Koha-US SIG - Consortia Special Interest Group, 18 Nov 2021

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From YouTube: Consortia Special Interest Group - 11/18/2021

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Chat logs:
00:23:18 George Williams: https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/JQuery_Library#Match_the_new_.22Allowed_pickup_location.22_dropdown_to_the_logged_in_library
00:28:43 Trevor Hunter - DeSoto Public Library: That makes my brain hurt
00:49:39 Tom Taylor: We aligned our lending rules
00:55:11 Tom Taylor: Nate, we don't have any plans to use it
00:57:19 George Williams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTl3sITWaz0
00:58:02 Jason: https://forms.gle/jhebiNf5j8r6PnKU7
01:06:49 George Williams: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=15812
01:07:53 George Williams: Third Thursdays in odd numbered months sounds good to me.
01:07:55 John Ernst, Thomas More University in Northern KY: Thank you. That was helpful.

A

uh So we don't really have like a hard and fast agenda for today, but one thing I do want to talk about, and that's one of the reasons why uh uh some of our uh bywater friends are here today is uh one of the things I think is the most difficult part of coha. When you're a consortium is the resource sharing part and the more libraries add you add the more complex it gets.

A

So what we found um is our our big issue has to do with uh holds reciprocity. Now, if you're a consortium and everybody has the exact same circles and they lend all the exact same things, then this probably isn't a problem for you.

A

If you are like us, and it sounds like a couple other, you have different types of libraries, uh for example like if you have any school libraries, even if you have the same circles, those schools do close at some point during the year and you don't want hold requests going in to those schools that aren't going to be filled because they are vacant during the summer, um so that that's part of reciprocity in our consortium.

A

We also have some libraries that don't want to lend dvds so, for whatever reason, uh uh that's uh in one case, it's because the when they lend dvds their patrons borrow dvds and that ups, their courier costs to a point where they don't want to pay for it. So it's so successful that they don't like it.

A

So it's just kind of an interesting uh quirk, uh but uh but we have to respect those rules uh that they want to enforce, uh and what the issue we face is that there are two ways you can set up: basic hold rules, and one is you can either look at the circles of the item or you can look at the circles of the patron either way you go.

A

That creates a scenario in which um in which something is not being honored what I have proposed and uh to buy water as we look at looking at both of those things. That way. If somebody says, if you're a school- and you say I'm closed for the year, then you just set things not lending and then it will prevent requests from coming in and it will prevent requests from going out right now.

A

You kind of have a choose your own adventure on that and there's some other ways that we use with like branch transfer limits, and things like that that I used to manage that. But it is complicated and with the new upgrade and we'll talk more about the upgrade later and see how that's going for everyone, if you're on it yet or talk about what to expect uh a few things, have changed. I've just made it a little bit worse. So uh because of the way item level holds work.

A

Now you used to get a nice little message. That said, can't be transferred to pick up item now you get uh valid pickup locations that you select from just makes it confusing. I already noticed uh from running some reports yesterday that there's been some confusion and people requesting uh staff are requesting uh items that aren't actually available to be picked up at their library, but the holds are going through because they're selecting a library across the state that their patron will never be able to go to pick up those items.

A

So that's kind of uh sets the stage for my thinking of that. But the idea of having this conversation is to is to not just have what works for our consortium drive any changes we make with holds rules but get feedback, because there's probably some other things that your libraries have that. Maybe we don't need, but that are related to this type of thing.

A

So I just wanted to kind of set the floor for that and then try to get some discussion going on uh what your ideal uh hold resource sharing system would be, and if there's some pain points you've experienced.

B

Bob this is jerry brock. I I have to admit: we've run into somewhat the same challenge. It's not unusual for us to have 50 or 60 miles between libraries, so uh patrons in one library will occasionally choose the pickup location and it you're right. It will be another library.

B

We recently addressed that the uh my contractor that works with me uh seemed to have found a solution, but I need to get the details from her or at least somewhat of a solution, but I'll, try and get that and uh email that to you and uh you can see if there's a anything there that you can use or anything yeah.

A

That'd be great, I can share that with the group I mean we do have some workarounds that just uh I think my goal is to get somewhere where the it's more, because I know like I know, jason. I have discussed this before that.

A

He uses a lot of jquery and things like that, but ultimately getting something where it's actually coded into cohab might might work a little bit more efficiently, but it's always good to hear what other people are doing with their workarounds, maybe that at least in the short term that could help some libraries out.

C

There a lot of the issues that you're describing that we specifically build into the policies that you know the the you know nobody is theoretically allowed to uh prevent things. You know if it circulates at your library, it should be available to any any other library is kind of the way we look at it. We don't have a situation where courier costs go up.

C

If you know for for things, if you're, if you're borrowing more your courier costs, don't go up because um necklace highly subsidizes, the courier here in kansas, there's a flat fee, but um that's kind of the. What we try to do is when people join. They know that they're gonna be in a situation where they have to loan.

C

If they. If the item circulates at their library, if their patrons can put a hold on it, anybody can put a hold on it. So um and I wouldn't really call that a workaround. So much as like a policy decision, I think it's probably a little different in colorado where you've got a statewide consortium. Our consortium, geographically, is not nearly that big. It's it's not even a quarter the size of kansas. So yeah.

A

This is more of a situation where you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. uh It start and I don't think we would have grown when I start like I said we had 100. We have 129 libraries and we have over. If you count our we're migrating, a bunch of uh department of corrections, libraries, we have like another 25 plus coming uh in the next year.

A

uh So uh I s when I started. We had 32 libraries, I think, but we wouldn't have been able to grow and provide the service mostly to rural communities if we didn't sell them on the fact that um that they could keep local control on most things.

A

So there's just there's just at this point: there's no way to tell people you you have to lend your dvds and like it, but like I said, if, even if you have all the same circles, if you're dealing with schools, shutting those down is a complex process uh currently for us, so anybody else have uh experience. I know a couple of you are kind of new to this. I don't know if you've run into.

A

The teeth of how uh resource sharing is working or not working.

D

Well, we had some issues with item level holds acting weird between locations, but with the four of us we just kind of agreed to only do bib level holds from the opec side and that really fixed a lot of our problems. um But you know the it's.

D

If I was going to drive from to all four libraries, it's only 60 miles, which I do that every other week um you know so I mean it's not a big there's, not a courier cost, aside from just my gas and labor to to make a delivery between all of our locations. But getting rid of item level holds really was a was a nice benefit for us to to make it easier.

A

Yeah, that's certainly something we try to do, but staff obviously have the ability to do that when we have patreon placeholds, we we force them to be uh bib level, and so that's why we don't have a massive problem, because I think if we, if, when they placed holds, they had the same kind of view as we do on the staff side, we would have a bit of a disaster. So fortunately it's not a major problem, but uh staff are getting confused multiple times a day uh as.

C

A there is um when um I heard about the issue with the upgrade from lizette at valnet, where now in the new version in 2105, there is a separate drop down on each item level uh on each item in the uh staff interface.

C

When you place a hold, so I wrote some jquery and and to get work around that and that's I posted the link there for that, so that I think, will stop most confusion on staff on the staff side. But it's going to be a problem if the location that the item is at is a forbidden location for hold pickup.

C

A

Yeah and that's why we haven't used yours, uh george uh bywater wrote some jquery for us.

A

That makes it so the the list is blank to start with uh and then so, if you click on it, it forces you to click on it and look and then see if your there's, that your library, so hopefully staff will be paid attention to that where we're facing the issue is just because there's less messaging on there because it used to be if there wasn't um it used to be great, the to place a bib level hold if the pickup location didn't match there used to be a message saying no holds uh are, are available or something like that, and then that button would be grayed out.

A

So we are still seeing. Bib level holds more than item level holds being wrong just because that change has changed some of the messaging jason. I know I mentioned you had some jquery. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you're handling this sure.

E

So all of our sort of hold restrictions at the local level are handled by the halt's policies and the circles. um We also are mostly bib level. Our patrons can't place item level holds and our staff are strongly discouraged from doing so.

E

um Really, the only situation we allow is, if they're trying to get their own item back for some reason um as far as the the holds policies handle for for us, it's the new items really we're trying to enforce reciprocal sharing um among our libraries uh for new items and we've got it set up so that some libraries can delay sharing of their new items. In some libraries, most libraries just share their new items and that's handled by creating a holds policy on the item type.

E

But there are some things that I had to jquery out to make that work. um I've added tool, tips on the the opac so patrons at those libraries where things are delayed uh realize that they can't place holds yet because, because their library doesn't share um it's slightly passive, aggressive in messaging um and then the hold queue at some point started pulling in those holes.

E

Even though we don't want to send them, so I had to kind of jquery out the libraries that don't share their items off of the libraries that do share their items, um but yeah we've never used the transfer limits and it seems like, for the most part, the the holds policies in the circles work, but they're very unclear.

E

I mean the work has been done over time to kind of clarify that section of your of this circ policies, but it's still really confusing trying to to get it to do exactly what you want it to do.

E

I do wonder they recently added whole groups to those settings, so I wonder if that may be a possible solution for the the schools like. If you take them in and out of the group, could you possibly um turn them on and off of sharing? Basically.

A

We did a little experimentation with that and it had a lot of like buggy unintended consequences with, because we do have some districts within multi-branch districts within our large consortium. So we thought maybe that would help and then all of a sudden it was like saying things like they.

A

They didn't have a valid pickup location at their own library, like things like that that were just kind of unintended, and I just went I'm just washing my hands of this- we'll go back to what we're doing, but there's definitely some uh opportunity there for some more testing. I think, and uh that creates some possibilities.

A

One thing I you jason mentioned: the uh branch transfer limits. I was uh pulling up.

A

I'm gonna share my screen real quick just so I can show you how we're managing it so bywater did. Apparently, this is how it used to look and then they made the branch. Transfer limits. uh Look a lot differently, but we have so many branches it doesn't.

A

uh It doesn't actually load so uh kyle uh kind of reinstated this for us- and this is what we've been using, but you can see the amount of complexity it goes and we have some libraries a lot of schools that never started resharing after after covid and some cases aren't even opened, and some of these are like seasonal libraries, but uh just this giant mass of check marks that we have to manage uh so that I have created a system uh that works, but anytime, a library is opening or closing.

A

It does take a significant amount of time and kind of a uh a well like a well practiced procedure to get so it actually works well, but this is way preferable than before when I used to create really long spreadsheets and submitted them to the bywater data team and they tried to load it that way, uh so that was way less accurate and way more work. So, uh but that's just an example of kind of how we're approaching it.

A

um I definitely want to make plenty of time to talk about other things, but uh does anybody else have any thoughts or experiences they want to share.

F

We would love to hear what kind of development initiative would be needed to fix. These holds issues.

F

You know it would be great if, if you all could get together and put together a spec or at least a description of what needs to be fixed, you know, um then we can look at this. We've heard from enough people that this item level drop down that was added is not cool so like what do we need to fix about it? You know we didn't write it. It was, you know, that's part of the open source deal, um but but we can fix it. You know we've done that a lot.

F

So if there are certain aspects of this feature that are creating excess work, workflow needs, and you know frustrations and confusion- um just tell us what what those pain points are and we'll fix them. You know um we've heard from enough people where we're not going to be pushing for major funding on this. uh You know we might try and get a couple dollars here and there, um but if this is like, if we can just get kind of specifically what what it is that needs to be fixed, you know then, then we'll do it.

F

um We'll reach out to the original developer, see what they were thinking and go from there. You know um so yeah we're fully. You know, invested in making everybody's lives and workflows better, and we don't necessarily need money from anybody to do that, especially if it's an issue with our larger consortiums- and you know even our smaller libraries that is making more work for you, that's something that we want to eliminate. We want code to make your lives easier, not harder, especially with upgrades you know, but again in an open source community.

F

We don't control every piece of functionality that goes in. We try and keep our eyes on every piece of functionality that goes in, but sometimes you don't know until it's actually in production.

B

And then we fix it so bob jerry here: how easily would it be? How easy would it be to demonstrate this problem? What screens you go through what drop down and so forth uh that might help some context for.

A

Me yeah: I can uh pull something up real quick. I just want to uh I'll just say something in response to nate and then I'll work on getting that pulled up. So you can see it yeah, but I I know exactly what would fix our problem so, uh but that the key is that might not be you know we want to make sure that a lot of other uh libraries needs are considered and that we're not screwing them up just because it fixes something for us, so that's really the key. So for us.

A

I know that uh the issue- that's exacerbated by this recent update- is that the that is that the item pickup locations are uh are are looking at for valid pickup locations and for us the only valid pickup location is the home location and the only way I think we can get it the uh quahog to view. That is if it's checking both against the item circles and the patron circle. So is this a patron that can request this from this library? Is this an item? That's requestable from a from an outside patron?

A

That's the kind of thing that I think would then only populate what is actually valid, uh so that solves our problems. But let me try to show you an example. uh So um so, while bob's pulling.

C

This up, let me say that you know from my perspective. The big problem here is that on is that the day before the upgrade quahog works one day, one way when you place an item level hold the d, the pickup location is, unless you change it, the pickup location is the location that you're placing the hold at, but the day after the upgrade. The item level, the bib level hold, is the pickup location where you're logged in at and the item level.

C

If you change that to item level it's different than what it was on the day before the upgrade, so there's a change there. That happens because of the upgrade in the in people's workflow and that's the problem uh is, and- and it's because I I think ultimately, the issue is that it's because the developers and the and the libraries don't communicate well with each other about you know, there's so many things that happen where the developer says somebody. Somebody says to a developer this.

C

What if we did this and there isn't enough feedback from other librarians to the developers to say this is gonna, have yeah and it's it's not a a problem, that's easy to fix, because what it requires is more feedback from librarians in bugzilla. Ultimately, I think is what the issue is is that it requires libraries, have enough staff to monitor, what's going on in the quahog community, to know to better communication between the community and and the librarians oftentimes that are using the software?

C

um That's that's always been. My experience is that a lot of the problems that we encounter are because the libraries and the developers aren't really communicating well.

A

Yeah and I think that's what this process and I'm sorry made to step on you, I think that's the whole thing we're trying to avoid here.

F

Yeah and we try and communicate any major changes prior to the upgrade through our educational webinars that we do. I think we did two before this one, but it's still it's after the fact right. It's already written and.

C

It's coming yeah and my experience too, is it's: never the big enhancements that are a problem. It's always when somebody says hey. Let's change, this drop down from a simple html select drop down to some javascript. I mean this. That's one of the issues I think going on here is that somebody said instead of using this, this built up. You know piece of html to create the drop down uh for that item level. um Can you pick it up or not?

C

Some developers said hey, there's this piece of there's this way to do the drop down, build it out of jquery, with this select two jquery plug-in: let's use that instead because it loads 1 500th of a second faster than the other one which isn't a bad thing, but it completely changed the way that dropdown is being built um and and so that unleashed all of these other unforeseen problems. I think that's part of the issue so like an on off switch, wouldn't fix this.

F

uh I don't know, like you know, default to the system. Preference like you know, making this a system preference um better way to approach.

C

This, I don't know um because you know like I said this was something that was.

C

You know that I didn't even I wasn't even aware of because it was a bug that somebody opened and somebody worked on, and I was I you know I I try to spend a lot of time in bugzilla knowing what's going on, and even I didn't catch this one and that's, I think, part of the issue every now and then I will catch something where, where somebody will say hey, let's do this in the development and I'll catch it and I'll say, but that's going to have this unintended consequence and and that's always what we're fighting with is you know when, when we have these things pop up?

C

It's always the unintended consequence of a good idea, because koha is used by so many different people in so many different ways that you know somebody comes up with an idea and that's, I think what bob is trying to avoid is by saying you know: let's do this this way, um but he doesn't want to create an unintended consequence from that. So as far as.

A

There just being a switch if you could go with the api, which is was being currently used or go back to the way it was that would at least restore kind of some of the functionality we had to make our lives a little easier. It doesn't serve our big problem, but it would be helpful so just to give that feedback. I'm going to share my screen again, because I want to show you kind of what it looks like when we're placing a hold. So one of the things we've done with jquery.

A

Is this pop-up message just to let libraries know hey the the what's showing is the available pickup doesn't match. So you need to actually think about this. Before you place the hold, um and now we are actually getting.

A

So this is actually different today. This is what it used to look like, so I'm not sure why that has changed, but this is like actually good, because it it is showing the patron from a different library and cannot place holds. uh This is something I was not being able to see before.

F

So is this the stuff that you wanted lucas to pop in.

A

uh Well, we already had this existing, but uh the this behavior has slightly changed. Let me try another one. um That is a positive development, because that was not what it was looking like uh previously. So that's exciting sweet.

A

Okay, yeah, okay! Well, something let me see I'll see if I can find another example, but that is actually the functionality we're used to having that was not existing. uh As of yesterday, when I was doing testing, so I'm not sure, I'm not sure what the heck happened with that.

C

A

Let me see if I can pop.

C

Over to my test server and see if it's been fixed on my test server yet so we can show people what what the issue.

A

But yeah hopefully I mean that would at least get us back to.

A

Back to normal, there.

A

Doing one more quick test and then if anybody has any other thoughts, please go ahead and then we can move on to another issue. I don't mean to monopolize the whole meeting this way.

A

Interesting: okay,.

D

Oh, I mean it's still, educational for me because I'm learning about how other libraries use the the consortium and how you know in consortium concepts. So it's I'm just kind of trying to absorb as much as I can.

E

And I would just add on this specific issue, I still don't know what that bug is or why it was added, and I'm just like confused about it. um So if, like that column wasn't there before and now it is- and I know that at the webinar on the upgrade we talked about it a little bit and it was supposed supposed to just be bringing something to the front. So we could see how things work better.

E

I think that's how I understood it, um but it'd be really nice to to actually know what the intention was of the developer. Even if we don't have control over why uh turning it on and off it would be nice to know the. Why of it,.

A

Okay, I figured out what was going on. I was using a patron from a uh a library that uh didn't request uh that has dvd lending turned off. So that's why we were getting that message I wanted to see, but this is uh so that that's kind of the example of how it works one way, but not both ways where that was actually doing exactly what I wanted, because the library rules say that they don't run dvds, but our canyon city branch doesn't borrow dvds, but they are.

A

If I look at the valid uh pickup locations, I could select them, even though they are do not lend dvds. I can also place a hold, and this one will only list canyon city as an option.

A

So I could do that, uh whereas on this one, because the alamosa actually does lend dvds, I have a whole host of pickup locations uh and if I take that away um anyway, um if I, if I clear this out this- is how it's this is what our jquery is doing, where it's emptying these allowed pickup locations out and if I place the hold, it's telling me to pick up location. So, ideally, what our staff will do is realize. Oh, this is only available at canyon city.

A

My library is not keenan city, so I can't place the hold, but you can see how that message is here. That's warning me off from placing a hold here, so that is uh that's actually a pretty good example of kind of the issue we're facing.

C

And I've got it pulled up on my test server with no fix applied if you want to. If anybody wants to see um what it looks like straight out of the box without any. So let me share my screen after you're done and.

A

C

A

One more thing I want to do real, quick, uh because I just want to look at what it looks like when we just have a library that doesn't have a requestable item.

A

So this is what is happening when this item is not requestable, unless I select the wrong pickup location, but you can see where the the pickup is now defaulting to canyon city, because that is the only branch available. So this is where we're running into issues.

A

uh So, if I'm a patron from in this case, it's fort morgan and I you and they go in the library and request this and the person isn't paying attention they'll request that, but it will never come to their library.

A

So that's what I wanted to show.

A

C

So you guys should see my screen with harry potter and the sorcerer's stone up there right.

C

All right some knots um so when this is on our test server straight out of the box, no uh nothing here to to uh to enhance you know. What's going on, so we go in and we put in a card number. We pull up the account and it's going to say pick up in northeast kansas, northeast kansas library system, which is you know what people expect it's the library you're at. But if we switched, if we click on any of these buttons and uh change this to a item level hold the allowed.

C

Pickup locations are going to default.

C

To the library that owns the item- and that's where you know we have an issue- is that this means that staff who have for years been just going in and the only way to choose the pickup location is up here now when they select an item level hold the default location, isn't going to match the library that they're logged in at it's going to be the home library and if they want to choose something from the drop-down, they have to open this drop down and it takes a few extra seconds to load and then they've got to go through and find.

C

uh You know, presumably they're going to want the pickup location that they're at and now they have to go through this extra step of finding the pickup location. So that's, I think what is the that I know that was the situation valnet. I know that's going to be a situation here for us, the pickup location. I can use the jquery. I wrote because I know that the pickup location that you're at is going to be a valid location for virtually every item in our system, because we share virtually every item in our system.

C

So that's going to be a solution for me, that's not going to work the same for bob or it might not work for this. The same for your library, because you've got different rules about what's shared and what's not shared and I'm sure what happened is somebody said you know uh in the uh I I've looked up the bug and I know that the situation was where somebody said you know if you can't um place a hold on it.

C

If, if the hold is never going to be filled, you shouldn't be able to place a hold on it. So how do we do that?

C

And they came up with this idea of let's put the the drop down on the right hand, side and let's build it dynamically with this new jquery select, plug-in and then it'll only populate that list with the list of valid pickup locations for that item, um and then the unintended consequence is that for the staff that work at a library every day, all of a sudden now there's this disconnect between what they were doing yesterday the day before the upgrade, which is just you know, click on the specific item and it's gonna, you know, use the same default.

C

It's gonna use the same pickup location that matches that pickup location at the top, but now all of a sudden there's this extra step, and so that's where um that's where my libraries are going to face problems without you know me fixing it beforehand and that's exactly the problem that I know that they had at val net and at uh and and at other libraries.

F

So you just basically forced that secondary drop down to default to whatever's on top of the screen.

C

Yeah, that's what the jquery I wrote does. Is it just forces that that uh drop down? But then, like bob said, that's not going to work for him because uh there's this other condition in his system where there are a lot of libraries that don't loan things and that's not the same situation. We have because our libraries loan virtually everything.

F

It's a tough nut.

C

Yeah- and you know this is the kind of thing that, if I had uh you know, if somebody else you know uh if, if there had been more of us keeping an eye on godzilla, if if somebody was able to oversee everything and understand everything that's going on, um we might have had a chance to say this is going to cause this kind of problem.

C

But that's you know the situation that we're all in is. You know I probably spend a couple hours a week in bugzilla and that's not enough time to know that everything that's going on.

F

C

Do other systems.

F

Handle this kind of complexity and flexibility with different consortiums running different rules and all that stuff. Does anybody have any input on that like? Is it better worse? The same.

C

Well, I've worked at two different consortiums and you know there's uh a lot of difference between my old job and this job, and you know working where I did in idaho at val that I was able to see ilses how do different ilses.

E

C

This kind of stuff.

F

C

F

C

um You know well there. I've probably got a lot of experience too, because when I worked at boise public we were in a dynex consortium and then, when I worked at valnette, we were first in a well that before that I worked at the university of idaho when we were in a a carl system with six other libraries and then dynex and then voyager uh and then koha and um well carl didn't do anything well and dynex.

C

I'm talking about dynex before cersei dynax, where it was all on vt terminals um and voyager doesn't do anything well.

C

So on the one hand, I would say that quahog, you know, even despite all of its problems, um there's a lot of things that quahog does better than any of those other systems.

F

C

Just like curious.

F

I mean you know if there's a better way that they're doing it, we can copy it. You know I mean so I'm interested in poking I'll do a little research. You know with uh recently migrated consortiums who came from like a polaris system or a cersei system to see if it is better and how it worked, and maybe it's a simple solution that we just don't see. I don't know yeah, I'm not the technical brains in this company.

F

You know I'm just like the guy who gets things done so, like I'm gonna, uh you know, dig and and and start talking to people and find out like what are other ways that we can approach this to see if we can get more granularity and flexibility in the holds. Functionality is basically what it comes down to.

F

A

I think, like a.

F

Standard, you know it's not a one-size-fits-all. I.

A

Think the thing about coho is it's so flexible.

A

It allows us to uh get ourselves into trouble on uh you know by allowing us to be more complex than we create complex problems um and that's that's kind of the situation where we're in uh so uh I I going way back to when I worked at a library that had millennium- I don't I I wasn't involved on the system side, but I do remember there being things that uh you couldn't request and it worked both ways so like if there was a restriction on if there was like a patron category, they couldn't request that worked.

A

If there was, uh you know, it's uh there's, I'm drawing back on memory and a lot of the structure is different, but I remember this working a little bit where it looked both at where the item was, but also who was requesting it. So I do remember that, but again I wasn't on system, so I don't know anything about how that worked and that's not even the current triple I product. So I assume sierra works. Similarly, but no clue there.

A

Well, I think we can we've still got a little bit over 10 minutes. I think we've uh explored this issue pretty well for this. I don't want to just have this be the whole meeting, so what I would uh we can certainly talk a little bit more about uh the the most recent upgrade, but for those of you that are kind of new to this, I'm curious what questions you have, what we might be able to answer for you.

D

You know I don't specifically have any like questions. I guess you know I'm I I harass bywater an awful lot. They they see a lot of tickets from me frequently, and you know so it's usually whenever something comes up. As far as like a you know, question with the rest of the consortium members, it's like I'm one of us is usually making a ticket within like 30 minutes of the question coming up.

D

um So at the moment I don't have anything, I'm just trying to learn more about how other libraries use do the consortium and what works for you and something that we may be able to implement. uh You know we're. I mean we're tiny, we're four libraries. So a lot of the big arcing issues that y'all are dealing with they're kind of not applicable, but um you know I never know what I might. What y'all are talking about and you know, may take away and be like.

D

I can do that so, but I appreciate just you know sure, being here.

F

Bob I'm going to throw out a hail mary because I don't even know if this is even a good idea, um but the transport cost matrix could that be used for anything.

A

uh My answer was given my knowledge of it, which is not extensive. Is it I think that gets us basically into what we're using branch transfer limits for where it's a super complex way to work around uh an underlying issue? So probably is the answer, but I don't know that it gets us any further to towards simplicity.

C

The I used the branch transfer, uh the excuse me, the cost transportation matrix at val net and setting it up was a lot of work which I used um uh jquery to set it up. The problem is the more complex, the more branches you have since there's one row for each branch and one column for each branch, the more branches you have the bigger of a monster it becomes, and so I use jquery to identify.

C

You know to be able to click on a row and say fill in this row with one set of numbers or another set of numbers, but it it works, and it has some good advantages to it. um But it's um uh the the issue with this kind of enhance with this using in this way is that it's dealing with everything as if they were it's dealing with all item types. It's saying you know this is the you know the it's. It's not saying this item type is allowed to move to this branch from this branch.

C

It's saying everything that goes from this branch to this branch, assign it a value and the higher the value the lower down. It appears in the in the whole fill targets process, so it it's a good way to stop or to slow things moving from from one branch to another branch, but it can't work at a granular item type by item type level, so that that would be the big problem there.

A

That might be something that could help us when we're shutting down like a school for the summer or something like that, but I still think there's probably better ways to do that.

A

I just want to make sure um if we're tossing around the word jquery a lot. Does anybody have any questions about? I don't know how much you've gotten into that on your own sites. Does everybody know what we're meaning when we're talking about how that applies to co-op.

D

I understand the concept I couldn't do it myself.

A

Well there there was a day where it looked completely foreign to me and then uh george and I sat down, and I actually figured out how to write some myself, not that I could easily do it again, but it's uh it's it's doable, uh even though it's kind of a confusing thing, but uh it's definitely helpful um jason.

A

I was thinking this might be a good time to uh uh to promote our november 30th uh q, a uh giving tuesday session, because uh there is an opportunity not just to ask questions here when we meet next, but we do have a q, a session that we're uh doing on november tuesday november 30th. So uh I was hoping. Maybe you have that link in the uh you can uh ask us questions, and uh several of us here will be responding to those uh in a two-hour webinar.

E

Yeah, so the the form is still live. If you want to shoot a question into it, I'll put that in the chat um and yeah this will be november. 30Th, 9 o'clock, pacific 10, mountain 11, central noon, eastern um and it'll be streaming live on our youtube channel. If you want to participate.

C

um Go ahead, george, the link that I put in the chat right above jason's link, the youtube link is to a presentation I did at the koha us conference called very, very basic jquery. If you had any jquery questions, um I'm also, you know, speaking of uh things on the koha u.s website, there is a mailing list just for members of their just for other consortia.

C

um So if you're, not a member of that just email, george nichols.org, and I can make sure that you're added to that and have the address if you want to send uh emails just to other libraries that are there consortia, that's the quick I I can't find the the easy set of instructions for how to subscribe to that. But if you just email, george knuckles.org I'll make sure you get added, although please say that you want to get added to the list, don't just send me a blank email. Please.

A

So the other thing I wanted to make sure we discussed before we left was how often to have these meetings. So this is our first official non-conference meeting in a long time because before it was a lot of jason- and I just like you know catching up- because we were the only people here, but this is actually fairly well attended. We're having a good discussion.

A

So we were talking about perhaps doing this quarterly, but if we can do it every other month, if there seems like there's a lot of interest in having these discussions uh more regularly than just a few times a year, so I'll open that up to whoever, uh if you're, finding value in this. If you want it more frequently than just four times.

B

Bob jerry here and I I do find a good deal of value in it. I'm disappointed I hadn't attended before now, but uh you're suggesting every other month. Every other.

A

B

A

Hey if it's like, if there's more demand than that, then we could go to monthly, but I I think uh yeah. I think, let's let's try every other month and then, if there's, if there's more demand, then we can always increase.

D

I would agree, I think, that's a that's a good starting point. I'd agree with every other month as well. I agree.

A

Excellent okay! Well, we'll we'll do that. I know there's a few people that I couldn't make it today and I certainly did not do uh the earliest job promoting this, and so that will be rectified for next time. So hopefully we because I know there's a few faces that uh kind of have come and gone from these meetings that uh hopefully we'll see in the future, so we can probably get even a bigger group. um I guess I would say I we have a couple minutes left.

A

Was there any other uh things from this upgrade anybody's noticed that uh consortiums should be uh aware.

D

Of uh has anybody like looked at the uh the enhanced reporting for transfer transfers like I know, that was something that I had read was coming to it, but I haven't delved into it because we just went live last weekend and I haven't pulled any reports yet.

A

Yeah, I don't remember seeing.

C

That so I I haven't messed with that yet yeah. I don't remember hearing anything about that either, but I'm looking I'm poking around on my test server right now, yeah.

D

Supposedly it was a like a little bit better tracking for items, so you could see how long they were in transit versus just when you know an item went into transit. I.

C

Guess what I'm seeing here um that I don't think is on my production system is in addition to transfers, to receive I'm seeing transfers just yeah. I do remember that yeah transfers to send, as well as transfers, to receive.

D

Yeah so because we've had some confusion already with transfers and stuff, not people forgetting to uh check things in when they come in on a transfer and.

D

A

I know one thing that some of our libraries are reporting. This is one of those little things that george is talking about.

A

Is that when you're searching a patron to check something out to them, if you just immediately hit the button- and you don't wait for their name to kind of populate it'll, actually take you to the details screen versus the checkout screen, because I think it functions like a search versus uh before it would always go to the checkout screen, and we have a few libraries that are not used to that workflow and have uh uh or have some concerns on that. But you still can do it it just so.

A

I can I'll share my screen real, quick and do a quick. So if I do um so, if I'm checking out- and I do turkish and I let it come up like this- it goes to the uh the checkout screen. If I do that, and I just hit enter it, does it as a search and takes me to the detail screen so uh so, apparently that functionality is a little different, uh just something to be aware of.

F

That's weird yeah: what, if you typed it under checkout uh that I did on both times? Oh, you didn't just do under search nope. So if you type the guy the turkish under checkout, it doesn't take you to the checkout screen. If.

A

F

Enter right away, yeah, it's a bug.

C

F

Don't think it's a bug, I think it's an enhancement.

C

And I think I have a bug number somewhere how.

F

Is that an enhancement.

F

I mean if you search and then you do, that I get it. You go to the details because you're searching for the patron, but if you're in check out, that means you want to check something out and you should.

A

F

To check right, yeah.

C

I think the issue.

C

All right, it's not working that way for me in my test server, so maybe it's not the enhancement. I'm thinking of there is an issue with. um If you do a patron search. There's this a long-standing issue or if you do a checkout search. Excuse me if you do a checkout search.

C

And you only put in like one letter it's going to give it, it doesn't do a data table. It just gives you like, like if you type in smith, it's going to give you one table with every smith in it.

C

uh If you do check out, if you do patron search, it breaks it up into a data table and only gives them to you 20 at a time.

C

So there was an enhancement in the works that, if you did a search that returned, if you did a checkout search and it returned more than uh it doing, a search for a patreon name in checkout wasn't going to take you to a checkout search anymore. It was going to take you to the patron search and the patron search when you're in patreon search and you click on a name. It takes you to the details page. I think that's. What's going on here, I'll put in a ticket nate.

A

Just so you have that because it seems weird for me, like.

C

Well, yeah, it definitely has caught a few of our libraries off guard and I think the solution to that is that eventually there's?

C

um Oh, I'm not going to be able to find the bug number now, um but it's one that I'm tracking so, but I'm tracking too many of them remember what it is but yeah. I think that um for nate I would say, uh talk ask nick about it because I think he's the one doing the work on that bug. I think I know that he's done a.

F

Lot of performance enhancements to people yeah, um we had a very large system, go live and it was not good, so he needed to fix that. You all might not see that big of a change but for very large systems. It's so much faster. Now, um actually, even not large systems, people have been saying: patron, searches are way faster and it loads a lot quicker because of the enhancements that we've added. I don't know.

C

I don't know if it's caused by this bug, but this is the bug I'm thinking of it's a 15 15812, but I don't know if it's been pushed back into this version or not so it could be a different bug. So.

A

Well, we are in bonus time here so if people want to hang out and chat a little bit, uh that's good, but if you have places to go, certainly understand that I will be putting out um uh we'll figure out, we'll probably aim for a third, because I think this is in a couple months. This is probably going to be about when the calendar is still clear. So I will j.

A

I can take a another look at that and I'll confirm jason, but uh in a couple months, uh middle of the month, uh some middle of january, we'll aim for another thursday morning meeting but uh yeah hang out. If you want to chat for a little bit, I got a few more minutes. Otherwise, I really appreciate your participation and your attention.

D

So and thursdays work really well for me, it's a good. Thursdays is a good day.

A

D

Thank you. Bob.

D

Thank y'all see y'all next time.