Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
Because of the policy implications to many libraries, auto-renew would need to be optional - and by that I mean not default that you turn off but something you turn on. It isn't so much that overdues are revenue, consider the requirements from your funding agencies for how stats are reported. When a library in Georgia did something similar, it was considered wrongly inflating their official stats. Elaine J. Elaine Hardy PINES Collaborative Projects Manager Georgia Public Library Service 1800 Century Place, Ste 150 Atlanta, Ga. 30345-4304 404.235-7128 404.235-7201, fax eha...@georgialibraries.org www.georgialibraries.org www.georgialibraries.org/pines From: open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Ruth Frasur Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2014 8:19 AM To: Evergreen Discussion Group Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality This is definitely something that I personally would be interested in. I'm not sure that, as a consortium, Evergreen Indiana would garner enough support. I could be wrong. I know I've heard that some Indiana libraries, before we were all attached to one another, had this as their standard practice anyway. As was stated by others, my concerns would not be around fine revenue. To hope that there's enough negligence and/or carelessness among our patrons to raise a certain amount of money is akin to speed patrol quotas. My concern is also the timely and predictable return of materials. I also agree with Rogan that I wouldn't advocate on one side or the other for this. Holly also provides a good real world example of what happens when there isn't pressure to return things on time. I worry that something that seems like good customer service actually isn't. On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Holly Brennan haderh...@ci.homer.ak.us wrote: The conversation on this has all been good. Great points from everyone so far! I don't have time to think too deeply about this now, but if it was picked for development I would want to see a difference in a patron- or staff-forced renewal vs. the automatic renewal when looking at an item in the staff client. I am also wary of the return rate and loan duration of items if this happened. I think it would force patrons to place holds on items more often to get them returned, rather than being able to browse on the shelf. I know when we changed our DVD checkout policy from a 3 to a 7 day checkout period, we ended up having more late fees. My thinking on this: People watched the movie, felt no pressure to return, and so the item was then forgotten laying on a table or pile somewhere in their house. Our goal was to reduce fines, but it didn't work. -Holly From: open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Scott Thomas Sent: Friday, January 24, 2014 11:19 AM To: open-ils-general@list.georgialibraries.org Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality I am wonder if this type of functionality has ever been discussed for Evergreen: an item would be renewed automatically at the end of a loan period assuming there are no holds on the item or anything other issues with the patron or the item. The renewal would generate a circulation statistic. Patrons would be able to keep an item longer without having to take any action. We understand that fine revenues would take a hit. Does anyone know if something like this being worked on? Thank you, Scott Scott Thomas Board of Directors PaILS (570) 207-2379 tel:%28570%29%20207-2379 http://www.palibrary.org/pails/ Description: Description: Training | SPARK - Pennsylvania's Statewide Library System Pennsylvania's Statewide Library System -- Ruth Frasur Director of the Historic(ally Awesome) Hagerstown - Jefferson Township Library 10 W. College Street in Hagerstown, Indiana (47346) p (765) 489-5632; f (765) 489-5808 http://hagerstownlibrary.org Our Kickin' Website Our Rockin' Facebook Page http://facebook.com/hjtplibrary and http://pinterest.com/hjtplibrary/ruth-reads/ Stuff I'm Reading image001.jpg
Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
This is definitely something that I personally would be interested in. I'm not sure that, as a consortium, Evergreen Indiana would garner enough support. I could be wrong. I know I've heard that some Indiana libraries, before we were all attached to one another, had this as their standard practice anyway. As was stated by others, my concerns would not be around fine revenue. To hope that there's enough negligence and/or carelessness among our patrons to raise a certain amount of money is akin to speed patrol quotas. My concern is also the timely and predictable return of materials. I also agree with Rogan that I wouldn't advocate on one side or the other for this. Holly also provides a good real world example of what happens when there isn't pressure to return things on time. I worry that something that seems like good customer service actually isn't. On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Holly Brennan haderh...@ci.homer.ak.uswrote: The conversation on this has all been good. Great points from everyone so far! I don’t have time to think too deeply about this now, but if it was picked for development I would want to see a difference in a patron- or staff-forced renewal vs. the automatic renewal when looking at an item in the staff client. I am also wary of the return rate and loan duration of items if this happened. I think it would force patrons to place holds on items more often to get them returned, rather than being able to browse on the shelf. I know when we changed our DVD checkout policy from a 3 to a 7 day checkout period, we ended up having more late fees. My thinking on this: People watched the movie, felt no pressure to return, and so the item was then forgotten laying on a table or pile somewhere in their house. Our goal was to reduce fines, but it didn’t work. -Holly *From:* open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org [mailto: open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org] *On Behalf Of *Scott Thomas *Sent:* Friday, January 24, 2014 11:19 AM *To:* open-ils-general@list.georgialibraries.org *Subject:* [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality I am wonder if this type of functionality has ever been discussed for Evergreen: an item would be renewed automatically at the end of a loan period assuming there are no holds on the item or anything other issues with the patron or the item. The renewal would generate a circulation statistic. Patrons would be able to keep an item longer without having to take any action. We understand that fine revenues would take a hit. Does anyone know if something like this being worked on? Thank you, Scott Scott Thomas Board of Directors *PaILS* (570) 207-2379 [image: Description: Description: Training | SPARK – Pennsylvania's Statewide Library System] http://www.palibrary.org/pails/ Pennsylvania’s Statewide Library System -- Ruth Frasur Director of the Historic(ally Awesome) Hagerstown - Jefferson Township Library 10 W. College Street in Hagerstown, Indiana (47346) p (765) 489-5632; f (765) 489-5808 Our Kickin' Website http://hagerstownlibrary.org Our Rockin' Facebook Page http://facebook.com/hjtplibrary and Stuff I'm Readinghttp://pinterest.com/hjtplibrary/ruth-reads/ image001.jpg
[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
I am wonder if this type of functionality has ever been discussed for Evergreen: an item would be renewed automatically at the end of a loan period assuming there are no holds on the item or anything other issues with the patron or the item. The renewal would generate a circulation statistic. Patrons would be able to keep an item longer without having to take any action. We understand that fine revenues would take a hit. Does anyone know if something like this being worked on? Thank you, Scott Scott Thomas Board of Directors PaILS (570) 207-2379 [cid:image001.jpg@01CF1917.A283E9D0]http://www.palibrary.org/pails/ Pennsylvania's Statewide Library System inline: image001.jpg
Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
Hi, On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Scott Thomas sc...@albright.org wrote: I am wonder if this type of functionality has ever been discussed for Evergreen: an item would be renewed automatically at the end of a loan period assuming there are no holds on the item or anything other issues with the patron or the item. The renewal would generate a circulation statistic. Patrons would be able to keep an item longer without having to take any action. We understand that fine revenues would take a hit. Does anyone know if something like this being worked on? A similar idea [1] was recently proposed on the Koha development mailing list for the use case of extending loans for faculty at an academic library. I'm not aware of any current efforts to do this for Evergreen, but this is a good way to get a conversation started. Here are a couple questions just to flesh out the idea: 1. Would you want patrons to receive some sort of notification that their loan was automatically renewed? 2. Would whether or not a loan can be auto-renewed be determined purely by policy (based on patron profile, library, circ modifier, and so forth, like most other circ settings in Evergreen), or would you also want the ability for circulation staff to turn auto-renewal on or off for individual loans? [1] http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Automatic_renewal_RFC Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Manager of Implementation Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts email: g...@esilibrary.com direct: +1 770-709-5581 cell: +1 404-984-4366 skype: gmcharlt web:http://www.esilibrary.com/ Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org http://evergreen-ils.org
Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
Hi Galen, You ask two very good questions. An email or text notification would enhance the customer service experience so would be desirable. I was thinking a policy-driven auto-renewal, but there may be circumstances where you would want to be able to override it for specific loans so that would also be desirable. Thank you, Scott From: open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Galen Charlton Sent: Friday, January 24, 2014 3:37 PM To: Evergreen Discussion Group Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality Hi, On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Scott Thomas sc...@albright.orgmailto:sc...@albright.org wrote: I am wonder if this type of functionality has ever been discussed for Evergreen: an item would be renewed automatically at the end of a loan period assuming there are no holds on the item or anything other issues with the patron or the item. The renewal would generate a circulation statistic. Patrons would be able to keep an item longer without having to take any action. We understand that fine revenues would take a hit. Does anyone know if something like this being worked on? A similar idea [1] was recently proposed on the Koha development mailing list for the use case of extending loans for faculty at an academic library. I'm not aware of any current efforts to do this for Evergreen, but this is a good way to get a conversation started. Here are a couple questions just to flesh out the idea: 1. Would you want patrons to receive some sort of notification that their loan was automatically renewed? 2. Would whether or not a loan can be auto-renewed be determined purely by policy (based on patron profile, library, circ modifier, and so forth, like most other circ settings in Evergreen), or would you also want the ability for circulation staff to turn auto-renewal on or off for individual loans? [1] http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Automatic_renewal_RFC Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Manager of Implementation Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts email: g...@esilibrary.commailto:g...@esilibrary.com direct: +1 770-709-5581 cell: +1 404-984-4366 skype: gmcharlt web:http://www.esilibrary.com/ Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org http://evergreen-ils.org
Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 3:19 PM, Scott Thomas sc...@albright.org wrote: I am wonder if this type of functionality has ever been discussed for Evergreen: an item would be renewed automatically at the end of a loan period assuming there are no holds on the item or anything other issues with the patron or the item. The renewal would generate a circulation statistic. Patrons would be able to keep an item longer without having to take any action. We understand that fine revenues would take a hit. Does anyone know if something like this being worked on? I tried to convince my library to adopt that policy, but they wouldn't go for it (see: fine revenues would take a hit), so I never developed it. But yes, the idea was to send a courtesy notice that included the BTW, we've renewed this automatically for you to save you from getting fined!...
Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
Interesting questions. To throw my .02 dinars in 1) Yes. 2) I would prefer policy based for a number of reasons that revolve around lack of consistent policy among member libraries. While it's tempting to say that the ability to turn it on or off would be nice frankly it's adding another flip switch on a large control panel full of doo hickeys and some staff don't know all the existing ones. And when I ask myself can I see a significant utility in staff having this ability, frankly the answer is no. So, would I be upset if the override was available? No, and we might find some currently unforeseen use for it but I doubt it. I can actually imagine it causing as much or more confusion than it helps. On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 3:36 PM, Galen Charlton g...@esilibrary.com wrote: Hi, On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Scott Thomas sc...@albright.org wrote: I am wonder if this type of functionality has ever been discussed for Evergreen: an item would be renewed automatically at the end of a loan period assuming there are no holds on the item or anything other issues with the patron or the item. The renewal would generate a circulation statistic. Patrons would be able to keep an item longer without having to take any action. We understand that fine revenues would take a hit. Does anyone know if something like this being worked on? A similar idea [1] was recently proposed on the Koha development mailing list for the use case of extending loans for faculty at an academic library. I'm not aware of any current efforts to do this for Evergreen, but this is a good way to get a conversation started. Here are a couple questions just to flesh out the idea: 1. Would you want patrons to receive some sort of notification that their loan was automatically renewed? 2. Would whether or not a loan can be auto-renewed be determined purely by policy (based on patron profile, library, circ modifier, and so forth, like most other circ settings in Evergreen), or would you also want the ability for circulation staff to turn auto-renewal on or off for individual loans? [1] http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Automatic_renewal_RFC Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Manager of Implementation Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts email: g...@esilibrary.com direct: +1 770-709-5581 cell: +1 404-984-4366 skype: gmcharlt web:http://www.esilibrary.com/ Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org http://evergreen-ils.org -- Rogan Hamby, MLS, CCNP, MIA Managers Headquarters Library and Reference Services, York County Library System You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. -- Ray Bradbury https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1630.Ray_Bradbury You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. -- C.S. Lewis http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1069006.C_S_Lewis
Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
Hi, On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 12:58 PM, Rogan Hamby rogan.ha...@yclibrary.net wrote: 2) I would prefer policy based for a number of reasons that revolve around lack of consistent policy among member libraries. While it's tempting to say that the ability to turn it on or off would be nice frankly it's adding another flip switch on a large control panel full of doo hickeys and some staff don't know all the existing ones. And when I ask myself can I see a significant utility in staff having this ability, frankly the answer is no. So, would I be upset if the override was available? No, and we might find some currently unforeseen use for it but I doubt it. I can actually imagine it causing as much or more confusion than it helps. A per-loan auto-renew flag could be accompanied by library settings and permissions to control its visibility, and it could also not be exposed to the UI at all. I brought up the idea because during the discussion on the Koha mailing list, somebody expressed that such fine-grained control would be useful to them. I would agree that it's a good idea to not display switches unnecessarily on the patron loan list interface unless they would get used. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Manager of Implementation Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts email: g...@esilibrary.com direct: +1 770-709-5581 cell: +1 404-984-4366 skype: gmcharlt web:http://www.esilibrary.com/ Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org http://evergreen-ils.org
Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
I wouldn't object to it, I just wouldn't fight for it either - the per loan over ride. The ability to have auto renewals I rather like as I see it as a chance for good customer experiences. On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Galen Charlton g...@esilibrary.com wrote: Hi, On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 12:58 PM, Rogan Hamby rogan.ha...@yclibrary.net wrote: 2) I would prefer policy based for a number of reasons that revolve around lack of consistent policy among member libraries. While it's tempting to say that the ability to turn it on or off would be nice frankly it's adding another flip switch on a large control panel full of doo hickeys and some staff don't know all the existing ones. And when I ask myself can I see a significant utility in staff having this ability, frankly the answer is no. So, would I be upset if the override was available? No, and we might find some currently unforeseen use for it but I doubt it. I can actually imagine it causing as much or more confusion than it helps. A per-loan auto-renew flag could be accompanied by library settings and permissions to control its visibility, and it could also not be exposed to the UI at all. I brought up the idea because during the discussion on the Koha mailing list, somebody expressed that such fine-grained control would be useful to them. I would agree that it's a good idea to not display switches unnecessarily on the patron loan list interface unless they would get used. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Manager of Implementation Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts email: g...@esilibrary.com direct: +1 770-709-5581 cell: +1 404-984-4366 skype: gmcharlt web:http://www.esilibrary.com/ Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org http://evergreen-ils.org -- Rogan Hamby, MLS, CCNP, MIA Managers Headquarters Library and Reference Services, York County Library System You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. -- Ray Bradbury https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1630.Ray_Bradbury You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. -- C.S. Lewis http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1069006.C_S_Lewis
Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality
The conversation on this has all been good. Great points from everyone so far! I don't have time to think too deeply about this now, but if it was picked for development I would want to see a difference in a patron- or staff-forced renewal vs. the automatic renewal when looking at an item in the staff client. I am also wary of the return rate and loan duration of items if this happened. I think it would force patrons to place holds on items more often to get them returned, rather than being able to browse on the shelf. I know when we changed our DVD checkout policy from a 3 to a 7 day checkout period, we ended up having more late fees. My thinking on this: People watched the movie, felt no pressure to return, and so the item was then forgotten laying on a table or pile somewhere in their house. Our goal was to reduce fines, but it didn't work. -Holly From: open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-general-boun...@list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Scott Thomas Sent: Friday, January 24, 2014 11:19 AM To: open-ils-general@list.georgialibraries.org Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Auto-Renewal Functionality I am wonder if this type of functionality has ever been discussed for Evergreen: an item would be renewed automatically at the end of a loan period assuming there are no holds on the item or anything other issues with the patron or the item. The renewal would generate a circulation statistic. Patrons would be able to keep an item longer without having to take any action. We understand that fine revenues would take a hit. Does anyone know if something like this being worked on? Thank you, Scott Scott Thomas Board of Directors PaILS (570) 207-2379 [Description: Description: Training | SPARK - Pennsylvania's Statewide Library System]http://www.palibrary.org/pails/ Pennsylvania's Statewide Library System inline: image001.jpg
