We now have confirmation that we will be upgrading to Sierra version 1.1.3 next Wednesday, November 20. Please inform all staff that we will once again be doing a staggered update of the Sierra client on workstations in the afternoon/early evening after the server upgrade has been completed in the morning. Stay tuned for more instructions next Wednesday, when it is your library's turn to upgrade workstations.
Any PrairieCat Fully Participating library can choose to use the ILL Module in Sierra to manage interlibrary loan requests for their patrons from outside of PrairieCat (i.e., requests on SHARE-Illinois, I-Share or OCLC). The ILL Module allows staff to add a virtual record for the title requested, and then track the ILL through the order, receive and return process. This also means that the patron can see the status in My Account in Encore, will receive pickup notices and overdues, etc.
As you may have experienced, searching by local call numbers in our database is tricky. The “trickiness” stems from trying to keep the different “Class Schemes” that were used in our legacy system when those are no longer necessary in Sierra. We have broached the call number searching topic with Innovative Interfaces management and our new implementation project manager and they are working on a plan.
Technical Bulletin #16 - Holds Processing Cribsheet, is now available on the Support Site under Documentation-Circulation-Technical Bulletins. This Bulletin reviews the proper selections for placing “normal” holds for patrons, including:
routine holds (Title Level - Hold Copy Returned Soonest)
multi-volume holds (Volume Level - Hold Selected Volume) -- commonly used for requesting TV series, magazines, etc.
It was recently reported at a meeting that the Web Message field was not working. I’m happy to report that Jason has gotten the field to display.
The Web Message field is a variable length field in the patron record that you can use to put a message into (i.e. You left your umbrella at the circulation desk) that the patron can see/access when they are logged into their account.
We are planning to move Bolingbrook, Coal Valley and Rockford staff to the new RAILS phone system on Friday, August 2. Here are details related to the phone switchover:
1) All staff should use the PrairieCat toll-free number to call directly into PrairieCat support or contact PrairieCat contract staff – 877-542-7257. As of that day, only the toll-free number will continue to work of the phone numbers we currently use. 309-799-3155, 815-873-1282 and 815-729-3345 will no longer work.
After months of hard work by the PrairieCat Resource Sharing Committee, we are finally ready to begin implementation of the new Item Code 1 values for PrairieCat. Use of the new ICode1 values is mandatory for all PrairieCat libraries in all item records.
