeing if we can, if we can convince her finance or set out procedure that we can delete it after. You know three years instead of six, but I don't know the specific laws and that's something we'll have to look into, but if I can convince them that it stays you know in the deleted table, you might be able to get rid of it sooner, which is is useful. So that's awesome.

A

All right um kim actually had another topic and she was hoping to to get some feedback on the curb tool or who's using it.

B

The curbside pickup plug in if anybody was using it.

D

I had it installed, um none of my libraries really picked up on it and then it broke, and um I knew that my libraries weren't using it because it broke and no one complained, so we ended up just turning it off, so I don't have any real feedback on it. Besides that.

B

When you say broke you mean that there was a bug or something in cola, or is it something like on your end.

D

You know well, I had the plugin installed and then I think co-op upgraded or something and then when you went to use the tool from the patreon page, it just doesn't work anymore. So, like I think I needed to update the plugin again, but since no one was using it, I just didn't um but like it, it completely stopped working like it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do at all.

B

I looked at it in the beginning when they first um announced it to the pandemic, and I at the time I thought that boy. There are a lot of steps involved and I don't know if, because we weren't really open but we're still doing some curbside stuff. So we took a pass on it because we also had lib cal. So we were scheduling, appointments to lib cal, but we no longer have live cal and while we are open, there's a vaccine mandate going into effect in january.

B

So I anticipate there'll be a lot more of a curbside need because people aren't able to come into buildings on campus etc. So that's why I was kind of looking at it, but all I really want to do is set a time for the person to come, and then we can just say. Yes, they came that type of thing.

B

So, even if we need to print something from them, it might not even be a book to pick up a book. So that's why we're exploring that.

A

So we we actually installed it and started training on it to to get it to to use it, and there were some issues with. um I think what we wanted was is that the tool might be misremembering this, but the tool didn't check out material or no, it checked out the material and then it just kind of wiped the screen.

A

So if you, if someone came in looking for their books, you took them, you checked them out using the tool and then, if you gave it to the person, there was a chance that you might have missed one of their books and accidentally checked them all out to the person.

A

If I'm remembering correctly, but ultimately, we, like you, said kim, it was just too many steps and we went with a different service called communico and um that's worked out really well, but yeah.

D

Thank you, and um if you you mentioned, maybe just a simpler solution. um I know that christopher brandon did something before sorry stuff popping up on my feet um before the curbside plug-in was fully realized. He had done some work to just add a slip using jquery and that's in the jquery library. So I put that link in the chat, but it it might be an alternative. I guess, if you're not wanting to go through all those steps but want some sort of um functionality there. Okay,.

B

Great. Thank you.

A

So does anybody else have any other topics? Those are some great conversations so.

A

C

A small one- um and I don't totally know how to the question I'm trying to ask so.

A

Just work it just go through it go for it.

C

um It's dealing with patron um password, username accounts.

C

Some of our libraries use it some of our libraries don't right now we have where they can use that and they can also use their google email for our for our organization.

C

However, the consortium- half the patrons, do not belong to the organization, so they can't use their gmail passwords.

C

um I wanted to know how can we give the patrons the ability to control what their username and password is in their coho account instead of the local librarian, or is that even an option like? Is it only?

C

The local librarian has to be the one that just gives you this thing and you're stuck with it for the rest of your life until you email the librarian and say I want it changed to explain.

D

So part of our encouraged workflow is whenever a staff member sets up a user name and password for the patron they get like a dummy password and then they're encouraged to go home and change it themselves, and that is a system preference. I think um yeah. It's this one.

D

Opaque password change you can set that to allow and then, when they use that username and password you set up for them to log into the opac there's a one of the tabs on their account is change password and they can go in there and change it themselves.

C

A

Yeah there's a notice that goes out an email notice that says- and that gives you that you can include the link in there, and it asks you to request to change that password.

A

I think you have to is when you click on that that system's preference does that automatically set up the the email, or is that something you have to gear up.

D

That might might be the other one I just put in there- oh pack reset so that one's the one that lets patrons use. The kind of I think it turns on the forgot, your password link and then that sends the email um for password recovery.

D

So I think there are two separate things.

A

Yeah we have discovery, so we don't use this a lot, but I just I was messing with the the notices and the triggers, and I noticed that one so.

C

Okay, so the opec reset password affects the notices and the op pac password change allows actually they'd still have to get a notice that has the username and password that I gave them, and then they click the link and they change it.

D

There's another notice: it's called account details and I think they get so I think they get the account details, email, if you sign them up and they have an email on their primary email address thing. When you make their account, they get the account details, right notice,.

C

D

That may be wrong, but that's my guess and recollection.

C

Okay, I will the I finally have a local library that I'm now over, in addition to helping the consortium and I've just migrated us into coho, and so now I'm working on setting up the username password accounts and I'm like all right. I want to get all this instead of having you know, 50 to 100 people come knock on my door, asking me about their password. I'd rather like send out an email and let go.

C

I would rather co-hobby the secretary instead of me.

C

D

D

Trying to remember if there's anything else involved there, but I guess once you dig into it: you'll find out.

C

And I'm still learning learning how to set up notices in coho. I I feel, like I'm, I'm much more proficient in cataloging than circulation.

C

um Because I don't use circulation that often um so this will probably I will learn more than I ever wanted to learn in doing this.

A

Yeah one of the things I realized recently it was just it was a minor kind of a dumb mistake was. Is that when I was looking at the triggers, I thought it was the triggers were the days after the last notice was sent and it's actually the days after the item is overdue.

A

So I made that mistake and I was like oh, I should have seen that, because I mean you, you set it up and then you just forget about it. So I was looking at that recently and fixed that so learn from my error. Please.

C

Yeah, I don't remember which meeting I went to someone pointed out to make the notice the due date. No one of the notices you need to be the overdue notice needs to be before the due date or you end up getting a lot of notices, because you get one that it's due one that it's overdue, one, that it's, oh, the automatic renewal, one that it's renewed, it's like the patron doesn't want three or four emails.

C

They just want their book renewed.

D

Yeah, that makes sense. They don't want to be notified that it's over to you and then it got auto renewed.

A

Yeah, our first notice. We had that auto, renew and and when it it stops, and we can't renew anymore it message. It mentions it on the renewal notice and then we wait 14 days for the first overdue and then the next one is 30 days and then the final one is, I think, 51 days, and so that's how we can handle it. But it seems to work out fine. I mean I haven't heard any complaints about that.

A

Does anybody else have any questions or topics they want to bring up.

D

I feel like I had something several weeks ago, but I don't know what it was and I didn't write it down.

A

Yeah, whenever I come across something I always try and write it down and.

A

It's like one of my problems is that a lot of the questions I have tend to start to bleed over into like admin, development kind of stuff. So there is yeah and all this all the stuff that I've got written down right now, except for that, the one that I came up with was is development, so.

D

I think the biggest like post upgrade complaint I've gotten circulation wise, is the way that the um patron search works and there's a bug that I'm following that. I think I patched that I can share related to that.

A

Is it a 500 error? Is that what you're saying.

D

No so the way it redirects is different um so before, if you did an account like a patron name, search in the checkout box in the top, um it would take you to their checkout screen. If there was only one result, so, like you typed in their exact name, to search for their account, it would take you to their checkout screen. Now it takes you to their details screen.

D

So then you have to click to the checkout screen, um and that seems to be a bug so um which is good news, because I got lots of complaints about that.

D

um The other change that it did, which in it was in the spirit of like speed and efficiency, um is it um it used to come up to its own little list of search results if you typed in a vague search term on the patron search, uh so then, and then give you a list of things um now.

D

It goes directly over to the patron details or the like the patron patron search instead of the that extra list of things, which is an improvement, because you get all the results and it's faster, but it's throwing some people off.

D

So um those are kind of the big patrony things.

A

Yeah there was a a change in the transits or the transfers that just kind of thrown off our catalogers, where you used to be able to check in an item and have and ignore the transfer, but it would trap the hold and now, instead of they just have it just totally ignores everything if you click on ignore, and so you have to use the check in right above the transfer tool to get it to work, and it's just it changes the workflows, and it kind of you know, threw things off a little bit for a couple of days so but we're getting a 500 error whenever we do like a cataloging search and we're using our our barcodes and our barcodes start with a zero.

A

I think that's the problem. That's a really weird one!

A

There's a bug about it, but it the bug is weird because it has if the barcode starts with a letter and that trips off that whole that air that bug, but this one's just a zero trips it off with us. So.

D

I'm glad I don't have that problem. That sounds terrible.

A

It is it bothers the catalogers more than anybody else, but it's still a pain in the butt.

A

But overall I'm happy with the the upgrade it's a lot faster.

D

Yeah, I I think cars went fairly smooth once it happened. um The main issue we had was that it didn't happen. The first try, uh but after that um I don't think I had any major issues.

D

Just a few complaints here and there I'm I'm trying to think it's been about a month a little less than a month now for us. So it's not as fresh.

A

I was talking about the the search searching in the catalog and patrons and stuff like that. It's really it's faster than originally was, and we get results. A lot quicker, which I think is pretty cool. So.

D

And we we like right before this upgrade switched to elastic, so it's kind of like we um yeah. We experienced some definite speed and uh accuracy improvements with the switch to elastic right before we upgraded to the current version of claw. So it's all kind of been a nice holistic improvement of our. What we're offering I'm gonna be quiet. Now.

B

We haven't actually upgraded, we switched to elastic a few weeks ago, but we haven't done. The only thing that's been upgraded. So far is our test server, so I'm actually going to go there after the meeting and start doing some searches to see if I notice what you guys have just mentioned.

B

A

Yeah, it might be a data error on our our side. We've got some really funky records, but we've noticed that it was um that 500 error was in the searching. Let's see where it is so it's cataloging.

A

And it's cataloging search, I think, let me just try it and then we found it in another place, but let me make sure about this. One first.

A

Yep, it's it's in catalog in and it's the cataloging search and that's where we get the 500 error.

B

And that's when you search on a barcode or is that what you said.

A

Yeah on a barcode and ours becomes zero and I think that's what's tripping it up so okay and we have another where it's in the uh transfers to receive, and it's just one branch that we have uh kicks off, that 500 error as well. So.

A

Anyway, anybody else any other topics.

C

Just to eliminate that it's a system, this might be a system, preference problem, and I don't know in my opac, so I have two accounts. I have a patron account and then my super librarian account my patreon account credentials. I cannot log into the opac, but I can use my super librarian.

C

Do you all have potential.

C

What might be happening.

D

Can anyone log into the opac that doesn't have permissions like see.

C

I don't know if I use the google email like logging in by my google email I can get in, and I almost feel like. I've probably logged in with my email using my super librarian account, and I don't want to log in using my email on my patreon account, because I'm wanting to keep that a pure. This is what it's like.

D

Giving you like an error.

C

Well it it's just I keep getting on the login screen. It doesn't.

A

Doesn't go all the way through it just gets the circle of doom.

C

A

Yeah, oh that's weird,.

C

Okay, I almost wonder if it's a bug we're on 2011 and I'm one or if what I have discovered with upgrades is depending on what you had in your system. Preferences before doesn't mean it does the same thing in the upgrade, and so you sometimes have to go back in and tweak some stuff, and I'm wondering if there's I'm needing to tweak a system preference um that could be causing that.

D

Yeah and we don't use the the google login stuff, so it sounds like maybe that's causing some sort of interference.

C

Yeah, I'm almost wondering if it is because we have that turned on it's not. I either need to turn some an additional something on to make it work, because you could do it before the upgrade. It worked it's after the upgrade that it stopped working, and so I'm trying to figure out okay. What do I need to something change? A definition probably changed somewhere and.

D

I assume you've tried resetting your that username and password on and that doesn't. Okay.

A

D

Have any other.

A

Accounts that are, you know, they're the same like uh same first name surname and uh different privileges, I'm just thinking that it might be. There might be some conflict when it's trying to figure out which one of you guys is logging in.

C

They have different.

C

Like the username and password are different right, um it's just. I have two personal accounts and I really don't want to have a third to keep to keep up with. I can maybe ask some other people to try logging in to the opec you can log in, like my library, staff can log in to the staff interface that works right.

A

C

Can use the credentials to log in the staff interface? It's it's something to do with the opac.

A

So do you know of any other staff that have that kind of like they have the personal account and the user account and they're having the same trouble.

C

No, I have not heard of anyone else having that trouble, but I also we don't have a lot of our patrons if they run into problems they they're not used to someone being on the other end of the email, so they got in the habit of not really oh well. I can't log in like they just go without yeah.

A

C

Of emailing, we can fix this.

A

C

Trying to gain that reputation back of no, you can email us your problems, we're here to help you it's harder to get it back once you've lost it.

D

Yeah, um have you tried making just like a a new dummy patron and logging in with that without the google stuff just to see if it works.

C

Just if it works for a new patron, I have not.

A

So you use their the google accounts as their username and username, and then they have the the library card as well.

C

So not all of our libraries have library cards, okay, so this this cell. Now we do have the self checkout turned on.

C

But I finally got that to work. Oh, but did I get that to work before the upgrade? I'm not sure when the upgrade happened so because that wasn't working and then I finally got it to work, and I haven't checked it again to make sure it's still working. I was wanting to have my my patrons know about the library in november and it didn't happen, and so I'm like january is just fine.

C

So now I'm trying to make sure everything's working for january. When I tell everybody about it,.

D

You didn't um happen to use your non-google account as the self-checkout patron. Did you because that'll mess things up.

C

I have logged into the self checkout using that, so my patreon account. I have logged into the self checkout.

D

But like as a as a patron or as the staff user, that runs the self-checkout machine.

C

D

Okay, because, if, if that account is the one that's set up to run the self-checkout like that's what you log in to run the self-checkout, I you give it a special permission and that special permission can throw off its ability to log in as a regular patron. I think.

C

You know that I think I created a circulation, a jar circulation, lat circulation, library account and that's what.

C

The cell checkout um attaches to.

C

Okay, I will keep investigating. I just thought since you're here, you guys might have encountered the problem, but.

D

um There is a system preference which I assume you have on that allows people to log in to the opac. um I I guess you could check that okay, but I if it was working before it would have had to have been switched and I lost it. I don't know what it is. Okay,.

C

Yeah all my to-do list, um either december or january, is go through our system preferences and make sure everything stayed kosher.

D

um Yeah, so that one is opec user login which lets you uh let patrons log into their accounts, but I would guess if that was not turned on, you would have heard about it. By now,.

A

Man, I'm really spoiled with discovery, because it's all the all the troubles that you guys are having it seems. Like I'm sorry I don't know, I don't hear that.

C

We're looking into aspen we've been re. I I talked with ptf s europe this morning to see we're considering aspen because of the electronic resources: whole circulation, opec, all that fun stuff.

A

It's really sweet with the the the um overdrive and the cloud and hoopla that that checkout features is really nice and now they're they're thinking that we're they're going to be able to get us statistics on that stuff too. So that's also really really cool. So.

D

That's good to know because it's on our wish list, but that would be one more reason to move, because we can't uh get stats on our electronic resources right now.

A

Yeah, it's it's a work in progress, but um mark the guy that that develops. It is really responsive and you know when he says something's coming along. It usually is so.

A

All right does anybody else, have any topics.

A

Well, we actually had some great conversations, so that's awesome, but um if there aren't any other things to talk about, I can come to call this meeting meeting to a close so going once going twice all right. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah thank everybody for uh alright coming and we'll see you next month.

B