Re: [IUG] Title-Level Paging

["Stephanie Nordmann" <snordmann at slcl dot org>]

We moved over from item level paging to title level paging in November.  The
transition would have been smooth, but we lost network connectivity that
day, so it was a bit hectic in an unrelated way.

We designed our priority table according to our delivery schedule.  We have
4 delivery trucks and 20 locations.  Locations that share a delivery truck
have a higher priority with each other. 

Here are some of the questions / issues that came up after we moved to title
level paging:

Patrons are not receiving their periodical requests:
Be sure that staff understands that they will still need to run item paging
lists daily.  We had some staff forget about the item lists, and our patrons
requesting periodicals had a bit of a delay at some branches.

Items with Series information:
Some of our series titles (Manga and DVDs especially) have series
information in the title.  On the title paging list, the title will cut off
after a certain # of characters (Don't know how many offhand).  This led to
staff having to look up a title like "Dr Quinn Medicine Woman" to see what
volume was being requested.  

Renewals for items with holds:
If you restrict renewals on items that have a hold, patrons may not be able
to renew an item online with available copies.  Here's the situation (and
this has come up often in our case)  A patron requests an item with 15
available copies and 1 checked out copy.  Instead of the bib level hold
being transferred to a specific item (like with item level paging) the hold
sits on the bib level until an attached item is checked in.  If the patron
with the checked out item wishes to renew it, the system will see the bib
level hold and restrict the renewal.  The renewing patron will become irate
because there are copies in the library.  The patron calls the library to
see why they can't renew the item.  Staff are not able to override the
renewal because of the hold, and must either cancel and re-place the hold,
or check in the item, and check it back out.  In release 2007, staff will be
able to override the renewal.  

Duplicate Entries on title paging list:
Often, there will be 2 entries for the same item on the list.  Because
there's no patron information on the title paging list, staff aren't able to
tell that this is due to the fact that 2 different people are requesting
copies of the same title.  It's a bit confusing

Items that are missing

With title level paging, we no longer have to manually transfer holds when
we cannot find an item.  This has been very nice, but please be sure that
staff know that this is not the case for titles that have only 1 copy.  The
hold still needs to be cancelled.  Another question that came up often is
whether staff need to make an item "missing" if they can't find it, or if
the system made the item missing automatically if the paged item wasn't
checked in.  Of course, staff will have to make the item missing to prevent
additional holds.  Imagine the chaos if a branch didn't run their paging
lists, and the system made all paged items missing  -  Seems obvious, but
well...

B# instead of barcode

The title list contains the b# instead of the barcode.  Our staff, outside
of cataloging and processing, is unfamiliar with the b #  (the bibliographic
record number )  some thought that it was the barcode.  We (unfortunately)
don't include the b# on our labels, so when there are many different
editions of a title, staff may not be able to differentiate between which
title is being paged.

I hope this is helpful!

Stephanie Nordmann
System Administration Manager
St Louis County Library
www.slcl.org






-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org] On Behalf Of Krimm, Debi
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 1:29 PM
To: IUG INNOPAC List
Subject: [IUG] Title-Level Paging

Soon we will be moving from item level paging to title-priority paging.
Any words of wisdom that you'd like to share, caution us about?  Also,
for those of you that have multiple branches did you choose to setup the
Paging Priority table or let the system hold the paging randomly?


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