No. 05-14                                                                                                                                 APRIL 22, 2005      

• MARISA IACOBUCCI, Adult Services Coordinator

Film Festival!!
Come join us at the FLLS system meeting on Thursday, April 28^th, 9:30 – noon to see a viewing of some clips from documentaries in our collection.  If you think you’ll be able to make it, please let me know by e-mail (marisa@flls.org) or phone (ext .26).  Thanks and hope to see you there!

 

• REX HELWIG, Computer Network Manager

Here is some news and information on the Polaris front.
As I work through the hundreds of pages of setup forms that need to be filled out which are now about 3/4's done, I have come across a couple of bumps in the road.  Fortunately at the last FALCONS meeting we setup committees that were empowered by FALCONS to make those decisions on behalf of the consortium.  In circulation there are 4 settings that are considered System-wide settings.  That means that these 4 settings apply to all of the System libraries equally.  The committee members discussed these settings requirements via email and decided on the following:

 
1.  How many days is an items overdue before it goes to a lost status?  30 days
 
2.  What is the default replacement fee if there is no price in the holding/item record?  $20 - Our plan is to have all of the item record replacement cost fields that are currently blank updated from another item record on the same BIB that has an amount already entered in the replacement cost field during the data migration.  For those items that are still blank, our plan is to automatically generate a report that will be emailed to the owning library a few days in advance of an item going lost so you can enter a price in the item record.

 
3.  Is Polaris going to automatically charge a fee for placing a hold and if so, how much?  No - the way an automatic hold fee would be applied is that the moment a patron placed a hold, a fee would be assessed to their account.  The problem with this is that the circulation clerk would be prompted to collect the hold fee prior to the patron receiving the item.  It is also possible the patron may never receive the requested item for various reasons (expired, cancelled, item is withdrawn) causing issues with credits.

 
4.  Is Polaris going to automatically charge a processing fee for items that go lost and if so, how much?  Yes $10 - the processing fee is added at the same time an item status goes to lost which is driven by the notice production.  Therefore, it would be impossible to add a processing fee to the patrons record prior to a notice being generated.  This fee will show up on the billing notice in addition to the replacement price of the lost item.  If the library chooses to, they can waive the processing fee for the patron.  One scenario might be that if the patron returns the lost item or pays for it within 30 days then you might waive the fee.  This way it might be used as an incentive for the patron to settle up quickly.  Keep in mind that it does take staff time to enter the item into the system and prepare it for circulation (barcoding, covering, pockets, vendor processing charges, etc.) which does translate into real costs that are above the actual purchase price of the item.

 
If you have questions or comments on the above decisions, I encourage you to attend the FALCONS committee meetings.  The next meeting is on Thursday, May 19th at 9:30AM in the Borg Warner Room at TCPL.

 
It is looking like we will be installing Windows XP Pro upgrades to the Win2000 computers that will have a Polaris client installed on them.  Since we don't have a true Wide Area Network (WAN), we are opting to run Polaris in a "Workgroup" mode, unfortunately this only works for computers running Windows XP Pro.  I'll keep you posted on when this will happen.

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• Directors’ Advisory Council (DAC) members: 

If you have any questions or concerns regarding FLLS library service, you are welcome to contact a DAC member from the list below. 

Beverly Dann, Waverly Free Library
Gail Park, Southworth Library Association, Dryden
Janet Steiner, TCPL, Ithaca
Judy Barkee, Ulysses Philomathic Library, Trumansburg
Kay Zaharis, Cortland Free Library
Lois Maki, Newfield Public Library
Mary Frank, Peck Memorial Library, Marathon
Sally Otis, Hazard Library, Poplar Ridge
Stephen Erskine, Seymour Library, Auburn
Susan Robey, Groton Public Library