Minutes Circulation Committee 2 May 2005
Present: Melissa, Feiden, Joe Hankins (minutes), Irene Mazor, Georgiana McReynolds (chair), Denise O’Malley, Pat Page, Dan Pribble, Kevin Sheehan, Ginny Such
Agenda
Agenda
a. Georgiana McReynolds is reviewing the results submitted to her by the circulation testers for v.16.
b. Maria Rodrigues identified 90-100 people who need basic circulation training and 20-25 who need advanced training. Kevin Sheehan, Denise O’Malley, and Georgiana McReynolds will review training documentation.
c. Your Account
In version 16 if someone forgets a password they will be prompted to pick a question and supply a previously identified answer before they are allowed to change their password. Because there are several questions to choose from, we suggested limiting to a single question, suspecting that the user will forget what question was answered initially.
Testing of the forgot password function was not possible until recently The ability of patrons to change their passwords should reduce the traffic coming through the Your Account Password Problem Electronic Rotation Schedule (YAPPERS).
d. Designated Borrower Form
Georgiana met with Nicole Hennig to design a designated borrower form. Nicole and/or Marion will first prepare a test version so that any changes can be made before the form goes live.
e. Reserves testing
Ginny Such reported that Christine Moulen s aid that reserves, for version 16, is ready for testing. Ginny will send the URL to circulation supervisors-lib. Joe Hankins mentioned that restore item information occurs in the ALEPH client and wondered if that needed to be tested for reserves processing . Melissa Feiden said restore defaults works. She tested this using a temporary location.
In version 16 Christine Moulen will receive a message alerting her when courtesy notices do not reach a mail server. We cannot test this feature until we are live. One suggestion was to check how successfully this feature works with sites that currently run version 16. If power outages on the side of campus near Dewey are determined to be a problem we will suggest moving the server to another location such as Hayden or the Systems Office. We questioned what our policy should be if we know notices are not going through. We should bring this discussion to PSMG. We also need STS and IS&T to help identify if and when there are reasons for the courtesy notice delivery problems.
An Architecture person asked to check out an RSC journal for 28 days, saying that RSC items are designated low use simply by being in RSC. Circulation Committee believes the default loan period for RSC journal stacks is reasonable since it is really a space issue, not a low use issue.
Pat Page suggested we review our term loan policy. Discussion ensued. Circulation Committee will draft a proposal.
The committee will recommend changing the default request option through the web from holds to recalls. The main purpose for the change is to help reduce the number of patrons who receive fines on overdue items with holds. The patrons receive no notice that someone is waiting for the item until the item is overdue but recalls generate a notice before the item is due.
The committee plans to determine if a new fine policy for summer loans is necessary. It was agreed that we should tell international graduate students especially that they need to monitor due dates through Your Account when they take books home during the summer; they are also responsible for the timely return of recalled items.