Cornell University Library Voyager Implementation Site    

Voyager Access Services Meeting
Minutes, April 28, 2000

Present: Deb Lamb-Deans, Carmen Blankinship, Pat Schafer, Joanne Leary, Howard Raskin, Linda Miller, Susan Currie (chair)

VOYAGER 2000 and additional modules:
We discussed the implementation of Voyager 2000. Committee members should review the release notes from Voyager 2000 for circulation related changes.

We also began discussion of when we might implement the Electronic Reserve and Media Scheduling modules. Since these are two major installations with significant workflow and public service implications, we would like to think about bringing these modules up in January 2001. There are equipment issues for electronic reserve as well. We will continue discussion of this at a future meeting. Right now, we are focused on bringing up the basic system since that alone will be such a major change. We agreed to think about a phased approach to implementing e-reserve by exploring bringing it up in the fall of 2000 in selected units.

We also need to find out how off-line circulation is accessed. None of us have been able to locate it and the trainers will need to train staff. Susan will investigate how to get this to committee members.

Reserve
Linda Miller is our liaison to the Technical Services Workflow Group for reserve templates. These are the templates staff will use for processing reserve materials that are photocopies and instructor personal copies. Deb, Carmen & Howard have been working with Linda on the configuration of the templates. We reviewed the information sent by Linda and confirmed the templates so far. Linda will take additional feedback to the TSWG.

Deb asked about the possibility of having an installer for some of the customized work being done by the Access committee including the circ.bib.cfg for reserve templates and possibly some of the customized patron notices that we set up in Reporter. For example, since what was labelled "lost book fine" will show up as "overdue fine" in Voyager, we might want to customize replacement bills so that we don't use the "overdue fine" terminology. Amy Blumenthal from Desktop Services, posted a message to the IMT listserv about this. Basically, she wants to somehow repackage the Voyager installation to be a one-package, rather than using Endeavor's three-package installer so that we can incorporate Cornell's customizations. If we customize anything that we want to retain from installation to installation, we should let Amy know.

One example are the reserve templates as one need for an installer. We will invite Amy to a meeting to talk about what customizations we would want to be part of the installer. Unrelated to customization but for installation, call slip will need to be installed along with the circulation client.

Howard asked if the reserve information on courses that is supposed to be transferred from the Registrar will have ALL Cornell classes showing in the opac or if only the ones chosen when processing reserve materials. We need to find out more about this program since we don't want every single class to display--only the ones that really have course reserve materials.

Fines, fees, bursar update:
We will be able to see the Binding, Damage and Repair and Miscellaneous charges on Bursar bills (before just appeared as overdue fines). But bills generated by these defined reasons in Voyager will map to the overdue sub codes in the Bursar transfer. Budget and Accounting will need units to track the volume of bills generated using these codes in order to determine the need for new sub codes.

Susan reviewed the setup in Voyager for fines so that we implement the same policies we have right now. One difference is that in Notis, a recalled book that was billed for replacement included a $25.00 lost book fine and a $35 recall overdue fine. In Voyager these two amounts will be combined to make one amount of $60 for an overdue recall. Joanne suggested we look at editing the text for the notices sent to patrons to see if we can make this clearer rather than just have the term "overdue" appear. When Lydia gave us an overview of these notices, she indicated that a certain amount of customization could be done so we will look at the results from the circ test load next week. The fine/fee structure is:

Reserve:The fine rate is set for .04 cents per minute with a maximum fine of 35.00 This is the amount that will appear on replacement bills. .
Short term Loans (1 day, 2 day,etc.) The daily fine rate is $2.00, the maximum fine will be $35.00.
Regular: Daily overdue fine rate is .75 per day with a maximum fine of $25.00.
Recall: The daily fine is $3.00 with a maximum fine of $60.00.
The maximum fine is what will appear on replacement bills.

These reflect what is in NOTIS right now. The difference is in how the maximum recall fine is set to appear.

Circ Transaction Load
This is scheduled for Monday, May 1st. This is from the March 24 extract so there will be a complete circulation configuration for CUL.
Members of this committee will use collected circulation data examples from all the units to test the migration of circ data.

We reviewed the item types in the Matrix sysadmin set up . The list of item types (which is equivalent to item loan codes in NOTIS) is much more extensive in Voyager than in NOTIS. We have a loan item type defined for formats as well as for loan periods. Since the loan periods cover all the loan periods used for the format base item types, we will set up the matrices for the specific loan period item types as well as the "nocirc" item type for non-circulating material. There will be a default set up for format based material that normally does not circulate. The loan period will be 0 days. The default, if it works as we hope, should allow the staff to enter the date due for the material. This is something we must test in the next two weeks.

OPAC Display
Deb gave a progress report on her work with Fred Murataori in editing and customizing the patron displays in WebVoyage. We have asked for some technical help to find out if we can suppress the prefix and suffix in patron ID records. These numbers are encoded on the magnetic stripe of ID cards but are not visible anywhere on the card for patrons to see. Patrons will not know to enter these numbers. We hope to have the system either supply the numbers as a default or to be able to suppress them.
Deb asked committee members to let her know of editing needs in the opac displays. For example, they are trying to get rid of the flashing error messages. Also, if a patron places a recall on a book and then later tries to place a recall on the same book, the error message is confusing. Deb listed some suggested changes to the instructions for call slip (called closed stack requests). Help screens are also in progress as well as investigation of a time out in case patrons leave screens with personal information displaying.

Training
Howard, Deb and Carmen have been preparing for the Access Services Training which is scheduled for late May/early June. The training will consist of a basic circulation and a supervisor level training.

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last modified on: Oct.6, 1999