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New Library Cards and OverDrive - Updated

11/29/2017 - Final Update: This issue has been resolved.

UPDATE:

The following resources appear to be affected by the new library cards with “01”

  • OverDrive
  • Tumblebooks
  • RB Digital Magazines Audiobooks

The following resources do NOT appear to be affected

  • RB Digital Gateway (Magazines, ArtistWorks, InstantFlix etc)
  • Hoopla
  • Badgerlink Resources

I have calls in with OverDrive, Tumblebooks, and Recorded books and will post when this issue is resolved. Thanks,

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Patron's recently issued new barcodes with "01" rather than "00" as the 6th and 7th digits are getting an error when logging into OverDrive. The error on the OverDrive site is: "Library server message - Invalid Library Card. Not a valid InfoSoup Libraries card."

If trying to check out from InfoSoup, the error is: "There's a problem with your library card. Please see a librarian."

I have contacted OverDrive support and hope to get this resolved quickly. I will also test other online resources to see if the new cards have any problems authenticating.

Sierra Database Server - Operating System Upgrade

We have scheduled to upgrade the OS on our Sierra Database server on Sunday, November 26 starting at around 5:30 pm. The upgrade should last between 2 - 4 hours. During that time, InfoSoup will be unavailable. I will put a note on the InfoSoup home page next week. This upgrade is required before we can perform any more Sierra or Encore upgrades. If all goes well, we will try to run the Sierra 3.3 upgrade after all libraries close on Monday evening, December 4th.

Sierra 3.3 Upgrade Schedule

Sierra 3.3 has been on our upgrade horizon for a while now. 

We will run the update when all libraries are closed, so there will be no Sierra down time during regular library hours. InfoSoup will be unavailble during the upgrade. In order of preference, here are the dates we are considering:

  1. Monday November 13th - Evening (around 9:15 pm)  - First Login to Sierra upgrade in the morning, Tuesday November 14th
  2. Tuesday November  28th - Evening (around 9:15 pm)  - First Login to Sierra upgrade in the morning, Wednesday November  29th
  3. Monday December 4th - Evening (around 9:15 pm)  - First Login to Sierra upgrade in the morning, Tuesday December 5th

Upon morning login, there may be a slight wait while .jar files download to each computer, so we recommend logging into Sierra one computer at a time to minimize any bandwidth issues.

Please let John know if you have any special events that might interfere with us doing the upgrade in the wee hours of the morning during one of those suggested closed times. We will try to accommodate everyone's situation as best as possible.

Multi Facet Searching Bug in Encore

At the AAC meeting, a question was asked about problems with Encore when trying to combine mutlitple facets. There is one long time bug in Encore that I am aware of when trying to refine by a library location and the Children or Adult and Young adult location. Innovative is aware of the issue, but has not been able to fix it yet. There may be additional problems with combining facets that I am unaware of. If you come across other examples where combining facets produces incorrect results, please let me know. Below is a description and work around for the location bug. I have also posted this on the OWLSnet home page under the "InfoSoup Things" heading - https://owlsnet.org/owlsnet/multi-facet-searching-bug-encore

Encore has several bugs and/or limitations when selecting multiple facets from the "Refine by" sidebar.

The biggest problem is that (in the basic search) you cannot combine a Library Location with the Children or Young Adult location. It treats the two locations like an “or” search rather than an "and" search.

If you want to use the Children or Adult & Young Adult location facet, the only current work around that I know of is to do an advanced search with your keyword(s) and select Children or Adult & Young Adult from the location field. On the results page, you can then select your library and any other facets (other than another location).

You could select your library from the Advanced Search and the Children or Adult & Young Adult facet from the sidebar, but in that case, you would not be able to use Availability facet to limit to items available at your library.

As an example, if you wanted to know how many books (or DVDs etc.) on apples are in the children’s section of your library and currently available (at your library) here is how you would search.

1. Go to the Advanced search page and enter your Keyword(s), in this example "Apples"

2. Select Children from Location and enter the search*

4. From the results page, select your library from the sidebar location facet

5. Select Books from the Format facet - (At this point you can select any additional facets such as format, genre or limit by date, etc…)

6.Select Available from Availability facet to limit to items in at your library.

*you could add format and date limits from the advanced search page, but that limits your ability on the result page to add or clear the format without going back to the advanced search, which would then clear your library selection from the location facet.

If you come across other Encore weirdness, please let me know. Thanks,

Evan

Encore Bug Updates

Holds showing as (0) in Encore. Innovative is aware of this problem and is working on a fix for a future update. For now there is nothing we can do, other than let patrons know it is a known issue and that it does not actually affect any holds, but is just a display issue. For most users, the (0) display appears to fix itself fairly quickly. 

We have also been made aware of another Encore "bug" that affects the display of the item status in Encore brief record displays. The bug appears somewhat random, so we are not sure how many records it affects. The bug manifests itself in two ways:

In Encore brief record displays, the Checked Out or Available status does not follow the rules for displaying local titles first when in a library. For example, in this screen shot the Appleton record should display on the brief record page, since I am searching from Appleton, rather than seeing "Checked out at Fremont." The full record page and the View all copies display correctly orders the title, with the Appleton copy first. This problem appears to affect certain titles (or perhaps titles when the status matches certain criteria) rather than locations. The same affect was first noticed at Shawano, where titles they owned were not displaying on the brief record display page.

This same bug is also affecting Encore mobile, where the status is showing as "Not Available" even though copies are available. See this screen shot for an example. The three cat records showing "Not available" actually have copies available. In these cases, the first copy listed is checked out and that seems to trigger the "Not available."

Innovative has referred this issue to software engineering, which means that they may or may not fix the problem soon. Until then, the best I can suggest is to make sure to "View all copies" or go to the full record page for the most accurate status. Thanks to those who reported the problem and sent screen shots. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Evan

Holds showing as (0) in Encore

We are getting a number of reports of users logging in to Encore and seeing a (0) next to their holds display tab. Upon clicking on "Holds", the holds do appear and the number in parentheses updates. Although this might cause some panic for users thinking that all their holds are gone, it appears to be a display issue and not a problem with any lost data. My current guess is that is some kind of caching issue related to the Encore upgrade. I will open a ticket with Innovative to try and learn more and see if there is anything they can do. For now, I am thinking this is a one time problem the first time a user logs in after the upgrade. If anyone comes across an instance of a user with holds where the holds display remains at (0) after a user has logged in a second or third time, please let me know. I will report if I learn anything from Innovative. Thanks,

Evan

Sierra 3.1 Upgrade

At the last AAC meeting I mentioned that we will need to upgrade to the latest release of Sierra as soon as it became available in order to keep ecommerce working. Sierra 3.1 was just released! Unless we run into any problem with our backups over the weekend, we plan to run the upgrade beginning around 8:15 pm on Monday, June 19th. The upgrade should take around 2 hours. During that time Sierra and InfoSoup will be unavailable.

While we don't anticipate any problems with the upgrade and expect Sierra to be good to go Tuesday morning, this is always a good time to go over with your staff off-line circ procedures, whether you use the offline circ client or track checkouts on a spreadsheet. 

The upgrade will require new jar files to be downloaded, so we ask that you open Sierra one computer at a time and let the new files download before opening another Sierra session. Bandwidth issues with Sierra jar files is often our biggest problem. The more you can stagger opening Sierra on different computers, the better. 

If you run into any problems with Sierra following the upgrade, please email OWLSnet Help owlsnethelp@mail.owls.lib.wi.us or call the front desk 920-832-6190. Thanks for your help.

Evan

New OverDrive Web Site

Just a reminder that the new OverDrive web site is scheduled to go live on November 7th. For now, it is just the web site that will be new. Users will continue to use the current OverDrive app. OverDrive was planning to launch a new app, but that has been delayed until after the holidays. I have updated the post on InfoSoup http://infosoup.info/ws to include news about the app. From previewing the site, I don't think users should have any problems navigating or using the new site.

High Demand Holds and Large Print Editions

We came across a number of popular upcoming release titles where the large print edition had the material type "book" and was not, particularly on the brief record page in Encore, easily distinguished as large print.These records have been cleaned up and are now listed as Large Print.

If patrons went to the full record page before placing the hold, they would likely have noticed that it was the large print edition. So in some cases the patron probably wanted large print, but it is also likely some patrons where unaware they were placing a hold on the large print edition. For some of the titles, the waiting time for the large print will probably much longer. I have posted a list of the titles, record numbers, the number of holds, and the patron's library in case you want to try and contact the patrons to see if they really wanted large print. This list can be found at: https://owlsnet.org/sites/default/files/owlsnet/holds_on_large_print.pdf

Please email the cathelp list if you have any question. If you see similar situations in the catalog, please let us know as soon as possible. I'm sorry for the confusion. Thanks,

Evan

Anyone else seen this Sierra problem?

We have a report from a library with an odd glitch when using the Search/Holds function in Sierra. The problem looks like this:

Using Search/Holds, search by title or author. On the Result page, double click on the record you want to view. The screen briefly flashes the record and then returns to the results page. Try clicking on the record again and the same thing happens.

This has happened at one library on different computers, all recently upgraded to Windwos 10. If anyone else has observed this problem, please let me know. Thanks,

Evan

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