CCS News
JUNE 25, 2010
Wow, what a week: three employees out with medical emergencies and a thirty-plus hour power outage. We hope to be back to normal staff levels by late July. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln...
FROM THE COMPUTER ROOM:
Staffing – Most organizations have experienced challenges with staffing from time to time and the Computer Room is no exception. Our numbers have been thin in the last few weeks due to illness and vacations. On the bright side – this is always a good time to ensure that cross training is in place and documentation up to date. Bob will return on Monday June 28, Linda will be at ALA through June 29, Frank will be out through early July.
Power outage - A COMED transformer went out on Friday afternoon (18th), followed by a 30 hour vigil waiting for the power to return. Finally on Saturday night it was all hands on deck to bring systems back to life and return to normal operation for Sunday.
“COOKERY” TO “COOKING” SUBJECT HEADING CHANGES:
Over the next few weeks, there will be many subject heading changes in the CCS database. LC has finally published the subject heading change of “Cookery” to “Cooking”. The main subject heading of “Cookery” will be divided into “Cooking” and “Cookbooks”. Other headings like “Cookery, Chinese” and “Cookery (Nuts)” will become “Cooking, Chinese” or “Cooking (Nuts)”. There will be references sending the catalog user to the authorized form of the heading.
So, as not to overload the system (there are over 14,000 bib. changes), the changes will be done in increments. Starting next week, about 75 headings will be changed each night. (Thank goodness our computer system can do the majority of changes by itself.) The reason why these changes will be done in increments is that the amount of bib. records attached to each heading varies – for example “Cookery, Dominican” has only 1 affected bib. to change, whereas “Cookery, Italian” has more than 500 changes.
Since there is a split between “Cooking” and “Cookbooks”, many of those 2500 bib. records will have to be done manually. Who knows, many of the bib. records really could use both headings and only someone looking at the record will know (or guess). The manual changes will appear gradually over the next few weeks too.
“Bon Appetit!”
BIBLIOCOMMONS:
Our Implementation Task Force is starting to roll. We have completed the requested surveys to provide background information and participated in a Webinar with BC staff about the implementation process. We are hoping to be in test mode in July and live by the end of September with at least a couple of test libraries. More news as it develops!
HOLD FLIP:
As many of you know, we have been trying to work with Sirsi to flip System range holds placed prior to June 2 so that they become Group holds if the Pickup Library’s Group can fill them. This is being done in order to manage van traffic further. As of today there are approximately 45,000 System holds to check.
Unfortunately, working with Sirsi has been frustrating. We opted to pursue this with them first because they already have the binary written; it’s functioning in iBistro now for new holds. We hoped they could just apply it to the earlier holds. However, it has taken a couple weeks just to determine that they can’t get to it till after July 6. Consequently, we have asked Joel Hahn to take a look at writing a script. We have been doing some consultation, and he believes he can take care of this for us. He will need to test his script. Bob Barth is on vacation this week and is still transitioning the Test Server to Oracle. When he returns next week, he will work with Joel toward the execution of the hold flip.
We are trying to save book club holds; in many cases those are technically fillable within the Group but not with the required number of copies. The recent discussion on shelp-l gave us some idea of prevailing methods – and of their inconsistency. WE ARE ASKING THAT BEFORE JULY 1, FOR BOOK CLUB HOLDS YOU WISH TO PRESERVE AS SYSTEM HOLDS AFTER THE HOLD FLIP, YOU EITHER ENTER (WITHOUT THE QUOTATION MARKS!) “BOOK CLUB” OR “BOOK DISCUSSION” IN THE HOLD COMMENT FIELD (ALL LOWER CASE), OR INFORM JOEL IF YOU USE A DIFFERENT COMMENT CONSISTENTLY AND WHAT IT IS SO HE CAN MAKE ALLOWANCES FOR IT IF POSSIBLE.
If it is not possible to provide a consistent way to identify and preserve your library’s book club holds, if you can provide a list (patron ID and title control #), it MAY be possible to convert them back after the flip.
Once again, we should thank the stars that we have a unique and valuable asset in Joel, and also thank Linda Weiss at Niles for releasing his time and skills for this gratis.
CCS MEETINGS NEXT WEEK:
None, but we hope to see some of you at ALA!
