On May 1, 2025 we got together and talked magazines on cartridge (MoC)!  We shared the current status and coming improvements, answered questions, and did our best to start you out on the right foot. As usual, this session was recorded for those who can't join us live.

• What: Issuing Magazines on Cartridge (MoC) Webinar
• Presenter: Katy Patrick,Technical Writer, Keystone Systems

5/1/24 Issuing Magazines on Cartridge (MoC) Webinar Part 2 

5/1/24 Issuing Magazines on Cartridge (MoC) Webinar Part 1  

Query to find BARD Only Patrons with Active Subscriptions

Here's the query Erin, AZ, requested during the webinar to find BARD Only patrons with active subscriptions:

Quick Search-

• Main Status | Equals | a

Advanced Search-

• Media | Pat Medium | Equals | db
• Media | ServeCode | Equals | bard [or "ob" or whatever code is used for "BARD only" patrons]
• Subscription | KLAS ID | [see below]
• Subscription | End Date | Is Blank

For the subscription IDs, either use "In" and a comma-separated list of all MoC Serials
OR
use "Not In" and a list of the most common non-MoC serials, ex: SER-TBT2,SER-TBT4,SER-TBN2,SER-TBN9,SER-DDB9,SER-NWL8,SER-CAW1,SER-CAP1,SER-VET9,SER-CAL2

This query is not perfect, but it should give you a reasonable list of BARD-only patrons with active subscriptions (which may or may not be MoC serials) for you to review. 

Bear in mind that these patrons have been receiving MoC Direct serials despite their BARD Only status, and may want to continue receiving them.

If you watched the recent Webinar on Issuing MoCs, you know that I strongly encouraged everyone to clean up their Serials... but what exactly should you be checking? 

As we get the first waves of libraries converted, I'm getting a crash course in what to look for and what our programs need to work, so here's the run-down! 

1. Active Serials

All of your active Serials need four things. The first three are on the title tab:

• Medium: DB
• Publisher: CMLS (It's fine to have the description spelled out, but the Code should be CMLS)
• Serial Type: Dir / Direct

For cleanliness sake, I also recommend making sure the Status is Active, and the Reading Level and Language are set appropriately, but the above are what we need for the program to make a local copy.

We also need an active Caption, which should look about like this. If you have MoC Dir serials without captions, please compile a list and send it to us.

2. Long-Discontinued Serials

At this point, we're recommending that the longest-discontinued serials be excluded from our copy programs. They've been unavailable for quite some time. 

If you agree to let these lie, please:

• Clear the Publisher field
• Set the Title Status to Withdrawn
• Include Discontinued or similar in the Title.

(Note: even for titles like these that you do not intend to circulate again, please do not delete serial title records, at least not without checking in with customer support to make very, very sure that nothing is still referencing the title.)

If you decide that you want to keep any of these for the option of sending back-issues, you need to either Cancel or Delete all active subscriptions for them, or patrons will get a very old serial issue. (See below for more details on clearing subscriber lists).

Any that you want to keep will also need the active serial info above, and something added to the Title to make it clear that the serial is discontinued.

Long-discontinued Serials list:

• AMH7American Heritage - Discontinued Fall 2012
• BRD4Das Beste aus Reader's Digest - Discontinued Mar 2020
• BUE3Buenhogar - Discontinued Spring 2009
• CPZ4Smart Computing - Discontinued Oct 2013
• DBF4Diabetes Forecast - Discontinued  Sep 2020
• JFA4Journal Francais d'Amerique - Discontinued Dec 2021
• MNY4Money  - Discontinued Jun 2019
• NGT4National Geographic Traveler - Discontinued Dec 2019
• OCI7 Cowboys and Indians - discontinued Fall 2020 
• OPR4 O, The Oprah Magazine - Discontinued Dec 2020
• PBY7Playboy - Discontinued Jan 2021
• SVT4Seventeen - Discontinued Dec 2018
• UNW7U.S.News & World Report - Discontinued Jun 2009
• YAM4Young Adult Magazine of the Month - Discontinued Dec 2013
• YOG4Yoga Journal - Discontinued Dec 2023 (no issues on BARD)
• ZIG3Matilda Ziegler - Discontinued Nov 2009

3. Recently-discontinued Serials

For these, you need to either Cancel or Delete all active subscriptions for them, or patrons will get an old serial issue (that they've presumably read before anyways).

Set the filter at the top of the Subscribers tab to Active, so that only the current subscriptions will show. Then, go through each and either:

• Update the subscription (Ctrl-o), add today's date in the End Date, and Save (Ctrl-s)
• Delete the subscription (Ctrl-d; enter to confirm). 

Cancelling by adding an End Date is preferable because it leaves a record of who was subscribed before. If the magazine resumes, you can resume the subscriptions by deleting the End Dates.(But if you have a long list, Deleting is faster.) 

We are working on a tool to help bulk cancel subscriptions, so if you have a later transition date and/or long subscriber lists on discontinued Serials, you might wait to see if we can get it to you in time. 

Finally, please make sure that the serial includes everything needed for Active serials: Medium: DB, Publisher: CMLS, Serial Type: Dir, and a Caption.

Most Recently discontinued Serials:

• AMH4American History - Discontinued Spring 2024
• DOG4Dogster - Discontinued Fall 2023
• OTL4Outdoor Life - Discontinued  Spring 2023
• WRT4The Writer - Discontinued Sept 2023

Dealer's Choice Serials:

Finally, there are two in-between discontinued serials, and you can decide which of the above lists they belong in:

• PES4 People en Espanol - Discontinued Apr 2022
• PSM4 Popular Science - Discontinued Dec 2022

4. Merged Serials

There are two pairs of merged serials that need review.

For Odyssey / Muse:

• ODY4 - Make sure the title reflects the dual nature of this serial
• ODY4 - Needs Publisher: CMLS, Serial Type: Dir, Medium: DB
• ODY4 - Needs both the odyssey and the muse caption/pattern, with the muse caption being the active one
• ODY7 / MUE4 / MUE5 - whatever the library has for Muse (BARD Back issues only) - needs to have the publisher cleared

Captions:

• odyssey_@chron1@-@chron2@ 
• muse_@chron1@-@chron2@

• EBN4 - needs to have the Ebony caption/pattern
• ESS4 - needs to have the Essence caption/pattern
• ESS4 - needs Publisher: CMLS, Serial Type: Dir, Medium: DB
• Your choice whether EBN4 should be copied to allow back-issues sent on demand (if not, remove the Publisher)
• Active Patron Subscriptions should be on ESS4
• Check EBN4 for subscriptions added after 2019 - It was announced as returning in 2023 and then withdrawn. Libraries should follow up with those patrons.

Captions:

• ebony_@chron1@-@chron2@
• essence_@chron1@-@chron2@

In Closing

Thank you for making it this far--sincerely. All of this cleanup will mean that you get all the issues you want loaded, but no ancient history getting duplicated and mailed out. It will help keep your first round of MoC Orders reasonable, and it will make the conversion process a lot smoother.

If you have questions, let us know. We will also be working on the libraries coming up for conversion next, so do not fear if you see some of these changing happening "on their own". It isn't the cataloging fairy; it's Katharina and I. (Although, maybe Katharina is the cataloging fairy...)

This week we're sharing user perspectives from the two libraries who served as pilot libraries for how libraries for the blind and print disabled will circulate magazines on cartridge (MoC) via KLAS. Michael Lang, Director, State Library of Kansas Talking Books Service, shares the Gutenberg experience and Jesse McGarity, Technical Operations Specialist II, Virginia Beach Public Library, Accessible Resources and Services, provides insights from using Scribe for MoC. A big thanks to Michael and Jesse for testing the waters, helping us improve the process for all of you, and for sharing their experiences!

MoC at Kansas Talking Books Service

Submitted by Michael Lang

Michael Lang, checking in with an update on some of the lessons we learned getting started with local MOC production in Kansas. We ran into a few issues, some were issues of our own making and some were bugs in the system that needed to be worked out. As such, my MOC circulation numbers aren’t going to be very helpful for anyone. Nothing was running as we thought it should have at first. We started, ran for a week, had to pause as the bugs were worked through, and then restarted.

We are running our serials as a separate medium, so that magazines will be loaded separate from books. Our plan is to send them out on a calendar basis, weekly on Wednesdays. We’re still trying to make sure that’s working as intended.

Most of the problems we’ve uncovered are being or have already been patched by Keystone and NLS. Here’s the main problems we ran into.

• Issue 1: Old, some very old, issues of magazines were sent to our patrons. We intend to only send out one back issue to a new subscriber. That’s not how it worked when the switch got flipped. I believe this has been fixed.
  • Lesson 1: Pay close attention to which issues are being printed during your mail run at first.
  • Lesson 2: Consider cancelling subscriptions for inactive NLS magazines, or patrons might get the last issue of American Heritage magazine from 2019 (fake example) and wonder why.
  • Lesson 3: Look at your serials request lists in KLAS and see if anything looks funky prior to flipping the switch. Does someone have reserves for 2009 People magazines? Catch it before it goes out.
• Issue 2: Naming issues with Readers Digest caused multiple duplication errors, an issue that has been fixed by NLS.
  • Lesson: Know where your report is for orders in error status and run it throughout the transition. Patron Module – Reports Menu – Statistics – Duplication Order Status.
• Issue 3: Bug in the system has led to 0 new files (books or magazines) being added to our system since 3/15. Almost fixed.
  • Lesson: Sometimes being the pilot library breaks stuff, but if you can roll with the punches its worth it.

Overall, we’re excited about where this is going to get us when it’s all smoothed out. It’s given me a chance to email with Nancy and John a bunch which is always a treat 😊

MoC at Virginia Beach Accessible Resources & Services

Submitted by Jesse McGarity

In March, Accessible Resources and Services (ARS) at the Virginia Beach Public Library (VBPL) went live with MoC!

We are sending magazines out on separate cartridges from talking book. This is because we already had cartridges of separate colors (white for talking books, green for braille, and peach for magazines) and because we have a smaller patron size. We set the magazine limit to 15 per cartridge since they are smaller than books, with a max of two cartridges.

Some of the reasons we decided against sending talking books and magazines together is because we had the second color cartridge, but also because we did not want to confuse patrons. Additionally, we did not want to limit the number of talking books a patron would get.

After the first shipment it took us a week or so to figure out our settings were incorrect, but once we did, items started going out. The first two shipments were quite a bit for us (about 90) but as we wait for returns it has been much less. Right now our daily send out very low, about one or two. Hopefully has people realize we are sending them, it will be more.

The next step is to find a good way to add has/hads to each patron account, so they do not missing any issues.