Evergreen FAQ

 

Daily Life with Evergreen

How often will updates happen?

Evergreen updates are not like Microsoft updates. The development is iterative, so changes are smaller and more frequent. Those of you who are using the demos likely upgraded your Evergreen clients from 1.6 to 2.0 recently – most upgrades will be like that. We have been able to apply many bug fixes and small patches without requiring our libraries to download a new staff client. Some changes will require you to download a new staff client. We are aiming to limit the number of times you have to download a new staff client.

As you have seen, the process for moving to a new staff client isn’t complicated (and it will be easier when your libraries are all in there and each library has its own user name and password). No more CDs – you’ll just go to the upgrades page and download the new client.

The vast majority of changes will be small fixes and tweaks that we can apply without the need for a new staff client. Bigger changes are still small compared to software like Windows or Horizon that gets overhauled every few years.

Some examples: The Search Catalog button did not exist in 1.6. It was released for the community with 2.0, but we were able to apply it to our 1.6 install without requiring any action on the part of our libraries.

The tab “x”. Many of you have noted that in Evergreen 2.0, there is no longer an “x” to close a tab – it must be closed with a key board command (ctrl-w) or via the file menu. This is annoying. It’s part of a larger fix (the sort of thing that has to get worse before it gets better). In 2.1, the tabbing will be much more robust. However, there is a fix available for it now, but it requires a new staff client. We are offering the development partners the option to download that new client and that will be the ONLY thing that’s different.

Do we have to be really tech savvy to use Evergreen?

Not really. If you can use Horizon, you can use Evergreen. If you have staff members who are uncertain about right-clicking, they should practice that before we go live – Evergreen is a lot faster to use if you right click instead of going to the menu every time.

Circulation Questions

Will we be able to keep our new books, DVDs, etc, from being sent to other libraries?

Yes. If your rules currently restrict certain items to your library, that is how they will be carried over to Evergreen.

What are grouping and cloning?

You can group and clone patrons in Evergreen. Cloning just carries over address information, which makes it faster to register a family that lives at the same address. Grouping is something that will only show up on the staff side – when you pull up one family member, you can quickly see if other family members have fines, overdue items, etc. It’s also helpful when a family knows they have a book out, but doesn’t know who has it checked out.

Patrons will not see groups. Grouping does not affect patron privacy in any way. It’s simply informational for you – it doesn’t affect patron privileges or anything like that.

Since there isn’t a grouping feature in Horizon, there’s no way to bring our patron data in with groups. You can group people after the migration, but you don’t have to.

How do I merge patrons?

If you discover a patron with two records, you can merge the two records for that patron. From the patron search screen, search for the patron in question. You should get more than one result.

Select both of the patron records. You can do this by clicking on one patron, holding down the control key on your keyboard and then clicking on the other patron.

{an aside on selecting groups of things: in Windows and in Evergreen, if you click on the top item in a list, hold down the shift key and click on another item in the list, it will select all of the items in between. If you want to select multiple items that aren’t sequential , you can hold down the control key while you click the different items}

Once you have selected multiple patrons, you will see the “Merge Patrons” button. Click on it and a new window will appear.

You will be asked to select the “Lead Record”. Please choose the one with the correct barcode. The transactions and holds from both records will appear on the newly merged record.

Can we have Hold Shelf Expiration?

Sure thing. Many thanks this week to Mark Twain library. They’ve been testing the hold shelf expiration feature. So far, we’ve found that it works sort of the way we’d like it to. Holds expire from the hold shelf after 7 days, and are listed when you go to the “Browse Hold Shelf” screen and check off the box for “show shelf-expired holds.” Where it falls short is the “Clear these Holds” button is an all-or-nothing function. It clears all of the expired holds, but it sends them into a sort of fugue state where they wait for you to check them in. Once you check them in, they either roll over to the next patron or go back to the shelf. In Mark Twain’s case, they wanted to keep things on the hold shelf until the end of the day on day 7, so clearing those holds before closing proved problematic, unless they always cleared the hold shelf at the end of the night (and checked them in the next day). Since we’re trying to avoid having the tail wag the dog, we’re going to ask about the possibility of a future release including the ability to clear only those hold selected from the list of shelf-expired holds.

If you would like this feature turned on for you, please let the helpdesk know.

How and why do I retarget holds?

If you get a hold on an item you don’t want to send out to another library, you can retarget the hold. From your pull list, you can click on the hold, choose “Actions for Selected Holds” and then choose “Find another Target”. Do not cancel a hold unless you know the patron doesn’t want that item any more.

If you’re having trouble getting a hold to trigger (you know there’s a hold on a just-cataloged item and it’s not popping up when you check the book in), pull up the item in the catalog (if you want to zap it into item status and choose “Show in Catalog” that’s a quick way to get there) and under “Actions for this Record” Choose “View Holds”. From there, you can select a hold and under “Actions for Selected Holds” choose “Find another Target”. When you check in the item again, it should trigger the hold.

When you retarget all of the holds on an item (as you would when you add a new copy of a book), you need to choose only the holds that are “Waiting for copy” to retarget. If you are looking only at your library’s holds, they will likely already be sorted this way. If they aren’t, you can click on the “Status” heading to sort them.

Select the top hold that is “Waiting for copy”, hold down the shift key, then click on the bottom hold that is “Waiting for copy”. Do not select any that are “Ready for pickup”. Then choose “Actions for Selected Holds” and “Find Another Target”. We discovered today that the system will retarget those on the hold shelf, which we generally do not want.

What’s going on with Lost items?

Lost items came over from Horizon as grocery bills. When you check a lost item back in, the system will alert you that it is a lost item and ask if you want to make it an available item. If the item was lost in Evergreen, the item would come off of the person’s record. However, the items that were lost in Horizon came over as lost items with no ties to the patron’s account. You can see from the patron’s account what the title is, but it’s an artificial connection to the actual item. So if a lost item comes in and it was lost in Horizon, you will need to check your Horizon Lost report and manually remove it from the patron’s record.

To see the title of a lost item from Horizon on a patron record, you have to go into the Bills section of the patron’s account, look at the Bill History and then click on Full Details. Contact the help desk if you can’t find the title of a lost item.

 

The OPAC

Why isn’t the spell checker better?

Spell check is a tough thing to perfect. The spell check in Evergreen works off of a dictionary, so it doesn’t know that when you say Hairry Poitter, you don’t mean Hairy Porter. The community at large is working on making this better, but it’s a difficult issue to fix. We’re experimenting with the dictionary Evergreen uses to see if we can make it better ourselves.

You keep talking about the KCLS OPAC – what’s that about?

The Evergreen community is working fast and furious to get King County’s public catalog ready for general use. That’s the version of the catalog with some of the new features we’re excited about (like patron reading history). It’s also the basis for the Kids’ Catalog we’re working on with other Evergreen consortia. Since it was designed for King County, work has to be done to make it useable for other libraries. We’re hoping this work will be done by our go live date, but if it’s not, we’ll go live with the native Evergreen catalog (which you can see at acorn.biblio.org) and introduce the new catalog after our migration.

What does this mean for you? The differences between the King County catalog and the native Evergreen catalog are largely aesthetic. If we go live with the native catalog and then move to the King County catalog, it will simply feel like a nice upgrade for your patrons. Major functionality (search, my account, etc) will remain the same. Features like reading history will be welcome additions that your patrons will embrace. The Kid’s catalog will be ready after the King County catalog is implemented – we don’t have dates yet, but we are hopeful we’ll have the Kid’s catalog by the start of the school year (and let me tell you, when it’s done, it is going to be great).

Several of you have asked about the iConn tab and your pathfinders. The catalog will not initially be as customized as our current catalog – we simply don’t have time between now and our go live to make 60+ different skins. There will not be an iConn tab, exactly, but we will look at ways to include a link to iConn in the native catalog and certainly within the King County catalog when it is available. As for pathfinders – these will work differently. You won’t need to ask us to implement them – you’ll be able to use the bookbags feature to create lists of materials for any purpose and you can put those lists on your webpage (not the catalog itself, but your own webpage – much more flexible).

On go live day, we think you’ll find many of the features of the native catalog an improvement over the current catalog. First of all, there’s no difference between searching in the staff client and searching in the online catalog – you won’t have to explain to your patrons why you could find a title they couldn’t (well, you may still have to explain that, but the answer will always be your fantastic search skills).

The search in the online catalog is much better. Try searching for “The Help” in Evergreen and it pops right up. Even better, the keyword searching lets you search for “Help Stockett” if you’re so inclined. There’s also a spell check! Going live on the native Evergreen catalog will be an improvement in search and usability, with the King County enhancements just around the corner.

Cataloging, Acquisitions, and Reports

What’s going on with Acquisitions?

Acquisitions is brand new in Evergreen. We have been transmitting your problems and suggestions to the Evergreen community and developers.

And Serials?

Serials did not come up as expected. Right now, our attention and that of the company we are working with to finish the migration is focused on the schools and Bridgeport. Once we’re done with the schools, we’ll work with our (new) data specialists to get you an ETA on serials. In the meantime, just catalog them like normal.

What’s the deal with reports?

We will definitely miss WebReporter. The reports module in Evergreen is powerful but clunky. We often run reports directly on the database for our libraries. Any monthly reports you’re getting now, you will continue to get. If you need a report, let us know and we can create it for you. Sign up for the reports workshops on October 7 or 14 if you want to discuss more about reports.

What’s this blank line on my monthly report by patron residency?

One of the reports you received is called “Circulation by Patron Residency” and it often includes a blank line with a number of circulations associated with that line. Those are circulations to patrons who don’t have their residency stat cat filled in. We are also sending a report called “Patrons Without Residency” about a week before the end of the month. Those are people owned by your library without residency codes. If you fix those people,when you get your circulation by patron residency report, the number associated with the blank line should be smaller. However, if a patron owned by another library without a proper residency stat cat came to your library, and the other library didn’t fix that patron, that line will still exist.

Notices

Do we have to run notices?

No, notices aren’t “run” in the same way they were in Horizon. Email notices go out automatically to any and all patrons with an email address in their account. All other notices generate automatically, creating a PDF of that day’s notices for you to look at. If you check your print notices daily, you will only have to look at one PDF. If you check them less frequently, you’ll have to look through each PDF that was generated since you last checked and you’ll have to check the shelf for each item.

How are notices sent out?

By circulating library:

Scenario 1

A patron goes to Booksville Library and borrows items owned by Booksville Library and Readtown Library.

The overdue notices will come from Booksville.

Scenario 2

A patron goes to Booksville Library and borrows items owned by Booksville Library and Readtown Library.

The following week, the patron goes to Readtown Library and borrows books from Readtown Library and Pageville Library.

The notices for the first batch of items (from Booksville and Readtown) will come from Booksville Library.

The notices for the second batch of items (from Readtown and Pageville) will come from Readtown Library.

Patrons will only receive notices from libraries they have actually gone to.

 

What’s missing and future development

What’s missing in Evergreen that we had in Horizon?

There are a few things that Evergreen doesn’t do yet. We’ve outlined them in emails to the Evergreen list, and they’re all covered in this FAQ. The top items are:

Hold behavior

We were originally hoping that Evergreen would have a “my library patrons first” feature. Right now, that’s not the case, but we are able to easily protect new books from being requested by other libraries. The cool thing in Evergreen is that it’s possible to see all the holds on an item filtered by pick up location. For new books, this amounts to a hold list, so you’ll finally have an answer to “where am I on the hold list?” Even better, the Evergreen community is home to some truly innovative thinkers who want to create Netflix-like features for holds, allowing users to rank their preferences for which book they get next. Someday, the question “where am I on the hold list” will be obsolete!

Behavior by Item Type

When we go live, we won’t be able to send notices or expire holds by item type. In other words, if a book stays on your hold shelf for a week and a DVD stays there for three days, the system will only be able to expire holds every seven days. However, your hold shelf will be easy to manage – you can see the entire hold shelf in Evergreen and sort it by any number of fields, including date placed on hold

Inventory

At the top of our wishlist is an inventory module. We are looking into the cost of developing inventory control. However, the reporting features are incredibly robust. We can use reports to get inventory work done. For those of you who use the inventory module, start brainstorming what you’d like to see in a perfect inventory control module. We want your best blue-sky ideas so we can work towards building the best inventory features possible.

What else is on the Wishlist?

There are things that we would love to see Evergreen do or do better. Reports, as we’ve said, are in need of improvement. Fortunately, there’s a large community working on Evergreen and things like reports are getting attention.

We’ve been compiling wishlist items, which are things we can put out to the community and hope that they are popular enough to make it into a future release or they are things we can try to get developed ourselves.

-Integration with ReQuest and OCLC for ILL. That would be really neat.

-The ability to allow people in the same group to check out each other’s holds

-color coding by patron type, not just by patron status (right now, patrons that are OK are green, patrons with problems are yellow, and patrons that are blocked are red).

Demo Questions

Where are the item barcodes?

It can be hard to play around when so many functions (like the Item Status screen) assume you have a book in hand and can zap in a barcode. If you want to collect a few barcodes of items already in the test system, you can do that by looking the item up, clicking on the title, scrolling down to where the copy information is (you can click on “See copy information for all libraries” if you want), and clicking on “copy details” to see the barcode.

Can we get an hourglass or beach ball or something to tell us when it’s working?

Yup. The test server is a little slow, because we’ve put most of our resources into the real server set up. If you want something that tells you when it’s whirring along working on whatever you just asked it to do, go to the Admin menu (upper right side), and choose “Toggle Activity Meters.” Two bars will appear in the lower right side of your Evergreen window. They’ll let you know when it’s working.

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