Good evening all!
My library is hoping to migrate to Evergreen sometime in June. I've got questions coming out of the ying-yang, but here are a couple to get things started: Once upon a time, there was some discussion about homebound service. What happened to that? Is there a way to capture circ history for certain patrons? Otherwise, what do libraries do for work-arounds? In the 2.0 version of EG, there is an Acquisitions module (and the users rejoiced!). One of the features my Acq librarian is missing is the ability to apply vendor discounts to a) individual items or b) whole invoices. I've come up with a work-around which might work in the short term, but we'd like something for the long term; if anyone is doing development in this area (or is interested in it), we'd be happy to partner with someone. Finally (and this is a long one), I have a cataloguing question. Patrons under the age of 12 are unable to take out material in the Adult department but adults are able to take out material in the Children's department. This creates problems when there is a popular children's book that both the under-12 set and adults are interested in reading. If there are copies available in Children's department, under-12s and adults can put reserves on the copies but the under-12s don't get priority (even though it's material in their "department"). The solution has been to have two separate bib records, one with copies in the Adult department and one with copies in the Children's department; adult holds go on the adult copies, under-12 holds go on the Children's copies. There must be a way to do this in EG with one bib - the idea that I floated is we separate the departments into branches, with under-12s being members of the Children's branch and only able to take material out from that branch. However, adults need to be able to take out material from the Children's department/branch which means they would be able to put holds on Children's material and then we're back to the original problem of adults getting on the list for Children's material before the under-12s. (Clear as mud? I've got a great interpretive dance I can do to highlight the main points!) I guess what my question is whether or not it's possible to limit holds by age while not limiting circulation (i.e. adults can take out material with a collection code of JFIC, but they can't put holds on it). Cheers! Rebecca Rebecca Larocque Head of Information Services North Bay Public Library 271 Worthington St. E. North Bay, ON P1B 1H1 Phone: (705) 474-4830 x2821 Fax: (705) 495-4010
