Circulation Committee
Minutes
Reserves
Useful
Links
What's New
Circulation Committee
cir-lib@mit.edu
Circulation Committee
C-Space
HANDLING BOUNCED LIBRARY NOTICES
BACKGROUND
SLEUTHING/PROBLEM SOLVING
IF YOU RECEIVE NO NOTICES DURING THE DAY
AT THE END OF YOUR MONTH
LIST OF CONTACTS (for PCRs)
BOUNCED NOTICES LIBRARY ROTATION SCHEDULE
BACKGROUND
Library notices run automatically through the ALEPH Job Manager at intervals throughout the day; users with a current date and a correct email address in their Address tab will receive their notices via email. Paper notices are printed at Dewey for users with no data entered in their email address field or with an expired date in their Address tab. For records with an invalid email address (and for mail programs whose server may not be functioning when a notice is sent), notices “bounce” back to circulation@mit.edu. In order for a user to receive the bounced notice and any notices sent in the future, the errors in the user’s email address must be corrected.
SLEUTHING
Circulation staff subscribed to circulation@mit.edu will receive bounces throughout the day, although most will appear around the noon hour when courtesy and overdue notices are run. Often the address errors are very obvious –(for example, user@mit.edy instead of user@mit.edu or user@alumi.mit.edu, instead of user@alum.mit.edu) – but most require a degree of sleuthing.For MIT staff, students and affiliates the best tool is the People directory on the MIT home page. Staff and students at BLC institutions may be located through the online phone books on their school’s home page. Now and then – especially in the case of a bounced recall notice – you may need to call the user to get a correct email, and at the same time pass on the information contained in the notice.
Once you have obtained the correct email for a user, please update the ALEPH user record AND forward the email to the correct address. The first screen of the bounce will have information about the attempts and paths used to send the original message; please delete this information in the forwarded email so the user is sent only necessary information.
If you determine that the existing email address in a user’s record is correct, then resend the message. There may have been a server problem with the user’s mail system at the time the notice was sent. If, however, all your sleuthing is for naught and you cannot obtain a correct email address or the message continues to bounce, then delete the email address from the user’s record and enter a message in a note field:
LIBRARY NOTICES RETURNED FROM <EMAIL ADDRESS>; OBTAIN CORRECT EMAIL ADDRESS FROM USER; then Your initials and the date.
The next time the user checks out a book at a library, staff will see this message and obtain an updated address (and hopefully remember to delete the message).
ANY reply a user may make to a notice will also end up on circulation@mit.edu.
1)You may see requests for renewing books. Please renew them.
2) There will be questions regarding Your Account (usually password related—what is my password or I forgot my password, how do I get another one?).
3) Other requests tend to be in response to overdue notices, in which the user claims to have returned (PCR) or renewed an item. The owning library for items is indicated at the top of a notice; forward the notice to the circulation supervisor/contact of the owning library . It then becomes the responsibility of the owning library to follow up on the user’s reply.
4) Every once and a while there will be a reply from a user, almost salivating over what a wonderful service the Libraries are providing with the courtesy notices, and these almost make doing the sleuthing worth it.
In general, questions regarding Circulation policy should be tailored to information posted on the public MIT Libraries Circulation page.
5) If there are any questions/problems (for a real example involving expletives: "I returned that f$%!in book already, didn't you a**holes get it?") please forward them to the Circulation Committee Chair.
IF YOU RECEIVE NO NOTICES DURING THE DAY
On the average during the semester there are about 10 or so emails a day to be dealt with. The ALEPH Job Manager occasionally freezes, once or twice a month. When this happens, the notices are stored for 24 hours in a file and will run with a reboot. A very good hint that a freeze has occurred is the absence of any bounces to the list around the noon hour. The lack of any bounces around this time should be reported to Irene Mazor (imazor@mit.edu or x3-2722) so she can reboot the machine at Dewey running the notices.
AT THE END OF YOUR MONTH
If it's your month at the helm, on the last working day of the month you should add the contact person from the next library in the rotation (see Schedule and Contacts if unsure) to the circulation@mit.edu list and send an email reminder that these messages will begin appearing in their email. On the first of the next month, you can then remove yourself from the list and take it easy for a while. Please remember: once you remove yourself from the list you can no longer add anyone to it, so last day of the month add someone; first day of next month delete yourself.
LIST OF CONTACTS (for PCRs)
LIBRARY CONTACT AERONAUTICS & ASTRONAUTICS Mat Willmott (willmott@mit.edu) BARKER Andrew Shea (omalleyd@mit.edu) DEWEY Irene Mazor (imazor@mit.edu) HUMANITIES Pat Page (pagep@mit.edu) LINDGREN Joe Hankins (jhankins@mit.edu) MUSIC Forrest Larson (twiggy@mit.edu) (HAYDEN) RESERVES Ginny Such (ginnys@mit.edu) LIBRARY STORAGE ANNEX (LSA) Melissa Feiden (feiden@mit.edu) ROTCH Justin Scherma (jscherma@mit.edu),
cc: Kevin Sheehan (ksheehan@mit.edu)SCIENCE Pat Page (pagep@mit.edu)
BOUNCED NOTICES LIBRARY ROTATION SCHEDULE
MONTH LIBRARY December 05 BARKER January 06 BARKER February 06 DEWEY March 06 ROTCH April 06 HAYDEN May 06 ROTCH June 06 DEWEY July 06 AERO/LINDGREN/MUSIC August 06 ROTCH September 06 HAYDEN October 06 AERO/LINDGREN/MUSIC November 06 DEWEY December 06 HAYDEN
*Dewey Library is handling the ALEPH Daily printouts.
*Branches share the monthly monitoring of the bounced courtesy notices.
page
maintained by cir-lib@mit.edu
last updated 26-Sep-2006