Support and Training Services Report: July 2009
Aleph
Acquisitions/Serials
- A new answer has been added to the PALS answer book. The Answer ID is 3326. If you have items in your Web OPAC that say "Expected on 00/00/0000 (usually an old date like 07/28/04) instead of "On Shelf" and they have a PALS barcode and are actually on the shelf, they need to be corrected. The reason they say "Expected on" instead of "On Shelf" is because the material type is ISSUE and they have not been arrived. To find these items and correct them, use the General Retrieval Form (ret-adm-01) found in Circulation under Services. Answer 3326 explains how to fill out the form and a screen shot is also in the answer. To fix these items you would locate the item and enter an arrival date in the Arrival Date field on Tab 4 of the item record. If you happen to have a title that has quite a few items that should have been arrived and were not, it is possible to use the Global Changes feature. The Global Changes button can be found on the right hand side when viewing your items list. See the HELP in the Global Changes for information on using the global change for the arrival date.
- A new service pack was loaded on Aleph July 12th. Here are a few acquisition changes.
- RC#638 has changed the text of the column heading in the Acq Index from Order No. 2 to Additional Order No. 1.
- RC#642 has changed Aleph to retrieve the invoice delivery price field from the invoice header of the EDI file. The invoice delivery price field is stored in the General Invoice Record Shipment Amount. This change would apply to when libraries run their EBSCO EDI invoices.
- RC#646 When a new order is created in the acquisitions module for a given BIB record, if the BIB record had multiple ISBN fields, one of them was filled in the order's ISBN field instead of leaving it blank to let the staff choose the ISBN they wanted. Now the order's ISBN field is filled in only if there is a unique ISBN field in the BIB record or two similar ISBN numbers (one 10 digit and one 13 digit counterpart). If there are two unrelated ISBN's, it leaves the field blank and the staff member can choose the ISBN they want to use.
Cataloging
- Global Change. Using the Cataloging module global change service for SYS01 bib records and SYS60 holding is now possible for a single ADM within which an operator is authorized to work. Global change is a useful and powerful feature that has some risks. Therefore, the proposal of allowing libraries to use this feature was taken to the Executive Committee spring meeting. The proposal was that Deans, Directors and Coordinators should approve specific individuals to use global change at their institutions, if they wanted to do this at all. The Executive Committee agreed to this proposal. If you want to do your own global changes, speak to your library director since they have the authorization form and procedural document. When the authorization form is signed by the library director and the PALS executive director, PALS support staff will provide a web training on the procedural document. While some libraries may want to do their own global changes, many other MnPALS libraries may not want to do this. That is fine. PALS will continue to provide global changes for a fee as outlined in the Participant charges document.
- Automatic creation of Holding and Item records. Training continues for any library that wants to use the functionality of holding and item records created automatically upon the individual load of a bib record from OCLC. Libraries in production with this functionality are: CWN, DTE, MCT, MSU, MTR, NDC, SMU/Winona. Libraries having received the training and testing the functionality are: CEN, IHC, MSCTS, WSU. Libraries to receive training are: BSU, MHS, SCS. If you are interested to begin using this functionality, send a request to the PALS support center at http://pals.custhelp.com. Answerbook #3330 has a recorded web session of the training (1 hr. 18 min) and the 3 documents used in the training.
- OCLC's Local Holdings Record Updating Service (LHRUS). We have completed the beta test with IHC of sending a file of their print serial local holdings to OCLC. There are a variety of reasons that you would want to keep your holdings current at OCLC: 1) if you use WorldCat Local, or plan to use it, as your OPAC, your holdings need to be at WorldCat for your patrons to see those holdings, 2) LHRUS replaces MULS (MN Union List of Serials), 3) as a library citizen it is good librarianship to place your holdings on OCLC, 4) as OCLC member libraries and their customers look for information, your record holdings could be seen and accessed via their interlibrary loan requests. In conjunction with MINITEX, PALS has written a procedural document Steps to send your Aleph holding records to OCLC's Local Holding Record Updating Service (LHRUS) that incorporates how to pull a file of print serial records from Aleph and outlines the process and forms needed for OCLC. You can access the document on the Acq/Serial or Cataloging documentation page http://www.mnpals.org/sections/Aleph_Docs.html. Contact us at the MnPALS Support Center http://pals.custhelp.com if you need assistance.
- Authorities. The PALS office is beginning to test and implement the Aleph Authorities functionality on the development server. Mike Barnett has been contracted to configure and set-up the tables and functionality. We met with Betsy Friesen, U of M Technical services analyst, to learn how they implemented it. (NOTE: As a trade-off, we shared with the U of M how we set up the GOBI/Yankee Peddler vendor loader.) If all stays on target, our plan is to order and load to SYS10 (authority library) a new Name/Subject authority file in mid-August and test the setup/configuration against the new file. We will be contacting your Authority Task Force as to the specifics and areas where we would like them to test certain functionality.
- The new service pack was installed to the production server on Sunday, July 12th. Some of the improvements to Cataloging and Items are:
- RC#616. When running the Shelf List (item-05) service, the item's call number was overwritten by an incorrect value when the Update DB was set to 'Y'. That has now been corrected.
- RC#619. The file-96 and file-90 vendor loaders have been corrected. Now the status is set to "P" if it is "N" in the Default Values Input File (file-96) or in the tab_loader_def file (file-90). In addition, in file-96, an error is returned if the arrival status is an illegal value (other than "P" or "C"). (NOTE: currently, only the file-96 loader is being used by some MnPALS libraries. We are testing the file-90 loader).
- RC#625. The maximum size of a MARC record that can be converted has been increased to enable large records with many fields to convert successfully. It is now possible to convert records with up to 100000 characters.
- RC#627. When entering an invalid format code (or a format code in lower case) using fast cataloging in the Acquisitions module, a skeleton record was created in the BIB library (i.e. containing only fields FMT, LDR, 008 and CAT). When fast cataloging in the Circulation module, a record was created with the invalid format. This has been corrected. Now, no record is created and an error message about invalid format is returned.
- RC#638. The MARC language codes file has been updated with new codes. MARC21 updates to BIB,HOL and Authorities for the 8th edition have been entered to the open forms (Ctrl+F)
- RC#651. The trees on the left pane of the GUI modules were not the same color. This has been changed so that now the Overview tree is in the same color as the function tree.
- RC#666. The Report of New and Updated Catalog Records - by Cataloger (com-03) service now works properly. It did not work properly when run with the flag "Print To ADM Lib". It also did not properly update the batch log of the Task Manager (it remained in status "Running") and did not send a message through tab_alert. In addition, the implementation of the XSL file for the report (cataloger-report.xsl) was missing from the Implementation Notes for rep_change #452.
Circulation
- There was a service pack install on the production server on July 12. A problem in the service pack caused some services/reports to not complete properly. This problem has been fixed.
ILL
- South Central College, North Mankato can now exchange interlibrary loan requests with Traverse des Sioux and Martin Luther College. South Central North Mankato uses ALEPH ILL to manage their ILL requests; Traverse des Sioux and Martin Luther College uses VDX ILL software to manage their ILL requests
- The ILL User group asked all MnPALS libraries that use the Minitex Overnight Courier service to decide if they want to participate in direct lending/borrowing among MnPALS libraries. Interlibrary loan staff can still complete the direct borrowing survey at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB2296CP962XC
- Interlibrary loan requests on a patron's "Your Borrowing Record" are now sorted by last activity date descending.
- When using the "Multi-field Search" the search terms are retained.
- The Admin tab in interlibrary loan can now be set to a default setting. This example with J shows as a default view Task Manager Print files. This line would need to be added to your ill.ini. This could help to get to your lending slips in fewer clicks.
[AdminTree]
DefaultTree=J
OPAC
- Gustavus has asked that 3 unique item process statuses be set to Available. They are:
- FI for Fiction Display
- DV for Diversity Display
- GI for Global Display
The 3 Item Process Statuses listed above are not being used by any other libraries at this time. Our policy, as outlined on our website, http://www.mnpals.org/sections/item_process_status.html , is that since no other libraries are using these Item Process Status codes at this time, we will make them Available, and add them to the list of Item Process Statuses defined as Available.
Training
- Course Reserves - August 19th, 9:30-11:30
Not Aleph
EZproxy
- For more information on this product, check out the MnPALS Forum: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=47.0
- Minitex implemented a statewide contract from a number of database providers. Most changes were effective on July 1st. This resulted in a number of requests for assistance on modifying the ezproxy.cfg file. There should be a second round of requests for assistance when institutions come back from the summer break.
OCLC Link Manager
MnPALS Plus
Task Forces
Authorities
Indexing
MnPALS Plus Working Group
Reports Task Force
Updated & New Answers
- 3332 PLIF loader file structure
- 3331 New object code
- 3330 Automatic creation of Holding and Item Records
- 3329 MnPALS Plus: Linking or Implementing your Library
- 3328 MnPALS Plus: Updates to Circulation and Bibliographic Information
- 3327 Saxon Error
- 3326 Items in Web OPAC that say "Expected On"
Meetings Attended by Support Staff
- Regional ExLibris User Group (REUG) Program Planning - Mary Ann Greenwald (REUG meeting to be held Monday,October 26 & Tuesday, October 27 at Wellstone Center, St. Paul, MN)
- ALA Annual Meeting, Chicago - Jenny Turner