MINUTES of the Monarch Circulation Committee Meeting

August 3, 2017

Call the meeting to order: David Nimmer, Chaircalled the Monarch Circulation Committee Meeting to order at 9:30am at Iron Ridge Public Library, Iron Ridge, WI. Members present: Elizabeth Daniels, Iron Ridge; Pam Garcia, Waupun; Alison Hoffman, Monarch Library System; Diane Kallas, Sheboygan; Rhonda Klemme, Mayville;Jane Matko, West Bend; David Nimmer, Cedarburg; Camrin Sullivan, Mequon-Thiensville;Colleen Swart, Oostburg.

Public comment and correspondence: No public present.

Approval of minutes, July 6, 2017: Daniels moved for approval of the July 6, 2017 minutes,Matkoseconded. Motion carried.

Best Practices:

  1. Patron Registration: Since several copies of the patron registration document were sent out, Daniels was wondering which one is the latest version. Garcia will date the document and email it out. Daniels also requested a physical copy be sent on the van to all libraries. Garcia will do this. Garcia will also add information to the document recommending an address check method every 18 months or less.
  1. Address Check/Expired Patrons/Expiration Check Terms/Automatic Purging: This topic was sent to the Directors and there was opposition to the term “Expiration”. A director was opposed because expiration affects Overdrive. However, the address check block also affects Overdrive, so possibly more education is needed. Some would prefer no expiration of patrons at all, but recognized the necessity of a procedure for checking addresses. Directors want to put a general statement into the ILS bylaws to have libraries do address checks. The ILS committee can address this.
    Nimmer noted that the goal of the circulation committee is to recommend best practices. Use of address check and expiration is redundant. The circulation committee recommended the expired process because of the functionality that comes along with expiration, particularly the option of an email sent out x number of days (where “x” can be determined library by library) prior to a patron’s card expiring. This will allow the patron time to renew his/her card and staff to check address prior to the card actually expiring. Wording of the email can be changed to soften the terminology.

Hoffman will send wording to this committee, Nimmer will rewrite background statements and offer Directors different possible wordings connected to expiration and describe the features of using expiration.
No patrons are automatically deleted based on expiration. Automatic purging is not currently in place. Any future automatic purging would be based on activity date and not expiration.

  1. Barcode standard placement: This was presented at the last Directors Council meeting. They agreed upon barcode placement on the outside cover for books. Some libraries don’t trust their staff to check AV contents, and those libraries would still like barcodes on the inside for AV items. AV item barcode placement will be at the discretion of the owning library.
  1. Renewal override permission for items on hold: Hoffman will work with the Directors to determine who should have permission to override renewals of items with holds and who should not.
  2. Incomplete item sets: Garcia will send the statement to the circulation listserv recommending that incomplete items should be removed from complete item sets and cataloged as separate items or withdrawn.
  1. Expired patrons/automatic purging: Purging should be a yearly process. Hoffman reviewed that options include automatic deletion or gathering of patrons into a record set to be manually purged. Purging is based on inactivity for a set number of days. We need to develop procedures/best practices to share with libraries regarding automatic or manual purge. Factors including notes, fees and credits can be taken into consideration and those patrons can be excluded from an automatic purge. Hoffman said that an automatic purge could run continuously, if desired by a library. Sullivan mentioned that there is also a canned report which collects patrons for a manual purge.

Next month we will discuss and determine a recommended amount of time of inactivity to warrant patrons being purged.

Kallas mentioned that libraries may want to look closer at accounts where patrons owe money, and possibly consider purging some of these patrons that have owed for many years. Auditors/city council members may look at these accounts and wonder why this money is not being collected or may look at it as expected revenue. It was mentioned that legally the statute of limitations may have passed for collecting some of these old fees.
Future meeting(s) will involve developing purging options for libraries to choose from.

  1. Lost/withdrawn/deleted item and bib records: We discussed when bibs/items with certain statuses are removed from the system. Hoffman mentioned that empty bibs (those with no items attached) are removed through a process on a scheduled basis. Items with the status of missing automatically convert to withdrawn after 1 year. Note that “withdrawn” is not the same as “deleted”. Currently there is not an automatic process for moving withdrawn to deleted; Hoffman is looking into this. Lost items can be moved to missing or withdrawn, but currently are not. Are withdrawn items suppressed from the PAC? Hoffman will check. We will look into this issue further after we finish handling patron records.
  2. Damaged book billing: We will revisit this at a future meeting.
  1. Expired holds: Libraries should regularly look at “not picked up” items in Request Manager to get these items back to their owning libraries, preferably daily. Libraries should also look at items that cannot be found, as in items in one of the transit-like statuses. Nimmer called for volunteers to draw up recommendations/procedures for handling items in these statuses for extended time periods. Sullivan and Garcia will work on procedures to address these items that haven’t arrived and bring recommendations back to this committee.

Open Discussion: Because the reconciliation report was agreed upon with the Directors, Nimmer will work on the report proposal to Polaris. We are not sure when this will be ready, because there may be some back and forth with Polaris to figure out report criteria, we need to be sure price falls at or below the approved report cost (or else Directors will have to approve) and testing needs to be completed.

We discussed patrons possibly being able to submit address/phone/email changes via the PAC. Mead mentioned that it didn’t work well for them. Nimmer thinks we should figure out a way to allow this so patrons can keep us updated.

Libraries were concerned about whether or not the local holds functionality was working properly. There are a couple of things that don’t work exactly as we would expect them to. One situation that messes with the local holds functionality includes interrupting the natural flow of checkin/held/checkout. It was determined that these are Polaris shortfalls, and not procedural/policy decisions. It appears to be the shortfalls are just the way Polaris handles the holds.

Next Meeting: September 7, 2017 at 9:30am atWest Bend Public Library.

Adjorn: Sullivan moved, Matko seconded. Adjourned 11:53am.

Respectfully submitted,

Pamelyn Garcia, Monarch Circulation Committee Secretary