RE: Offline Circ Procedures

["William Gray" <wgray@xxxxxxxxxx>]

In answer to your questions:

1. Our library does coordinate uploading circ transactions when using Millennium Offline. We had some planned downtime some months ago, and I was the one in charge of coordinating circ transaction uploads with our Branch libraries. We planned beforehand that nobody would upload anything until I'd contacted them, and we did this for several reasons: a)it was new to other staff, and I was the only one at our library with experience using this system, so I was able to walk other staff through the process, b)in order to generate individual error reports, as you mentioned, c) on the off-chance that a patron dropped books off and/or checked items out at more than one location (it's rare, but with some patrons it can happen), we wanted to avoid errors cropping up from patron records still being in use by the system from a previous transaction. Point "b" is critical, I feel, for tracking and fixing errors.

One of the things we did when uploading the circ files was *not* erase the circ file when prompted to. The reason for this was because if something went wrong with the upload, the file would still be intact to try re-uploading; we deleted the files only after successful completion of the uploads.

2. We don't issue cards without barcodes. If it's in our system and active, it must have a barcode. That said, we also required patrons to have a current card with them in order to check out--no alternative identification was allowed if they did not have their cards. This way we were pretty much guaranteed that the cards existed and were active in our system.

It's important to note that uploading transactions via offline circ will force those transactions to happen, regardless of any blocks on the card (be they automatic or manual). So, it is technically possible that patron with too many fines, for example, will still be able to check items out.

Hope that's helpful to you.

William Gray
Library Technical Assistant
Greenwich Library


-----Original Message-----
From: Helwig, Ruth M. [mailto:helwi1rm@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 11:00 AM
To: IUG INNOPAC List
Subject: Offline Circ Procedures


Our system was down at the end of last week and we used Offline Circ for
the first time.  We would appreciate it if those of you who have used
Offline Circ could share your procedures or experiences on the following
issues.  Feel free to respond off list.

 

1)      If you have multiple circ points, do you coordinate uploading
the Offline Circ transactions so that each area can get a unique
error/informational report?

2)      The University distributes ID cards with barcodes from a
centralized location.  The library downloads a file of new students
twice a week from the Registrar's Office, but these records do not
contain a barcode.  The library does not know which barcode was issued
to an individual until they come to the library for the first time and
library staff updates the patron record.  Since Offline Circ only
accepts the barcode number there is no way of knowing whether or not a
patron barcode is active in the system.  On the Offline Circ error
report we found a few transactions that errored because the patron
barcode was not in the system.  If you have a similar situation, how do
you handle this?  If you automatically create a patron record for each
checkout, what happens if there was already a valid patron record in the
system?

 

 

 

Ruth Helwig <mailto:helwi1rm@xxxxxxxxxx> 

Library Systems

Central Michigan University

Park 305

300 E Preston St

Mount Pleasant MI 48859

Phone: (989) 774-2404

Fax: (989) 774-2179

 



--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
---
--
This message was distributed through the Innovative Users Group INNOPAC list
Public replies:  INNOPAC@xxxxxxxxxx
Update your subscription options: http://innopacusers.org/mailman/listinfo/innopac