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

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Circulation Special Interest Group - 4/5/2022

Description

00:07:26 Lauren Denny: ExportCircHistory
00:16:49 Christie: can you put the url to the test koha interface in the chat?
00:18:11 Christie: https://koha-community.org/demo/...I think I got it
00:31:21 Barbara Johnson: AllowHoldsOnPatronsPossessions

A

This is the quahog us circulation meeting. uh Is it april 5th 2022.

A

Stumbled over that, but okay, um I've checked the the agenda. We don't really have anything on there. Does anybody have anything they'd like to discuss.

B

We were trying our consortium was trying to decide if we should turn on export, cirque history system preference, but we're not quite sure what it does do. Any of you know.

A

I'm gonna have to check my settings on that. One.

C

So, what's the name of the system, preference.

B

Here and we'll put it in the chat.

C

Well, it's just that's the full okay.

C

I'm looking to see if we have it enabled or not.

C

It's um yeah r says: don't show.

C

D

C

My test server and turn it on and see what it does.

C

A

C

It's in well, let's see what it does.

A

I vaguely remember it: it records the circulation history of the user and we turned it off because of privacy concerns.

B

Well, there's another.

A

C

B

C

Yeah, that's a different setting. This is just the one that allows patrons to see it or not. We do have our system is set up so that it does remember people's history and it gives the borrower but not staff, the ability to opt out of the history.

C

So let me see, I'm logged into my test server.

C

Let me log into my test: opac find a borrower.

C

Yeah, maybe it'd be helpful to find a borrower that has some history.

B

It would probably make it easier to export if they actually had a history to export.

C

Open, I don't know the password for this account. Let's try that again.

C

So this borrower does have one item in their circulation, history and I've got this turned off. So let me switch it to show.

C

And I'm looking I'm assuming this is an opac preference.

C

Although that might be a broad assumption,.

D

And I don't release, I don't really see any difference: okay, circulation interface, preference.

C

When, in doubt uh not a bad thing to do is to go to.

C

The actual documentation did, does it say anything in the cohort manual about what this does.

B

I have not gotten, we just went through our system preferences and we moved that one to let's research, and so uh this meeting happened before I was able to look at the manual and I didn't want to have to wait a whole month before asking so I asked here first, I can look it didn't. Do it didn't do what I thought it would do.

B

I thought it would like export their history, but it's like I can do that, whether that's on or off so.

C

Yeah, there's a way to do that as a as a file as a let's see, I see a little export or print don't show.

C

When I reload the patron, it still says export or print, so I'm not sure and I'm not finding.

C

So this is under circulation, preferences interface.

C

It's a circulation interface.

C

C

Yeah, it's not very well documented, the documentation is, is ridiculously simplistic.

C

uh That's what the documentation looks like. There's no screenshots actually.

C

Yeah, that's a different preference. Export remove fields is a different preference, so.

C

So I'm not 100 sure what this system preference does, but we have, we haven't, got it turned on, and people can still export their history from the opac or the staff client. As a as a csv file.

B

We're in the process of trying to make it where people can use more features in the opac.

D

B

And learning what all of those things are to share with the patrons of the this is things you can do, um and so we thought that might be a setting we needed to turn on, but it doesn't it's like you can do it even though the setting the setting doesn't control exporting like, I think it should.

B

It is comforting to know that I'm not missing something that.

B

C

D

We're not using it.

C

I don't know 100 what it does.

C

So I'm wondering where it's exporting from it says from circulation, but I don't see.

C

Well, this patron doesn't have anything checked out. Let's change that real, quick, let's just check something out to them.

C

Just checked out somebody else: okay,.

C

Okay, I think I see where it where you can see it. Let me share my screen again.

C

This is on the checkout screen.

C

I think these, I think, that what it is is it turns on these two buttons.

C

Well, no, because I had it set to don't show.

C

So what happens if I change it to show on this page.

C

ah Here we go, it turns on this bar down here export checkouts, using mark format with items or mark format without items.

C

So there you go it's allowing you to to export the markdown mark. Okay, so I don't and it looks like it's only in the staff clients, so it's not going to affect your patrons at all. I'm not sure what the value of that would be in a public library setting. I can imagine possibly if you were in a library where you use something like.

C

Something that could read mark format for maybe building a bibliography. I think some of those tools like ref notes and those will read the mark format. So I don't know.

C

It's not something I picture myself. Turning on anytime soon,.

B

Yeah no, where I could possibly see that happening is, if I needed to export it because they were changing, they were leaving the consortium and they needed that circulation data.

B

Or is there a way to do a group.

C

Well, it's not exporting the circulation data, it's exporting the item. It's exporting the bibliographic records of the items that the borrower has checked out in that in that list of history on the checkout page.

C

So it's not doing it on the uh on the history page, it's for the checkouts page.

D

And that's the wrong page.

C

Yeah, it's I'm not sure what the value of it is. I wonder who I wonder where it comes from. I wonder what the history that system preference is.

C

I think it's a confusingly named system preference because it's not on the history page. It's on the checkout page.

B

Yeah and you're not exporting circulation, history, you're just exporting items.

C

You're just exporting what's currently checked out, yeah.

B

There may already be a name taken for what they wanted to call. It.

B

Okay, thank you very much sure.

A

That was interesting to anybody else. Have any topics.

B

I have one more if no one else has one, but I want to give other people a chance.

B

Okay, I'll share um we've been having problems with paid. Well, we don't have a lot of patrons. I have had problems logging into our opac using my my patreon account. My staff account we're fine.

B

We thought it was because the email address was attached to the self checkout, so we removed that and it worked for a season and then it stopped working again.

B

A colleague his patron account had the same problem and we noticed that both were set to the same patron category.

B

Do you know if there's something in the patron categories? Is there a setting that I might not know to turn on say, allow to log into the opac? I'm not even sure where to look.

B

For where that would be.

C

I guess my first question would be define we're having trouble logging into the opac. What does that mean? I can't.

B

C

You can't log in at all.

B

I I get my cr, I put my credentials in, I click login and it gives me the login screen like it. It acts like it's trying to do something and then.

C

Does it give you the message that says you've attempted to log in too many times or anything like that.

D

C

uh That could be a browser problem that might not be a cohop problem that might be a problem with your web browser.

B

Okay, we have noticed if I'm logged into the staff client and then I use those same credentials to log into the opac I can get in like if I like, my I'm logged in as a staff client into my staff client account on koha. If I then go and use my patron account on the opac, it lets me in it's really weird, it's bizarre, so you don't make it to koa setting check in the browser it.

B

It could be that it's a browser, I'm not sure if we were both using chrome or not, I could find out because that would be.

C

That would be my first guess, because I can't there's nothing if you have an account logging into the account there's nothing that tells patrons they can't log into their account that I can think of.

C

The it's a public catalog, you can see whether you're logged in or not right.

B

C

Because there is a way to make it so that you can't access the catalog. You can't search the catalog if you're not logged in, um but I can't think of anything that would make it so that uh so that uh so the there's no system preference. I know of that prevents people from logging into the catalog.

C

What I would suspect is that um is that there's, maybe a cookie or something that's being saved in your by your browser. That's you know that! That's all that's all I can think of. I I think it's more of a my suspicion. Is it's a browser problem and not a co-op problem.

C

Okay, I use firefox and I tell firefox that whenever I log out it forgets all my history. It deletes all the cookies. It deletes all of the saved internet history. It deletes all of the it deletes everything it's so every time I start firefox, it clears the cache everything gets deleted. Every time I close firefox.

C

um Because I don't want all that stuff saved, um so that would be my suspicion. Do you do you have whatever browser you're using? Are you telling it to remember passwords? Are you telling the browser to remember your usernames and passwords yes to.

B

C

In that's, that's probably the problem right there: okay.

D

E

D

C

Okay, I that I have seen before where people tell the browser to remember their username and their password, and then they go to login and maybe their passwords changed and the browser doesn't want to forget the old password or their username is changed and the browser keeps trying to put in the old username. So that would be. My first step is to clear all those old to clear that that's one of the easiest things to do is just tell the browser. Forget everything, go back to a factory reset and start over again.

C

The problem is, is that you end up losing all of that all of those passwords? If you don't have them stored somewhere, yeah, that's then you're going to lose all those so, but.

B

That would be my suspicion.

C

Is that there's a saved password somewhere in your browser that doesn't agree with you? Logging in there using a different password.

B

Okay, I will try that and get my colleague to try that and see. If it's a mystery, we thought we're not we upgraded to 2105 and we thought that would solve whatever it was. That was, and it didn't so much we need to fix this before we tell patrons. You should go to the opec.

C

I try to encourage people that are that are using the browser to save their passwords, to switch to something like lastpass or dashlane or onepass, where the passwords are stored.

C

The passwords are stored, but they're stored outside of the browser, because lastpass is just a plug-in that works with firefox or google or other browsers.

C

The phone app actually has its own browser, but that way the passwords aren't being stored in the browser they're being stored in a separate app that goes across platforms, um so that, because I have seen problems with I've had people that have used the autofill feature so that it tries to fill in website data uh like addresses and names and stuff and and they're sometimes, uh and sometimes those fields get interfered with.

C

um So I don't like the browser's built-in ability to remember things, because it always screws things up well, not always, but.

B

Yeah all right, thank you.

A

A

Thank you, lauren man, you're keeping this meeting pretty lively. Anybody else have anything.

B

I'll be brave and ask a question: go for it! Okay, so we currently circulate wi-fi hotspots for a rental fee, and you can pick how long you want it next fiscal year we're switching to free wi-fi hotspots yay, but we want. We want them to act as much like all the other items as possible. So two weeks, four automatic renewals, easy peasy, but with hot spots the patrons are wanting consistent access.

B

So, what's going to happen, is they're going to check out the hot spot immediately place the hole on the next one, therefore, preventing their own potential renewals?

B

Does anyone else circulate hot spots and have a good circ rule set for that or any other item where they want consistent access.

C

I have a library, you know, it's lauren keeps asking questions, I'm the one that I'm the one that's answering all of them. uh I have a 50 libraries and about 10 of them uh check out hot spots, and one of the libraries um was recently having a problem because they had, I think they had 10 hot spots and they had a separate bibliographic record for each hot spot, and so the borrower would and it's they had like.

C

50 bazillion holds on them and it's because they had 10 separate bibliographic records that they had 50 bazillion holds because their one patron would check out hotspot number one and then they would go in and put a request, because there's so many requests on all these, then they would put a request on hot spot number.

C

Two hotspot number three hotspot number four hotspot number five, and so that was one of the things I said is just put them all on one bibliographic record and then limit the number of requests per borrower to one per per record, so that the borrower can only have one request on that bibliographic record at the time. So they can check it out and then place a hold on it. That doesn't quite solve your problem, because they're still going to be able to place holds on it once they have it checked out. I I'm not sure.

C

If there's a way, is there a way to tell quahog that if they have it checked out, they can't put a hold on it off the top of my head, I'm not sure, but that solved a big part of their problem.

C

um The issues that we have with hot spots at my libraries are that somebody will check them out. They. We have a couple libraries that have like five to ten of these things and people will check them out and then they never return them and they called the phone company and tell them to deactivate it and then um so it's worthless to them.

C

If they don't return it and get it back in the system, and then they get turned over to a collection agency, because they've and but that's the biggest problem that our libraries have is that people check them out. They never return them even after their build forum, um and so that's why I have a lot of libraries that don't use them that they they had them for a while and they decided it wasn't worth their their time and effort to try to manage them.

C

B

Yeah, I think we're kind of hoping that this program will just slowly die because we've hated it the entire time. It's been.

C

B

C

So that's that's our story with that one particular library, but I think we've had in the past. We've had as many as 15 to 20 libraries that have had them, but I think we're down now. I think only like it's less than 10, probably maybe 10 at the most that are still using them out of 50.

E

There is a system preference for allow holds on patron possessions and it's allow or don't allow, but it it doesn't look like you could limit it to a specific item type. I think it'd be across the board.

E

I haven't looked at that one I'll check into it. Thank you. That's how it shows up um in the system, preferences.

C

I suppose what you do is you run a report to see how many people have holds on things that they currently have checked out and see. If it's an issue, because if it isn't an issue, then you can turn that on and nobody's gonna nobody's even gonna notice.

B

Yay a strategy, thank you.

A

So we have hot spots here at pueblo and we only have them broken into two records. The problem that we've been having is that we have so many hot spots that if we get to that, you know maximum item count on the record and it slows everything down and grinds it to a halt.

A

um What we've been doing to solve, that is just creating a dead record and anything that's discarded or lost, or whatever gets transferred to that dead record, and um I'm actually I've I've volunteered to do the the hot spots at our place.

A

So if anything is stolen, lost or damaged, I report it to our department who shuts it off and now the the user has a a great paperweight and one of the things that we did notice or we got a recall from team- knows verizon that their one of their models all had to be recalled because they're bad as batteries explode, yeah um and I've got one actually, my desk, it looks like a hockey puck, but I don't know what the model number is on it.

A

I'm gonna see if I can pop it open and find out but yeah. They I've gotten back a couple back that if their um batteries expand the size of like a cigarette, usually they're, like you know, a couple of cards packed together, but it's the ipolis jetpack from verizon, so yeah.

A

That was an interesting project trying to get all those hundreds of verizon hot spots back. So that was fun.

A

Anybody else have any hot spots or horror stories or anything else. They would like to discuss.

A

So I'm gonna open it up just a couple more minutes. If we.

D

A

Have anything else to discuss I'll end the meeting early, but um competition has been very lively, usually we're pretty chill and thanks a lot. George for all your help and uh answering those questions.

C

Well, I'm happy, I could be here the last couple of meetings. I've missed it because the I've misinterpreted the calendar or the calendar has been wrong. So.

A

Yeah I have that problem with the admin meeting, I'm always an hour late. So.

C

I'm trying to look to see if there are any videos that christopher and I have recorded lately that relate to circulation.

A

Well, if anybody doesn't have any more topics, then we can close this down and uh thank you all for gathering together and uh and definitely come back and please bring topics. This is always interesting to hear them. So um you all have a great afternoon or morning take care, see.

C