News

The agenda and documentation for the meeting on June 3 are available. No registration necessary. Thursday, June 3, 2021 9:30am to 12pm GoToMeeting Please join the meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone. https://www.gotomeet.me/SWANLibs/cataloging-users You can also dial in using your phone. United States: +1 (571) 317-3112 Access Code: 652-340-613 New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts: https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/652340613 See you on Thursday!

Monday, May 31st is Memorial Day and SWAN will be closed and there is no RAILS Delivery service. We will have staff on-call should any emergency arise. When to Call 844-792-6542 (844-SWAN-LIB): A service is down Circulation is impacted Unable to perform key job functions Otherwise please use the SWAN Help Desk or email help@swanlibraries.net if you require assistance.

The Cataloging Users meeting will take place via GoToMeeting on Thursday, June 3rd, from 9:30 to 12:00. It will depend on the agenda if the meeting will last 2.5 hrs ; however, I will be available for the full duration if need be. Please submit topic ideas for the agenda or questions to claudia@swanlibraries.net. We will send out the agenda a week before the meeting. Please note you will also have an opportunity to ask questions or bring up topics during the meeting itself. I look forward to your topics! Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone. https://www.gotomeet.me...

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) presents a unique one-time opportunity for Illinois libraries to apply for funds for programs or services created to help communities impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We have invited Diane Foote, ILA Executive Director, to our June 3rd SWAN Quarterly meeting to provide an overview of the various forms ARPA funds will be allocated in Illinois. Following the Quarterly meeting, SWAN will host regional meetings to generate some ideas for possible application when the funds are available. Full details on how to apply for funds are not available yet, but...

The proposed schedule and selection criteria for removal of patron records and purging of long outstanding bills have been met with concern throughout the membership. Open office hours were provided for discussion. The SWAN Community Forums provide links to the recorded sessions and a discussion thread. Members are encouraged to share their ideas, concerns, and recommendations for moving forward. Concerns fall around these critical areas: Inconsistency of automatic setting of Last Activity Date when accessing digital resources and in-library services Removal of patron records after a period of...

We're excited to announce the launch of the new SWAN Notice Dialer, with an official go-live date of Tuesday, May 25th! The migration to the new dialer on May 25th will require no downtime and all expected patron PHONE notices will be delivered as scheduled. The new phone notices dialer system is a contracted, cloud-based service through Unique Management Services and replaces our aging SVA (SirsiDynix Voice Automation) system. The new system will serve patrons with PHONE set as their notice preference and deliver 1st hold and 1st overdue notices. All other notices are served by alternate...

At the Fireside Chat on April 27th, 2021, we discussed transitioning back to full operations. We ask library directors, or their designate, to complete this short questionnaire to help us gauge moving back to "normal" in regard to your library fines, collections, and fees. Complete Questionnaire We will share the results of the survey at our next Fireside Chat on Tuesday, May 25th. Registration is required in advance. You will receive email confirmation with the personalized webinar link.

As of Tuesday, April 27, 2021 CPL began allowing patrons the ability to choose the name they would like to appear on their library cards. CPL still records the name on the identification in the patron account and can search for a patron using both names in their account, but all communication and the library card list the name the patron has chosen. Please be aware you may see a different name listed on the CPL card from the patron’s identification when patrons apply for Reciprocal borrowing. Continue to use the online verification portal to determine borrower status and assign expiration (1...

Now that RAILS Delivery is no longer asking libraries to quarantine library material before transiting, a majority of our SWAN libraries have stopped their local quarantine practice. Effective immediately, we have removed the mention of quarantine from our notices. Also, we have added language on overdue notices advising patrons that their records may be blocked if items are not returned. See Patron Notices & Notifications for a listing of all notice text.

----------Update at 3:00PM on 5/17---------- See PAUSE - Patron Record Purge news post from May 17, 2021. Based on member feedback, we have placed a pause on this work and will discuss at the June Quarterly. ----------Update at 5:00PM on 5/5---------- Have questions about the upcoming patron record purge? Join us at one of the upcoming Q&A / office hour sessions via GoToMeeting to have your questions answered! You can find the registration and event information on L2: Friday, 5/7 at 1:00PM - Patron Record Purge Q&A / Office Hours Tuesday, 5/11 at 10:00AM - Patron Record Purge Q&A / Office...

The User Lost Card Wizard creates a new, duplicate user record with the patron information and a user profile of LOSTCARD. In our efforts to maintain an orderly patron database, SWAN will run a monthly report purging all the users with a LOSTCARD user profile created two months earlier. This cleanup project will kick off on May 1st, 2021. If you use this Wizard and report on the number of accounts with a LOSTCARD user profile you generate each month, your statistics will remain intact. We have 2 reports available for you, including a new report: Count of LOSTCARDs Created in a Date Range. The...

Update at 9PM on 4/28 The SWAN Support Site and OTRS migrations have concluded successfully. No further downtime is expected for the evening. ------------------------------------ Beginning at 7:00 PM on the evening on Wednesday, April 28th, we will be migrating SWAN’s Support Site and Ticketing System to our Microsoft Azure Cloud servers. There will be downtime of these services involved in the process, but we expect they will be restored and available again by the morning of April 29th. We will post updates to this new post as the migration progresses. The following services will be...

We want to hear from you! What are your questions about Aspen Discovery? Please send your questions in this brief survey, and register to attend the April 14th Aspen Update. We'll answer questions, show off some exciting Aspen features, and share what the Aspen pilot libraries have been up to. We hope to see you there!

Two additional online courses designed for self-paced learning with interactive exercises have been launched. These are great introductory courses for new staff, as well as reminders and reinforcement for anyone involved in cataloging and circulation. Thanks to Claudia Nickson, Bibliographic Services Consultant, and Crystal Vela, User Experience Consultant, for their continued commitment to learning - and making it fun along the way. Cataloging and Serials Creating Pre-Cats Demystifying Serials [New] Circulation Patron Management Circulation Basics [New] Each course includes a course companion...

Our Bibliographic Services team is planning a round of serials data cleanup over the next few months. We want to target item, MARC holdings, and serial control records that are no longer being used. Outdated item and MARC holdings records both present misleading availability to our patrons. Unused serial control records prevent the deletion of discarded items. To better target candidate records, we have created a brief survey on serials topics. We would like to have one representative of each member library fill this out: Serials Collection Survey. If possible, we'd like to receive your...

Many SWAN libraries have requested a limited or restricted user profile to assist their communities in offering library services to the housing insecure. A universal user profile, LIMITEDUSE, is available to ensure consistent services for these patrons. LIMITEDUSE User Profile This profile is available for all SWAN libraries to register patrons for limited use of library resources. The parameters of the profile include: 1 year expiration date Charge Limit = 5 Hold Limit = 5 Bill threshold = $10.00 Libraries may determine internally when and to whom these LIMITEDUSE cards will be issued. When...

SWAN’s OCLC holdings are now up-to-date, and we are back on our monthly cycle. With the migration of our three new libraries last fall, we used the SWAN-developed OCLC Holdings Manager (OHM) and the OCLC WorldShare Management tools to perform a reclamation of their holdings. This ensured the new libraries’ OCLC holdings reflect the SWAN catalog. We developed this reclamation process to avoid the time and expense of having OCLC perform it on our behalf. This work is now also complete. SWAN libraries’ holdings are current on OCLC up through March 3rd, the date of our last extract. The next OCLC...

More opportunities to connect, share, and learn have been added to the SWAN calendar. Register on L2. By registering in advance on L2, we can reach out before the sessions to target specific questions and topics of interest. Office Hours Open office hours are informal and intended to provide an opportunity for members to bring questions and work on problem-solving together. Staff will share their favorite tips and tricks during these sessions and will incorporate questions/suggestions received in advance. Directors' Coffee Hours (1 hr) - bi-monthly chance for Directors to chat with Aaron...

On March 2, 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that they would stop publishing and licensing 6 titles. And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street If I Ran the Zoo McElligot's Pool On Beyond Zebra! Scrambled Eggs Super! The Cat's Quizzer This news has caused an increase in holds being placed on these titles within SWAN libraries. The 2nd/3rd market prices for these titles are soaring. Libraries are making individual decisions on how to circulate these titles in the future, and many libraries have pulled these items to make them available for in-library use only. However, several of these...

In the past couple of months, we have noticed an influx of tickets with a common subject: inconsistencies in fully cataloged records with OCLC encoding level 8. The reported inconsistencies referred to incorrect pagination, omission of Roman numerals, illustrations, missing 007 tag in audiovisual materials, etc. Level 8 is a pre-pub level of cataloging, and while the records are generally good, they require a thorough examination and often some upgrading once the item is published. Therefore, we would like to emphasize the following points for when you encounter OCLC records with encoding...