[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Items not checking in?

[Holly Brennan]

>>>>Yes, I can see why "Lost" and "Missing" probably wouldn't need an alert in our workflow either.

Our library staff need and use alerts for Lost and Missing. If something has been lost and is now returned, we need to decide whether we will refund the patron and put the item back into circulation - or perhaps it has been years and we don't even want the item circ-ing. There are many rules in Evergreen to "decide" these things, but we still want to take a look ourselves. We're a relatively small library so it's hard to let go of that personal touch.

Personally, I like the Missing alert because I get to celebrate a long-lost item resurfacing. "Yay, it's back!"

We also alert for number of pieces, so an alert pops up for EVERY audiobook and EVERY movie with more than one disc... and kits, books with maps, etc. I would say that in 98% of checkout interactions, there is an alert. They can be annoying at times, but it's our job to look at them.

I responded to this thread last week, before it became apparent that some people took offense to some comments. I work the circulation desk daily, so I spoke from my own experiences (and about myself) when I said that staff are often to blame. We're busy, multi-tasking, distracted people! There was not meant to be any talking down, and I'm sure this is the case for all those involved in this conversation.

-Holly



-----Original Message-----
From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of McCanna, Terran
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2014 12:56 PM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Items not checking in?

Yes, I can see why "Lost" and "Missing" probably wouldn't need an alert in our workflow either. Perhaps future development down the road could use color coding instead of popup alerts on the check-in screen for some of these types of alerts that don't require staff action? Something to think about.

I like the use of Check Parts for books that include CDs because that's so easy to miss when checking in otherwise. 


Terran McCanna 
PINES Program Manager 
Georgia Public Library Service 
1800 Century Place, Suite 150 
Atlanta, GA 30345 
404-235-7138 
tmccanna at georgialibraries.org 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Buzzy Nielsen" <buzzy at hoodriverlibrary.org>
To: open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2014 4:32:40 PM
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Items not checking in?


There are a few popups that we've deemed unnecessary. For instance, there's a pop up that appears at checkin for a "bad status", requiring staff to affirm that they do indeed want to check in the item. Two of those statuses are "Lost" and "Missing". Our staff honestly couldn't come up with any reason why we wouldn't want to check in items with those two statuses, at least not given our workflow and processes. 

Another (admittedly self-inflicted) example are the "check parts" notices some of our consortium members use. Oh, how happy would we be to convince our fellow libraries not to use those ... 

Anyway, this is all to say that those messages do indeed slow down work flow, and they can be painfully slow to pop up on older computers. Fortunately, all of our equipment is pretty new, but I know our smaller libraries can have issues with the speed as they have the double hit of slow hardware and slow connections. 

Cheers! 
Buzzy 


************************************ 
Library Director 
Hood River County Library District 
502 State Street 
Hood River, Oregon 97031 
541-387-7062 
http://hoodriverlibrary.org 

On 04/14/2014 01:12 PM, McCanna, Terran wrote: 


Most of those alerts are important, are they not? It's been a little while, but when I've covered Circ and done check-ins, I don't recall getting anything that I regarded as an unnecessary alert - I only recall things that required some sort of staff action such as routing, printing hold slips, etc. If alerts were suppressed, wouldn't that cause far more staff error?


Terran McCanna 
PINES Program Manager 
Georgia Public Library Service 
1800 Century Place, Suite 150 
Atlanta, GA 30345 
404-235-7138 tmccanna at georgialibraries.org