CCS News October 17, 2014

CCS News
 
OCTOBER 17, 2014

FROM THE COMPUTER ROOM:
The Monthly Item Discard Process:
As of November 1st we are implementing the SirsiDynix delivered feature that allows discard items with bills attached to be removed by the system while leaving the bill information attached to the patrons record. Once the item is removed, the detailed bill information on the patron’s bills tab will no longer display the item bar code; however, the title as well as all other information will be intact.  (We expect the November report to be much bigger than usual since it’s picking these up for the first time.)

THREE ENTERPRISE UPDATES:
Slowness: We have put Sirsi on notice that response time in general is unacceptable and must be improved.  I have solicited testimonials from our libraries which will be conveyed to the CEO.  Please continue to report incidents.  (Late addition: We just had a phone chat with Brett Hall of Sirsi to reiterate the degree of our dissatisfaction.  Per discusson with Joel Hahn, we are going to reduce the frequency of our data harvests back to where it was before yesterday (hourly back to daily) but obviously that’s not the long term answer.  More to follow via other channels.

Missing Syndetics Content Other Than Book Cover Images: Sirsi has identified a bug which causes the software to link to Syndetics via an OCLC number if one is present in the bib record; this is a problem.  They have proposed a workaround which we would like to avoid, while they work rapidly on a patch.  We are awaiting answers to some questions but will soon have an email out about our approach to this.

ProPay: Most of the glitches seem to be straightened out for the moment.  We are awaiting an email from Justin Swain of Sirsi outlining the statuses of our open tickets.  Sirsi wants us to beta test Release 3.5 which includes improved ProPay reporting.

BANDWIDTH UPGRADE STATUS:
Our shiny new fiber line is now working.  We have a few final details to square away and will soon be announcing a cutover plan.

CCS MEETINGS NEXT WEEK:

None!