Emerging Technologies Committee

Libraries have always been about information. Our mission of satisfying the customer's need to know certainly implies a flow of information from the library to the customer. But libraries have always been about interaction as well. In other words, the flow of information can go from customer to library, or from customer to customer. Citizens meet at libraries every day as a trusted place to interact with each other.

Compare this to the internet, which has always been a place of information. The library's online presence has always been a place to find information, but not necessarily a place to interact. However, just in the past few years, the capacity to use the internet to interact has grown exponentially. And while we have begun using tools that allow us to interact with our customers online, the library will begin looking into expanding our options in this area. To do this, an Emerging Technologies Committee has been formed. Visit the Emerging Technologies Committee wiki page to find out how we are doing this. If you have any ideas and would like to participate, please let us know.

How to Find Out if Something is "Claims Returned"...

"Claims Returned" is the status of an item when a customer claims that they have returned that item. Many times, we can look on the shelf and indeed the item was returned but somehow missed being discharged. Other times, we cannot find it and the item is in limbo. Unfortunately, the official status of the item is still "CHECKEDOUT".

This can cause confusion, especially if the only circulating copy in the system or at your branch is "CHECKEDOUT", but actually is "Claims Returned". So how do you find out if an item is "Claims Returned"?

Click here to find out. This is a page that has been added to the WorkFlows wiki page under Item Searching.

Thanks to Paul for explaining this quirk.

WorkFlows Log-Ins Tied to Locations

This is a re-wording of an email message that Paul sent in late November.

When working at Central on Sundays (or when working at any different location for any reason) , please login with the login of the department/branch you are working.

Do NOT login with your home branch REF or CIRC logins.

If you do, statistics will be incorrectly credited to your branch instead of Central, and items could be put INTRANSIT incorrectly.

I have mentioned this in several recent WorkFlows trainings but was one of those caveats that we missed in the original WorkFlows training.

I have added this information to the Logging In page of the WorkFlows wiki.