Koha-US SIG - Consortia Special Interest Group, 27 Jul 2023

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From YouTube: Consortia Special Interest Group - 7/27/2023

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00:10:27 CLAMS Library Network: Our main issue is slow response time in Circulation since we upgraded to 22.11
00:40:19 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: We're limited at the central office too. We can't batch delete fines, we can't batch update more than 5K at once, etc.
00:40:35 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: It was Aspen
00:40:44 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: 👍
00:43:04 Renée Palermo OSL-RI: Michelle, ByWater recently batch deleted fines for us.
00:43:17 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: Right, it took WEEKS to get them to do it
00:44:37 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: It used to take me 5 minutes 😫
00:50:46 Bob Bennhoff: Michelle, sometimes it is luck of the draw with who you get to clear things. Which is something ByWater needs to improve the standardization for response time on things like that.
00:51:06 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: That's good to know, thanks!
00:51:34 Bob Bennhoff: If you have a monthly meeting with ByWater, the person who runs that meeting usually get stuck tickets unstuck
00:51:37 NEKLS Zoom 3 / George Williams: A transportation cost matrix video from PTFS - https://youtu.be/y3s2ZmwBrEM
00:52:36 Steve, Ocean State Libraries (RI): Thanks!
00:53:18 Renée Palermo OSL-RI: Reacted to "A transportation cos..." with 👍
00:54:05 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: Here's our matrix - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17ilbMoHuwqz3SCbk5aH4SIlnTRxI0-el/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=112179891475226476097&rtpof=true&sd=true
00:55:12 Jason - SEKLS: Here's ours - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LvNfqCKM30e412kTlXhmaxRGb_pfvm-m/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=112179891475226476097&rtpof=true&sd=true
00:56:24 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: Your matrix is prettier 😆
00:56:35 Jason - SEKLS: Reacted to "Your matrix is prett..." with 😁
00:57:50 Jason - SEKLS: LHP for library groups bug: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=20747
01:00:47 Kristina Uvalle: to back track a bit....our IT guy is asking if CLAMS is self-hosted or Bywater hosted.
01:01:52 Bob Bennhoff: CLAMS is on ByWater
01:03:11 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: no we did not
01:03:30 Christopher Brannon: StaticHoldsQueueWeight
01:03:42 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: No ILS has the tiered holds that we want
01:03:56 Kristina Uvalle: Reacted to "CLAMS is on ByWater" with 👍
01:04:26 NEKLS Zoom 3 / George Williams: Dynix did the tiered holds thing beautifully back in 1997.
01:04:33 NEKLS Zoom 3 / George Williams: Before they merged with Sirsi
01:04:40 NEKLS Zoom 3 / George Williams: And it was still a unix based system
01:05:10 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: We met with Sirsi during our RFP and they didn't say that, that's cool
01:05:45 NEKLS Zoom 3 / George Williams: I don't think it moved over to the sirsi product when they merged
01:05:59 Bob Bennhoff: Just before everyone leaves I would be remiss if I didn't include the registration link to the koha-US conference https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSepzRRgm6ldHtr2swf6Zh8FHWifb8dgX1ToClZZQ5UiFG6NFA/viewform
01:06:03 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: ohhhh ok
01:06:14 Steve, Ocean State Libraries (RI): We had them change that cron job to only run twice a day.
01:06:36 Steve, Ocean State Libraries (RI): Had libraries pulling things for holds that moved on by the time they tried to check them in to fill the hold.
01:07:00 Michelle CLAMS Library Network: That's exactly what's happening here
01:07:08 Bob Bennhoff: We do ours every 2 hours, partly because we are completely randomized, so if someone gets bad luck and gets hit with all the requests, it will balance out later in the day
01:07:21 Bob Bennhoff: We do tell libraries they need to get things moving on before the next window
01:07:28 Steve, Ocean State Libraries (RI): Only problem is cancelled holds… no notification, so we created a report for libraries to run to show them.
01:12:47 Lauren Denny: gotta go. enjoyed it. Hope to see people at the conference! :)

A

So really, with this I I, think I put in the email I send out about this. Is that the there's no particular agenda? We can talk about whatever you want to talk about, if you're facing issues, if you have bugs you want to discuss, I, tend to find that once we get started, we easily take up the full hour. uh It doesn't uh take too long to get there. So uh did anybody have any uh questions concerns uh things they wanted to talk about this morning, at least this morning in Colorado?

A

How do we get on the email? I will get you on the email.

B

I will mention something that I came across thanks yesterday.

B

um We are on we're newly on 22 11, and we hadn't had this happen before, but I had a catalog or doing a search on a title and uh she's having trouble recreating the problem, but I did get a screenshot of it, but she was searching and then all of a sudden it was saying that she needed to log in and she tried logging in. It said she didn't have permission to access that page and she hit login three times and eventually it went to the page and it wasn't anything to do with cataloging.

B

It had to do with uh system preferences. So she somehow got system preferences to come up when she doesn't have permissions.

B

So please be on the alert about that. I'm, not sure how she was able to get those settings to come out that we, it was fully showing those permissions. I, don't know if she could have changed anything in there. We did not try. We just took a screenshot and went away tried to recreate the situation, couldn't figure it out, but I did report. It.

C

um Michelle correct me: if I'm wrong, we had something like that with someone having access to SQL reports when they shouldn't have had permissions.

D

uh Yeah it was that they were able to create SQL reports and um we don't allow that so I think.

C

That's been fixed, though yeah, but it was something odd like that that they suddenly had permissions.

C

That they shouldn't have had.

B

I know that there's been some weird permission.

B

Things going on with the new version, because uh uh recently, in this last version uh moved a lot of the cataloging tools over to the cataloging page and people that have explicit permissions for specific tools that can't necessarily get to them because they don't have cataloging permissions, and so they kind of overlooked the fact that if they have permission to those tools that that page should be able to be accessible, so I know that they've got a patch for that, and I did request that they backport it to this version.

B

So it should be coming out in the next security release.

C

I put in the chat what our main issue is, since we upgraded it's just devastating to us as a tourist tourist destination, when our libraries are super busy and Bob spent a lot of time last Friday with us going over system preferences, but it just persists anything that touches the patron record.

B

I've seen some lag time, not necessarily with just 2211 I know, I saw it in 2205 as well um with uh covers, since they went to this new display for the the book covers, we've been seeing some performance issues and I've also noted in 2211 we've seen some performance issues.

B

um I was seeing them yesterday when we were editing certain screens, if I remember, I'll mention it, but uh the the page would just uh oh, it was news. I was editing news and when I would finish, it would just Spin and spin and spin and hang and then I would get error. Error messages so I've been seeing some some performance issues on certain tasks.

C

It's um we're blue in the face taking videos for Bywater to show them, and it's I think it's up to five seconds or something which doesn't seem that long. But if a patron comes up to the desk yeah, if the patron comes up to the desk with you know: 10, kids, books or 10 videos or a mix, it's just awful.

C

And we've been through the as I said: Bob was kind enough to go through system preferences. Michelle has been working on reducing the number of loan rules, the number of item types and it's it's just since we went to this new version. I mean it was slow beforehand, but it's really slow. Now.

A

Yeah and it's definitely slower than what we're experiencing and.

D

A

Have our we have more branches so trying to isolate where that issue is I mean so far my best guest, we turned bad accidentally had on uh Branch transfer limits and they weren't using them. So we turned that off and we're hoping that would help uh and then yeah I. My next best guess is reducing item types and circles, but out of that, if that doesn't work, I can't really identify why it would be slower for them than uh than it is for us.

C

I'm just thinking last night, when I couldn't sleep thinking about this whole thing, has it anything to do with our firewalls.

A

C

A

C

Know but our systems person is on vacation but or not sorry that you're Bob um Brandon um I'm not getting much sleep over this issue, uh but it seems to me that one library that bypassed our firewall and went straight to the town doesn't seem to be experiencing the same latency.

C

So our our firewalls. We did a big project last year where we replaced all of the firewalls and the switches, but that was before we were on Coho, but again we're just grasping at straws here.

A

I definitely think that's a lead worth pursuing. uh You could at least do some testing on that and pretty quickly determine whether or not that's a factor, because you were saying that you, you can't recreate this at your office. No, so that would that would make some sense that could be yeah it's.

A

We we've had issues with upgrades where there's just been just the way, something loads changes and then all of a sudden it works a lot slower, uh but, and so somehow that might be interacting with the firewall in a unanticipated way.

E

For us in Ocean, State, libraries, the performance issues and Renee, please correct me: if I'm wrong, it's mainly the periodical records right.

F

E

F

um Yeah the periodic, especially the weekly periodicals, because we have them all on one record, a lot of like people weekly, for example, and that's how we had it with the volume records on our previous uh ilf, so we're seeing a lot of problems with that where sometimes you just can't check out a periodical at all, um but we also do have problems with slowness with searching for the patron that I've noticed where we were just talking about it now and I just did a search, I'm working from home right now.

F

I just did a search for my name and it took about 15 seconds to come up and that that's that's way too long. We did have.

F

um It was actually longer than that up until last week and we realized we were talking with uh Nick from Bywater, and he said that, because we were indexing, a an attribute that was slowing it down in the patron records.

F

So we changed that so we weren't indexing that any longer and that sped it up a bit. But it's still not where it should be.

A

I do notice I do notice that when you start to type in a name and it popped the suggestion of what the names are pop up a lot quicker than if you actually do a full-on search for a.

C

A

So I've been noticing that uh with this version, so if you like type in a name and like hit, enter or click on that Arrow, it does significantly significantly slow things up versus. If you just let that pop up with the the the suggestions of what that could be, and then, if you click on something directly, it does seem to work a little faster. So that was something I noticed uh yeah this week. Actually.

A

As far as the uh the magazines uh I could just tell you, we have each branch has their own record for each magazine, uh that's their own, and so they just have their items attached to it and that's how we approach that, just because it does get so even with before we were gonna get to the point with speed issues um that just seemed like a much cleaner way to manage manage. That is to separate that out.

F

Yeah I I that wouldn't really work for us because we allow holds on them and right with the first available for the item group and we're going. What we're going to try to do is take everything. That's not 2023 and just keep 2023 on a record yeah.

E

You can do it, but if.

F

That helps yeah. Have you notice how many items you can have before it starts really causing a problem or.

A

We had really slaves, particularly when placing colds when we were noticing like something like our copy of like a Harry Potter book would have like over a hundred items and then it would be excessively slow.

A

um Nick was able to apply something. That's sped it up. It's still on the slow side, but nothing like that. So I mean if, if you're under 70, you should be able to get it relatively quickly.

F

Yeah, how many, how many uh locations do you have in your concession.

A

um We have individual branches, we probably have like a 140, something like that. Oh.

F

E

F

E

Mean if I could jump in again I feel like is, is when releases are coming out. I'm sure, I'm, sure the developers are doing testing work, but I mean from what we're seeing and this is going to sound harsh, but it feels like the testing is being done in tiny little libraries with a tiny little test. Databases not anywhere near what's probably sitting around this virtual table here and we're kind of losing out is that a unfair assessment.

A

I think it would be fair to say that that things are very much changing on the type of libraries that are joining.

E

A

Being supported by Why by water, so I think there is some growth pains with that. I think that is definitely happening, and uh what I do expect is that the more that do join, there's going to be a priority on uh improving the infrastructure and the testing and all that I just know as somebody that represents a ton of libraries that when we do testing, we don't we're not successful in testing, what's happening in libraries either. So I I do understand uh at least to some degree.

A

How, particularly with so many unique setups How Stuff falls through the cracks so I. We have a test server and we we can do a lot of things. It won't replicate accurately the amount of transactions that would happen like if you're in a busy library and a bunch of people are checking in and checking out. That's not something we can create in the test server, but at least we're able to get ahead of some things prior to a new release coming out.

C

My you know: I've made my feelings well known to to Nate at Bywater that, if they're selling to consortia they need to get Beyond, this 70 items attached um and issues with lesser loan rules and stuff like that that um you know either they just sell to or become support. I know they don't own the software. They either just stay in their little niche, but if they're attracting want to attract consortia, they need to up their game with this sort of.

D

C

It just reminds me of Millennium, which was the we were on an Innovative shop. So it kind of reminds me the way. Millennium was that if you ran a global update or a report, you could bring the system to its knees.

C

um But then, when the other software came out Sierra it seemed to be able to kind of segment out functionality and I. Think Michelle, really kind of expressed that really well at an internal meeting that we had and I was like exactly just reminds me of millennium.

B

You gotta remember that you know um koha is quite a bit different than the um than the uh The non-open Source software.

B

uh In that you know it is cloud-based and yes web-based and uh with the open source Community, you know they're at the mercy of those that are willing to to do the late work and testing, and you know, even though we have you know we are in a Consortium. You know we're not necessarily running into the issues that you run into because of you know how our network is set up or uh because of how we're using the system, everybody uses it a little bit differently and so to be able to test.

B

uh Every single scenario is Not Practical for really for for any um ILS. You know, regardless of uh being open source or not. um You know, I think you know if you, if you want to uh let people know of the the issues that you're dealing with yeah you can. You can certainly talk to the vendor, but they're.

B

You know they can only do so much the the place to apply the pressure is getting on to bugs and Reporting these things, and uh you know getting other people to um to confirm those issues to uh to join in on that bug and say yeah. This is a. This is a an issue because when they see that people are dealing with those problems in the community and can give uh proper steps to replicate those issues uh that makes it easier for them to help resolve those issues talking to a vendor about those issues.

B

Probably you know if, if they're reporting those issues, if they're confirming those issues and Reporting them uh to the community, that's that's one thing and buy water. Does a pretty good job about that, but uh being involved in the uh the bugzilla and uh directly communicating your concerns. They're. There um is probably the best approach, because you can have a Hands-On uh with the communication in that bug.

B

If people are asking questions, you can provide direct feedback on that and be involved in um the the discussions and the and the direction that those things are going.

E

If, if I may, um I I totally get what you're saying but I feel, like you know, as someone who's just recently joined the the koha community and is you know, we've launched, but are we done not by a long shot and so like Eileen am I losing sleep absolutely.

E

um Am I encountering all sorts of problems absolutely and it's it's really difficult to to stop and and go okay. Are we the only ones? How do we get in or is this then something that's been reported and already discussed? Is this a new problem? How do I even go about this because I'm I'm not culturally acclimated to this new this new world and at the same time it feels like the world is caving in around us, because our catalogers can't catalog our circulation.

E

People can't check out books if there's any hint that a record is touched, a magazine record, one of our weeklies and and it's kind of like, and nobody knows how to run any reports at all, so we're just we're. Barely treading water and I totally get what you're saying, but um how do we? How did you deal with that? You know. How did you because I mean I? Imagine it wasn't all roses when you came on board either?

E

How did you balance that dealing with the putting out the fires and everything and kind of orienting yourself to I no longer have a uh I'm? No longer a customer? I am a Community member. How do I deal with that so.

G

um I guess I would start off by saying you know: I started using koha in 2012 in Idaho and now I'm here in Kansas, um and the way that we dealt with that when we migrated in Idaho from uh Voyager to koha was um that we had specifically me. You know: I was not a director. I was not the koha person, it was a 50 Library Consortium, maybe 48 at the time that we migrated and out of the whole Consortium, um there were directors there.

G

There was it it's a very Loosely, organized Consortium, so there's no central office there, it's, the libraries, are all there was no director of the Consortium it was. There was a group of directors that met monthly, that managed the Consortium. There was a circulation group there and that we created a system administrators group um where the member libraries all had people that met uh monthly for a while and then later later, quarterly, who sat down and talked about the issues and figured out a way to um become part of that community.

G

And so that's what I'd recommend is that, instead of trying to have everything, go from your employees to you to buy Waters, try and find a way to spread out the work so that you know, and in in the situation I was in. I was the circulation manager at one library, with six branches, and um because we had money at the time and other libraries didn't my director for that first year we were.

G

We were on koha devoted half of my time to the migration and to following up what happened at the migration, specifically within our libraries, but that kind of spread out to the whole Consortium. So that's, what I would say is you know, find a staff, member or a group of Staff members that are interested in the community, and you know the the way that I got started. Working with the community is that there is bugzilla and just once a week, I would sit down on bugzilla for an hour or two and I would there's.

G

um If you go to bugzilla um and I've talked about I. Actually at some point or another I did a talk about this about getting involved in koha. uh You know there are these bugs reported in the last 24 hours and there's buggers bugs reported in the last seven days and bugs changed in the last 24 hours and bugs changed in the last seven days and just once a week, I would go through what I would read.

G

You know what are the bugs reported in the last seven days and what are the bugs changed in the last seven days and find out? What's going on and I would just read through those and I? Would you know I would just open them up one at a time and I would look at it and I would say: I have no clue what this is so I'm just going to move on to the next one, and then you know I would move on to the next one.

G

Okay, this one's about circulation and fines- and you know, what's the issue when you know I- would just go through those things and um and learn how to be, and you know that's kind of how I learned how to be a part of the community I was I, would I think the way when I did the talk about this I divided into three three activities that you can do is number one is listen.

G

Ask questions and number three was um was uh make suggestions you know, and so just you know having somebody that can go in and interact with the community just by listening.

G

You know, just by reading up on, what's going on once a week and Reporting back, maybe to the group you know what's going on, you know, but finding some people in your organization that you know are interested in this and that that have the time that's the biggest issue is finding people that have the time to sit down and make this part of their part of their routine, and um that's the one thing that I would say, though, is what I'm hearing particularly from Eileen is.

G

It sounds like she's trying to she's carrying the whole weight of the library on her shoulders from the way she's talking. No.

C

No but I mean I mean me because I'm the executive director I mean our whole membership, chose this system, but and I don't have buyer's remorse. I do not have buyer's remorse I my thing about reporting this, the uh slow. You know the latency and the bug is like I feel, as Steve said, am I. The only one I mean other places are not experiencing this terrible latency, except for cereals periodicals.

C

So you know, if I put it out there as a bug, is everybody going to say, but we we're not experiencing that we're not experiencing that. You know what I mean it's like when to report. Something is a bug and when to try and do something internally. That's what I'm trying to balance.

G

Well- and you don't just have bugzilla to talk to, you- can also talk to the community mailing list into the koha US. Those are other places. Those.

C

Are yeah I think every and I mean we have a systems manager. We have the staff who's here, so I'm not carrying at all, but I feel as the person who's the director of the Consortium I mean it's 35, libraries with 38 locations I feel have I let people down. I mean this is not a therapy session, um but I just you know, and we're willing to put in some money into developments. I have to get a plug-in for that.

C

um So we've already contributed a small amount to a development that I'm not sure where it stands at this point, but um you know I can't even remember what it is now George.

B

The big thing uh to keep in mind is doing what you're doing now and is that's being plugged into groups uh that are in similar boats. You are talking to libraries that deal with consortiums so you're you're kind of narrowing down. What's going on you know talking about. It is very important because you know this is a. This is an element that a lot of ils's don't have. They don't go.

F

B

Talk to other people and find out if it's a common issue, uh they just kind of, are at the mercy of the ILS, and here you can talk about it and uh kind of pinpoint where the problem lies, because you know you're talking about it and if you find that there are a lot of other people experiencing the same thing uh and not necessarily in the same places, then maybe it's an overall ILS performance issue and if you're seeing it in a specific place, then maybe it has something to do with that specific element.

B

So you're narrowing those things down- um and you know by having that discussion you can determine- is this something you know is somebody else in the same boat not experiences experiencing this problem, then maybe it's a network or you know a local issue as opposed to an ILS issue, um so you have ways of doing that by being involved in these user groups. You know, that's that's the main point of these user groups and the sigs is so that you can uh have these discussions and be aware of these things.

B

I think you know that in combination with you know, having test servers um is, is a huge help in you know, trying to prevent um potential issues and upgrades, but I also, you know I also know like you know, I was mentioning earlier. You know they can't catch all of these things, even with a test. Server. I can't catch everything, because you know I can't do all of the tasks that we do on a daily basis on our test.

B

Server I can try and encourage for our staff to go visit the test server and play around with some stuff, but some of these things we can't find until we're in a real world situation, and so you know that does introduce you know an element of risk, but I think we run into that with with any iOS. You know you run into that risk, because those things can't always be tested on a on a workbench. Sometimes it has to be in the real world before we just we.

B

uh We realize oh, didn't see that that aspect of it now we need to focus on it. So I I want to encourage you. You know I'm glad that you don't have buyer's remorse, I, don't have buyer's remorse, we've been in it since 2012, and we had some performance issues right out the gate uh when we started, and that was a server thing. uh Bywater learned. Oh, we need you know when we have a Consortium.

B

We need to up these parameters on the servers for these types of organizations, so they learn some things uh when they took on more consortiums their consortiums and uh and uh I. Think that you know, since then, things have smoothed out tremendously overall for consortiums, but uh um I'm glad you don't have buyer's remorse. I want.

C

To no I, don't I don't keep doing what.

B

You're doing I.

C

Mean some of us do, though, some you know I think some people do, especially if you're out on a Circ desk, but um I mean we were talking about this internal internally the other day and we were like when have we ever before, got to meet developers? You know from Innovative, never and I mean Nick Lucas. All of those guys are fantastic, Kyle um and we've had you know, face to face meetings with them. I mean you never had that with a big, huge vendor. uh I love the open source, culture, I love.

C

All of this been able to talk to people. um You know members like Ben and all of that willing to and Jason willing to help I mean it's a completely different culture. Definitely and I. Don't have buyer's remorse. I just wish that we didn't have this latency at the busiest time of the year. Yeah.

E

You know can I jump in with uh one thought, though George the scenario that you you described, your Consortium is polar opposite to what I'm dealing with and what I suspect Eileen is dealing with. We have a central office. Our members are happily dependent upon us.

G

What I have now now.

A

That I'm in Kansas.

E

And and it's 99 of the time it works beautifully, they come to us. Our staff puts on Renee knows I've said this, you know they get on their superhero, leotards and and capes and everything they fly out to the libraries and they solve all their problems and they go oh you're. So wonderful and I think what's what's killing us right now. Is our leotards have holes in a mar Cape? We can't find them.

E

The dry cleaners lost them, we're running around in our underwear, trying to solve problems that we don't know how to solve, and it's just our members aren't used to us not having all the answers and we're not used to not having all the answers and I. Don't know that us getting our members involved in the Community is yeah.

G

You need your staff there at the library at your office in Baltimore's. That's where.

E

The yeah yeah and the problem is we're our staff and Renee knows this because she manages most of them. You know they're running around putting out fires. They're running around, like oops I forgot, an item type oops I forgot a loan rule. Oops I've made a mistake in the catalog. Can you undo this and I? Can't even imagine um I, don't know I mean I know our one of our catalogers is attending.

E

um uh She attended the last catalogers interest group meeting, so that's great, or was it Aspen? It might have been the Aspen group because we're having pains between Cohan and Aspen too. No thanks, Michelle Michelle does more than I do at.

G

This point I should just say that at this point, I should say that I'm really nervous. Now, because we haven't upgraded to the we're still on uh on uh 2205 here for another month or so so.

C

Yeah I hate to say it George, but I would love if someone else was in the same boat or something but not too, particularly, but um I. You know, everybody else seems to be doing just fine on 2211 except clams, and the thing is if it was our Fireballs now I'm kind of arguing against my own brain wave that I had in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep.

C

If the firewalls were the issue, we would have had this terrible latency before we upgraded because the firewalls were in place already and we up to our internet speed I mean we are. You know libraries are asking us. Well, what are you doing about it? You know we're out here stuck on a dirt, a cert desk. What is the Cam's office doing about this?

C

So we upgraded our internet speed at all of the libraries, um but yeah I mean those firewalls were in place before we migrated so, and we didn't have this terrible slowness on the previous version. So.

D

C

Changed in this version that just screwed us over I.

B

Would ask them, you know just double check. You know when was the last time an update was pushed to the firewall? Maybe something happened in an updates that might have you.

C

Know? Okay, you.

B

Know it might be a coincidence at the time that you've done an upgrade uh a firewall update was pushed out. Don't know you know it can't. You know I can't say that it isn't cohab, but you know for it for for you to see this in uh not have from what it sounds. Like other libraries saying the same things, it does sound more like something locally happening and if you can test it outside of that firewall and confirm it, I mean it sounds like you're you're, taking the right steps to yeah.

C

We're just we're trying everything yeah and you know we have our staff out of the library's taking movies For Heaven's Sake of check-in and check out, usually when the patrons are not there, because I think that would freak out the patrons, but you know emptying the um overnight bin.

C

That's where you know some of them have narrowed it down to that. So in the middle of their Crazy Summer on Martha's Vineyard I'm asking them. Can you take a movie of this? Can you video that so we can send it to to the vendor?

C

um So you know I I think they know we're doing our best, but I can't blame them for having thoughts of why on Earth did we go to the slower system but I think it'll work out in the end? If we can just get past this, this rough rough patch, yeah.

A

I'm hearing a couple things from uh from Steve and I Eileen, and some of them are these, like things that are real structural issues that are just really difficult, and it's painful to get through and I've definitely been on that end, uh but Steve I would say some of the things you're describing are things that are just learning how everything works and getting in all that and that will come along and those discussions with Bywater coming to these meetings.

A

That will only accelerate uh the the learning curve and you will feel more comfortable you'll get back to being. You know the person that knows the answer to the question, so I I definitely get that we we had migrated from a forked version of koha into Community Co-op. So a lot of the things were very similar, but it was different enough that we were scrambling for a good while there and I remember that uh pretty well, uh but for I.

A

Think, from my perspective and I think Christopher kind of alluded to this a little bit when you're talking about things seem to be crumbling down on our end, even though there are difficulties that pop up with various upgrades and things that happen overall, we're seeing improvement over long term, so I think you know you will get to that point where you it as Things become more familiar. You will also start to see that okay, well, this is getting better. We got this feature we wanted.

A

um It does improve at a much faster rate than other systems. uh Sometimes those improvements cause big issues, uh and then you have to kind of suffer through those those things for a while and that absolutely can happen and uh yeah, and then it's running around trying everything trying to isolate particular issues.

A

uh Absolutely uh definitely I mean I've, been in a year, and a half I've been working on a project to try to figure out a way to to change the way we do some of the the holds because we're using this Branch transfer limits and it slows stuff up it's hard to manage it's doing some things we needed to do and I've been working on that for a while, and it's I can't wait to get away from it and I feel like I'm like 95 there, but that last five percent is just hard to uh hard to push over the line you just get done.

A

E

I can I ask about that and.

A

E

Might need Renee's help on this, because Renee is the real brains behind the operation um holds is one of our top issues right now, um because of a lack of load, balancing and so right. Now, it's all random, so some of our small libraries might get like a hundred or more like hold requests on their poll sheet in the morning and they're ready to die and um I was talking to Jesse um at Bywater, and she mentioned something about a uh using dollars.

E

Like you know, setting dollar is that that Branch transfer limit thing you're talking.

A

About the cost trans uh Port, Matrix yeah.

E

We were thinking, could we kind of subvert that to our our will to kind of fudge up a way to kind of load balance based on you know something like you know: General circulation, trap, traffic patterns or collection, size or something absolutely.

B

How many libraries do you have in your system.

E

We have uh 72 3 locations, something like that.

B

With the costs Matrix the the thing that I'm I've been hearing in the community is, you know we use the cost Matrix. We only have about 28 libraries in our system, but the cost Matrix I feel like the cost. Matrix is good, but setting it up, especially the more libraries that you have makes it a more onerous task, and if you have changes that happen, uh often like, if you're, adding libraries or losing libraries.

B

Behind that cost, Matrix I will say if you use the cost Matrix like we have. You know it's not as rain. It's not random, uh like we were uh initially when we went to the cost Matrix it was. It was a huge Improvement for us. I I also had a worksheet that I that I had worked out to improve uh how to utilize the the cost Matrix a little bit better.

B

According to um how often we have careers and how many careers are involved in the mix and things of that nature, but I will say it made a huge Improvement, but the overall story that I hear in the community is the more libraries that you have. It makes uh maintaining that cost Matrix more challenging it.

E

Is am I right worth it for us, I would say.

E

So we're we're not talking about any money, we don't charge for delivery, we don't pay for it. The state pays.

D

For it, we would use.

E

It to basically say you get five percent of the holds you get, seven percent of the holds you get 2.5 percent of the holds. You know something like that.

G

And that's possible yeah.

B

It doesn't have to do with cost, like the cost really is. The distance uh traveled uh initially is, is the the concept of it, but you know I, think of the cost, as you know, is it what is it costing in distance and or how soon you can get it to somebody, and you know how how you know, what are the other elements involved uh to judge that I think it was initially created? You know, as you know, a distance. You know to just find.

E

D

B

You know the library requesting it and the library that has it.

E

um But still we're talking about an Excel formula if we wanted to proportionally redistribute holds we're just talking about a little bit of calculus in Excel to basically crunch the numbers for us, that's what we did: okay yeah, because that would not that for us we're we're a static Consortium, we're not actively recruiting and our public libraries are kind of Trapped with us. So they really can't go anywhere. So um you know we, we don't have to worry about adding or losing members and having to re-crunch the numbers all the time.

E

So it sounds like that's the right path for us.

F

Well, I had a couple of questions Christopher, you said it improved things for you. What kind of improvements did you see and what were you experiencing, that you wanted improved well.

B

Initially, right out of the the gate, um our our top library branch was getting flooded with all the requests. Okay, um we didn't do the randomization. We I knew that the randomization in in the hold request uh was going to be hit and miss and and didn't seem like a I I. You know it's not so much. uh You know trying to put the requests to a library that has particular item uh equitably as more.

B

You know, I I wanted to make sure that our patrons were getting uh stuff as soon as they they could, and so we wanted to make sure you know. Okay, this library is open three days a week. You know they there's two couriers in the in the mix to that particular Library. How does that way? Compared to this Library? That's open seven days a week, and you know they might be a little bit further out, but they can respond to that a little bit quicker.

B

We were kind of massaging the the cost Matrix uh towards that, rather than just by distance Alone. um So um you know we found that you know the cost Matrix um by itself. If you just do distance, I I saw a huge Improvement. It was more. It was more Equitable in getting uh requests to the libraries that made more sense where they should be coming from. You know they could respond quicker uh to uh specific requests than you know.

B

These random uh outlying libraries that are out in rural rural areas that you know it would take a week or more to to get that item to them. So um you know just alone with that cost. Matrix huge difference, but, like I said I I did some calculations factored in some other things to tweak those numbers uh to say it makes more sense to come. You know to request this library before you know another Library, that's just closer.

G

So um I posted a link to a video that ptfs has on the transportation cost Matrix I posted in the chat box. I'm sure that Jason did a presentation at one of the conferences about the transportation cost Matrix and there's a video for that. But I can't find it I.

B

G

There wouldn't be a video of.

F

It there's no record of it, but it.

B

Happened, but if you reach out to me, you know you can reach out to me via email. I can share what I have it's been years, and this is the thing uh I haven't had to touch it, except for when we've added a library- and you know in um it's been a few years since we've added a library but um I, don't have to touch it all that often and.

F

Okay, because that was my next question: if, if the library is a fairly static, is it just to set it and forget it.

E

G

F

I think it is yeah.

G

So the other thing I set up the transportation cost Matrix when I was at the valneck Consortium in Idaho. We don't use it here in Kansas, but the the idea that they're that you're assigning a cost is, is kind of deceptive.

G

What it is is you're giving is you've if you've got 72 libraries you're going to have 72 columns and 72 rows and one row we'll say library, a and one column will say Library b and you're going to put a number in there there, and that number is just a value that represents um that represents uh the cost that it takes to get an item from from library, a to library, B and if Library a to libraries B is like five and Library eight, a library C is 10.

G

Then it's going to go with the lowest number with the lowest value. um That's where the item is going to come from. But there are a couple of things you have to remember. So it only works.

G

If you have things where there are multiple items, if there's only one item, you're you're, not gonna, there's no there's no um comparison to make and it only works if there are more, if there's more than one item available, so you might have a hundred copies of the new John Grisham book in your system, but if only one of them is available, then that's the one. That's going to fill the request. It.

C

G

Matter what the value is so there's another setting in koha that I, don't know if you have said or not called local hold priority. Do you have that turned on? Do you know.

F

G

And there's um in the past, when I was at the velnet Consortium, there was a discussion of doing a local hold priority groups and that's kind of what Bob has done using his um Library transfer limits to say that the library, because they're Statewide in Colorado, which is a pretty big state. You know the libraries in this corner of the state. Don't transfer things to the library, the library's in the northwest corner, don't transfer things to the libraries and the the South West Southeast corner of the state.

G

Because that's you know like a 500 mile trip and so those you have that worked out some way differently. Don't you Bob yeah,.

A

And sometimes those libraries do transport to the other, but what we're we're doing is we're using that to manage uh when libraries are closed uh but or are are turning off research during, like our schools, that's one, but they still want, holds to be placed within. So we can manage that that way and then, if a district wants to lend amongst themselves something that doesn't go outside the district. That's another thing we do, but I've been talking with uh the clams people about uh developments where we could make local holds priority.

A

Also look at holds groups that would be really nice because then you could have kind of a tiered system. Is it at the home library? Then we keep it here. Then look and see. Are you part of a local whole group and then, if not, then it would go out to everyone else? Yeah.

G

That's similar to what, when I worked at the Valley Library Consortium, and this shows you one of the disadvantages of having a completely decentralized organization like the Val net. Consortium is um I that Consortium is made up.

G

You know the Layton County Library had seven branches, their school districts had multiple branches, the Prairie River Library District had nine branches, and so the idea was to have a system where the items would be shared locally, first at the at the home library and then within the district and then within the whole Consortium, so that the priority would be given to the the home library.

G

Then the then the group and then free for all and so Val net wanted to do that development, but the valnet directors, as a committee could never decide how that was going to be funded and when I moved to Kansas after being on co-off for four years in Idaho and then moved to Kansas I said you know, if you guys are still interested in doing that.

G

You know we could use that here also and then they could never get that together and I promised them up to 20 percent of the cost of that development, and it never happened because they they've probably forgotten about it. Now it's been so long, but you know if somebody wants to work on that kind of the development. That's certainly something that I would be interested in. So if you.

C

D

All right and Eileen are talking about that. Yeah I.

G

Have less of a need for it here, because I only have two districts in my 50 libraries, but that kind of thing would help your your situation too. Steve is, if you've had you.

B

G

The libraries in this County get priority for the things that are in this County and once all those requests are filled, then they go outside of the county or.

D

No I don't know how your libraries.

G

Are organized how many multi-branch libraries might be a part of your system, so we.

C

Really need it so um I have a just before Steve answers that if I may, the bug that Jason put in here I was asking Bob about this just before the meeting when he was trying to get organized I apologize. um This bug, 20747 I've, made a comment on that I'm, not exactly sure. If that's what we want, we don't want the whole to go to a group. First, we want the whole to go to Falmouth Maine.

C

Then, if Falmouth Maine doesn't have it and if the person wants to pick it up there, we wanted to search East, Falmouth and North Falmouth and that you know that's the middle group and then go to the bigger ring which is and the same from Arthur's Vineyard. We have six libraries there, but I hate mentioning the island because I don't want people to think we're unique and nobody else contributes to this. But um we wanted to search the main.

C

You know the main choice: Library first, then, the branches or the Locale or whatever, if they have delivery within that location and then the bigger group but I'm not sure the way this bug is worded to me. It sounds like bypass the main. You know the LA First Choice library and automatically go to a group instead of paging a hold at but I'm, not that used to bugs. So we want.

B

All of your libraries to do that or group a certain groups of libraries to do that. Certain.

C

Groups but.

B

I I was going to say in general, uh there is a preference in there and you can say which I think you can place the order of which libraries get hit. First, oh.

C

B

I think there's a preference, isn't that uh setting in the in the randomization I think the order that you place them in there can dictate what gets hit first. But.

A

I think it also always prioritizes home library to home Branch for a whole, like with the.

C

Home, that's fine, but that's fine but say Edgar town can fill a hold. We wanted to page Vineyard, Haven West Tisbury, all those other great Vineyard libraries. Before going to the mainland and.

A

The issue is yeah.

C

But this bug sounds as if it should go to the group before the Home Library before the pickup Library I wanted to go to the library. First then,.

G

The smaller that's the way, I read this book is: it starts with the the Home Library. Oh.

F

C

Then the group yeah.

G

That's the way, I read it because I'm, partly you know this is this is exactly the bug Lizette was at Lizette was the person that replaced me uh in Idaho and um that's exactly what I described to the Val net directors and she just wrote it down and put it in a bug.

C

The way it's worded is kind of confusing, though so I've in my comment, I've tried to say what we want, but I don't know whether to vote for this bug before so you think it does prioritize the library, then the group, then the larger group we taught the transport Matrix would resolve this issue, but it didn't so. We have aquina a tiny Library, only open two days a week or whatever saying that they're getting stuff in from Hyannis when they should be getting it in if they don't have it from Vineyard, Haven or Edgar town.

C

But I didn't realize in that randomization that we could set it that way, but it ties into if something is checked in in Hyannis and there's a hold for it, no matter where it is it'll travel over to the vineyard if they check it in first.

B

C

I find it hard to articulate the soul issue.

B

The preference I was thinking of and it doesn't do it by group- it just does it in the system overall was the static, holds key weight. uh We have ours set to zero, we're not using utilizing this particular preference because we are using the transport cost Matrix, but um you can set this setting. You can list your branch codes separated by commas and by default it's set to in random order, but you can have it set in the order that you listed in that field. So there is that capability, but again it doesn't.

B

You know, do that per group of libraries. It's everybody.

A

Yep I think we just need some developments to get what we want and as far as that particular bug, you know we can reference that bug. But if it's you know we, we could definitely work on getting the development more along the lines of what we're we need. uh Yeah. We can get that dialed in so I, wouldn't worry too much about the specific bug and how that's worded, because that we can that can get changed or if we need to file a new bug. We could do that. There's lots of options.

A

So it's just good to see that there's some other talk about this over the years, uh so uh we should be able to get that figured out one way or another and.

C

If anybody wants to co-fund that'll be great, absolutely.

A

C

That's related to another bug. I think we reported. We want the whole to wait at the library where it's available for 72 hours before moving on to give the little libraries that are only open a couple of days a week, a chance to fill the hold for the patron. So that's another related to transport and I hope. I have a bug in about that.

C

We we want to pause on the hold for I, think we used to have an art law system for 72 hours or something where it would give the little guy the chance to fill their hold without getting it from another location. I.

B

Had put it on request a while ago, you know I would like to see there to be. You know. Some sort of you know, wait and move on. Yes,.

C

Because if the library.

B

Isn't responding, it just sits there forever and it would be nice that oh there hasn't been any movement on this. uh Let's move on because you know it's showing available nobody's nobody's uh responding. You know we have. We have libraries that you know are only open a few days a week. It would be nice to say well, if you're not responding to this particular. You know a particular hold in uh you know, say a week, then: okay go to another library, because you know and make rounds basically through the queue.

B

uh If people aren't responding to things, it would be nice if there was that mechanism, not.

C

To move too fast, either right.

D

C

Have one of our little Dennis libraries there's five libraries in the town, the Dennis. Don't start me off, but they're complaining I have the book on my shelf and it's for my Patron and it's been filled by a library that opens earlier. Could it not just wait and and so that hold that I have the material? And yet it's traveling from another library to to fill my patrons hold so that.

B

Would be a local holds priority thing, I.

F

B

F

D

Of the things we noticed is, if, if somebody, you know, pulls a hold and checks it in on their thing, even if it wasn't in their holds cue, it might fill the hold for another library and get sent, and so we've since we're the biggest library in our Consortium we've been asked by all the other libraries to not look for books for their libraries and more than once a week and I guess, that's two separate things, but it definitely feels like we.

D

We have the transport cost Matrix in effect, but we still sometimes have things show up that we have and they're coming up on our holds rip queue, but they have them too. For some reason, I don't know it's just. It does definitely feel like there's a lot there's some issues that we could be doing some more development in.

A

About a year year and a half ago, a bunch of us got together and just talked about, holds and potential developments, so we didn't really decide on anything but they're with more consortia coming on. It seems like that's, going to be more of a ripe discussion where we can kind of band together get ideas because I I know with biowater. If we all come and say like here's, a large group of us, these are the things that we want to change.

A

They're going to they're they're gonna pay a lot more attention to that than when I've been like. We have really weird hold ways that we do things we'd.

D

A

You to work on code, that's just for us and then they're.

F

Like oh yeah, maybe.

A

Probably not oh.

F

Well, I would definitely like to be in on that conversation, yeah yeah.

C

I mean that's, that's a great idea, a holes meeting and then I mean that's how we got things changed with overdrive.

C

G

Bob mentioned the conference. He put a link to the uh conference uh page on the koha Us website in the chat box. How many of us are going to that uh conference.

G

Why don't we all have a discussion? There, yeah I mean we've.

D

Done this before we all had lunch.

G

One time in Coeur d'alene all the Consortium people. We should come up with the time that we can all sit down together, um yeah and- and just do this, what we're doing right now, just in in person.

C

I would I would go for one day if I knew what day that whole discussion is going to be I know seriously I just can't.

G

C

G

C

Mean two of our people are going Avery and uh Brandon is not here and I'm trying to convince Michelle to go, but um I mean I hope to attend. Virtually. Do you have to register? This is probably a stupid question. Do you have to register if you plan to attend virtually.

B

It would be nice, we were we're trying to keep track of yeah.

C

B

You know so we do have our online people registering, it doesn't cost you anything to register yeah.

C

Okay, so I wasn't sure the process there.

B

So just make sure that, because because you're you're attending virtually make sure that we send you the links to things.

C

Okay, so I do that register but say I want to go virtually, but if, if there was like a really important discussion and I know it's all important important, but if there was something going on about the holes, Massachusetts is not that far from New Hampshire, so I could go up for the day.

A

What I'm going to propose is that I've added a couple people to uh the uh the email distribution group for consortia if you would like to get on that, uh I will start that discussion for trying to get a day and we'll use that email distribution group. So if you want to be on that and you're not currently or you're, not sure if you're on that list, I will make sure you're on there get added.

A

So just email me at uh uh the vice president at kohaus.org and I will make sure that I get that started and we could pick a day. We can pick a time and we'll just sit down and work it out.

B

It wouldn't be a bad idea, I mean you know if people are interested and can't attend, uh but can go online I mean instead of doing this doing something like this. During lunch, I mean Bob. You could devote the consortia Sig time sure to this topic. You know kind of a mini holds Summit for consortia and um brainstorm on. You know what what libraries are looking for. I'll.

A

Put out a couple options and then we'll kind of I will get some feedback and decide from there.

G

I'm I'm, just looking at the schedule right now on the consortia discussion. Time is three to four on Friday.

A

I think you might be looking at an old I.

G

Might do I'm looking at the one on the website, if that's not up to date, then um I guess it does say, subject to change.

A

We uh the consortia Sig meeting like this, which will be the next time we do. This will be the very coveted last session of the conference on Saturday. Oh.

G

On Saturday so.

F

A

Be other uh consortia related contents uh on Friday we have a few Consortium presentations, so, okay.

C

No Saturday that would be easy for to go up.

C

E

C

An option is there an option for the conference to like pay for one day rather than going to the entire thing.

B

Our price is pretty because it's a it's such a low cost. We we don't uh parse out prices okay per day, so it's.

C

More like the staying at the hotel, the meals, you know sure and then coverage, even though we work remotely we still have to somebody has to stay on, keep to to support the library. So um that's more of the cost. I was thinking of.

C

Is it possible to download this chat there's a lot of links.

A

C

I, just save cash yeah.

E

C

A

It was like for three dots yeah.

C

It's gone, but it's there.

E

It buries it somewhere. It took me an hour to find it one day on my computer. It just sticks at some place where it wants to stick it in a folder called Zoom somewhere, but you'll find it eventually.

A

Well, we are a bit after and I I know I need to get going, uh but I we had a. This was a really great, robust discussion. If this continues up, I will definitely consider we've been doing these every other month, but we can definitely look at doing them more monthly.

A

uh So if you feel like that would be useful, feel free to send me that feedback and um the reason why we went down to half is a few years ago there was less consortia, so less people were showing up at these meetings and it was a lot of Jason and I. Just you know catching up, but uh recently the discussions have been varied and with lots of representation. So if we need more, we could definitely do more I'm willing to do that.

A

All right: well, everybody have a great rest of your day. I'll, stop the recording and.