Key Notes Blog

Bringing you weekly posts on conference planning, happenings at Keystone, or how better to put KLAS to work for you!

Administrator’s Training – What to Expect

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Tuesday, 14 August 2018 17:00; Published: Tuesday, 14 August 2018 16:59; Written by Katy Patrick

Hopefully you all know that we routinely offer Administrator’s Training sessions. But what actually happens at these sessions? How can you justify the travel and registration costs? This week, I’m aiming answer some of those questions!

What is it?

A two-day intensive training course, offered here at our offices in Raleigh, NC. You can read up on details, download the registration form, and check the currently scheduled session dates here.

In addition to the scheduled course topics, Admin Training is a great time to get into all of those nitty-gritty administration and policy questions, both with your trainer here at Keystone and your fellow attendees. Class sizes are small, capped at a maximum of just six attendees, so there’s lots of individualized answers and attention to your situation.

Best of all, you will be training on your own database! Not the Users’ Conference database or another mock-up with fake data and semi-arbitrary settings—your very own (live or training, depending on how brave you are) database, with your own settings, your own data, and your own patrons.

What can I expect?

Please pardon our dust: Part 2

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Tuesday, 07 August 2018 20:00; Published: Tuesday, 07 August 2018 19:56; Written by Andrea Callicutt

What's been up since we initially shared with you that the office is currently undergoing a bit of an upheaval as we are having work done to give it a facelift and some updates?

Well, there's all new A/C ductwork installed on the west side of the building as well as a new ceiling gridwork, new ceiling tiles, additional network and electrical drops and plugs, and all new paint on the walls, doors, and trim.

under-construction-2408062 960 720

Here are a few pictures of the latest work...

KDAC - KLAS Development Advisory Committee

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Monday, 30 July 2018 19:07; Published: Tuesday, 24 July 2018 16:51; Written by Andrea Callicutt

At the 2018 KLAS Users' Conference Craig Hayward, President, KLAS Users' Group, announced a renewal and revamp of the KLAS Development Advisory Committee (KDAC). The KDAC serves an advisory role to Keystone on new features being developed for future releases of KLAS.

The terms of the original persons on the committee have expired, but the Officers' and Keystone Staff feel it is needed particularly now with a web-based version of KLAS on the horizon, duplication on demand, and other new projects and features currently being discussed. Over the last couple of weeks, the Users' Group Officers' in coordination with Keystone have been working to update the library breakdown list, identify and discuss possible committee members, and to prepare for the committee's reconvening. Erin Pawlus, Secretary, KLAS Users' Group and Users' Group Officers' Liasion to KDAC, will soon send invitations to possible new committee members with an anticipated meeting of the new committee members in mid-late August.

The Stars of Keystone's Staff - Drea

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Tuesday, 31 July 2018 17:50; Published: Tuesday, 31 July 2018 16:05; Written by Katy Patrick

Welcome back to the "The Stars of Keystone Systems' Staff" series. Each will include some basic info and insight into one of our staff members. We hope these posts will provide you a look into who makes up our diverse, supportive, and knowledgeable staff.

Basic Stats:

Name of Staff Member: Drea Callicutt

Year Hired: 2002

Current Job Title: Marketing, Sales & Communications Coordinator

photo of Drea

Gutenberg is Coming!

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Tuesday, 17 July 2018 20:43; Published: Tuesday, 17 July 2018 20:43; Written by Katy Patrick

For this week's Key Note, I wanted to highlight a reply that James Burts recently posted to the forums--it's exciting news and we don't want you to miss it!

"We will be adding support for Gutenberg from KLAS. Time will tell if Scribe has any purpose beyond being a valuable testbed for our duplication efforts, but we have certainly heard loud and clear that you all want us to integrate KLAS with Gutenberg.

However, in order to be able to do this, there are some foundational parts that must be in place first. The biggest and most important of them is what we are calling the "Duplication Queue". The Duplication Queue is just what the name implies-- a prioritized list of titles to be duplicated to cartridges. We are adding to the nightly routines to make sure every patron's Duplication Queue is automatically filled with books that the patron would want. This automatic selection will function with similar rules as the current nightly auto-select to allow KLAS to pick books to be added to the duplication queue, but with a few very important differences from what nightly currently does.

The duplication queue will be books that the system has selected in advance.
- The system re-fills the queue the night after a patron receives a duplicated cartridge.
- Once titles are on a patron's duplication queue, entries can be added, re-prioritized, or deleted whenever you want. This will allow the RA's (or the patron themselves) to modify the items queue as they want--- like you can adjust the items in your NetFlix wishlist.
The selection of items in the duplication queue will be based on the full BARD collection, not just the titles you have available in inventory (which is how the current nightly programs operate).
- We are basically needing to create a process very similar to our nightly selection routines, but with some significant differences. The two processes are having to be somewhat aware of each other, and make sure they don't step on each other's toes. (for a simple example, if a patron returns a cartridge and is now due for service, we don't want both systems sending both a book from inventory/turnaround as well as a cartridge from Duplication on Demand.) Weaving these systems around each other is the cause of much of the difficulty in the Duplication Queue.

Having the automated selection of books for the duplication queue is a huge step. It takes away the current need to manually click the "Serve Patron" button, and pick the books that will be written to a cartridge. Having a manual step to select books would severely hamper the ability for Duplication on Demand to scale to support a collection-free workflow."

We want to make sure that KLAS' Gutenberg integration doesn't just work, but works well. That means a smooth workflow for selecting titles and duplicating the cartridges, and it also means tracking what actually happened at each step along the way. As part of our integrating with Gutenberg, we will be making sure that enough information is recorded to be able to track down issues, troubleshoot bugs, and answer patrons' questions, such as "Why didn't I get this title?" and "What was on that cartridge?"

The developers are hard at work, and we expect that the Duplication Queue should be finished in late September / October. Then they will work on tying that piece into the Gutenberg itself, which could take another couple of months. The current estimate is that they should be done sometime in December / January.

We expect to deliver a robust process that will work with Gutenberg (or other hardware) to provide your patrons with the right titles at the right time--with the right amount of work needed to run it.

In the meantime, please continue to contact us with your questions, workflow preferences, and suggestions!