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?

Your training will take place in our dedicated Training room, which (as you know, if you’ve been following this blog or our social media) will soon be freshly renovated. You will be on a workstation set up with remote access to your own database. Your trainer—probably Nancy—will also have a workstation and a projector, so you can see how it’s done, follow along, and make changes yourself as desired.

The schedule is pretty packed! You’ll be covering a lot of ground in relatively little time. The aim is more for you to understand your options, to know the various controls and information available to you, than for you to learn and remember exactly how to use everything. The small class size allows you to delve deeper into areas that are useful to you, while breezing through areas that you either already have a good handle on, or just don’t have much use for.

North Carolina Talking Books is just a short drive away, so if you’re interested in a field trip, we can usually set something up. And of course, you’ll have opportunity to try some of Raleigh’s amazing cuisine and to meet the Keystone staff.

What will I learn?

You can download the list of course topics from the info article, but here are some highlights with a bit more information:

• Nightly Configuration

This is always a popular Users’ Conference topic, but tackling it at Administrator’s Training will let you address your own settings as they are, and really get into the options available to make it work just right for your library. Fine-tuning your Nightly Configuration can help increase your circulation and even make the process more efficient.

• Maintenance and Control Files

KLAS allows an incredible amount of control over your own policy settings, so much that it can be hard to know or even for us to list all the things you can adjust. Your trainer can take you through it and help identify areas you may want to examine or reconsider. Take charge of your settings to enforce your federal, state, and agency policies, and to provide the high level of service your patrons rely on.

• Reports

Learn how to use the various reports available to you, and how to most effectively get at the information you need. By better understanding reports, you can provide more telling information about the work you do to your funding agencies. I will be providing more Key Notes posts about various reports, but again, nothing can compare to the value of seeing it work live and being able to test different setups on your own database.

Attendee Feedback

In September 2020, we conducted our first online KLAS Administrator's Training session. It was very much a trial run intended to make sure it met the goals we set out for it. So how’d it go?

We asked the attendees for their feedback, and here are a few of their comments...

“I really learned a lot from all of the sessions. I have this problem of not knowing where to start searches and Mitake took care of some of that. I am glad you asked everyone if we could record it. I have gone back a couple of times to see something that I had missed.

I am also glad that there are takeaway lessons and the manual for future reference.”  Shawn Lemieux

“I would like to first say thank you for providing the training for us, it really helped me understand many processes of KLAS that I had heard about from John, but now I have an actual context and understanding of them.

I really liked the presentations as a whole; if I had two monitors it would have been perfect because I could follow along and go through the motions along with the demonstration, so for people with access to two monitors it would be even better! I found them easy to follow along as well, especially considering my background is not in libraries or library science, I was afraid it might have a hard time, but I managed fairly well. I would definitely recommend this training to others, and if I am in a management position in the future here I would definitely make sure to have employees attend the training as well.”  Adam Smith

The above screen shot of the training session shows Nancy, Mitake, and two of our attendees, Adam and Tony. Everyone is smiling and having a good time.

In short, we feel like this was a success, and we’re pleased to say we’ll be offering regularly scheduled Online KLAS Administrator’s Training sessions moving forward.

What next?

Check out the "Online Administrator's Training" article for upcoming dates!

If you need further notice out, or have a particularly tight schedule, please let us know. While we cannot guarantee that we will be able to provide training on a requested date, but we will do our utmost to work with you to schedule something you can attend.

And as always, if you have additional questions, please ask! We’re here to help.

The Batch Patron Status Review (BPSR) tool was created to help users manage outdated patron records and comply with NLS and local records lifecycle policy.

The expected lifecycle for patron records is either:

• Activeto Suspended / Deceased to Withdrawnto Deleted
• Activeto Transferred Out to Deleted

For each stage, the BPSR tool allows you to:

1. Query for patrons to advance to the next stage
2. Review the batch and print Labels to send notices
3. Post the batch to apply the status change to all reviewed patrons

Document Outline

• Opening Batch Patron Status Review
  1. To Suspend
  2. To Withdraw
  3. To Purge
• Effects & Considerations

Download

Please log in to view available downloads. Thank you!

Remember: You are always welcome to call or email Keystone Customer Support with questions! 

Keystone is offering a two-day in-depth training, round-table, and user feedback opportunity for KLAS Instructional Resource Center / Instructional Materials Center Users. An agenda with full details of each day's activities will be available soon.

Note: Keystone reserves the right to cancel or reschedule.

Prerequisites for attendance:

• Attendee must have a KLAS Administrator role in their local system
• Attendee has authority to change records and policies for their KLAS system

KLAS IRC Symposium Dates & Times:

• Tuesday, October 29 - Wednesday, October 30, 2019
• Each day's sessions will run from 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM

KLAS IRC Symposium Agenda

IRC Symposium agenda updated as of October 14, 2019. Also, you must be logged-in to klasusers.com to access these documents.

• KLAS v7 IRC Symposium UPDATED Agenda - MS Word
• KLAS v7 IRC Symposium UPDATED Agenda - PDF

Cost:

• $300 for the two-day symposium
• Please make checks payable to Keystone Systems, Inc

Hotels & Airport Transportation Information:

• Travel Information - MS Word
• Travel Information - PDF

Transportation:

Please contact your hotel to arrange shuttle service to and from the airport.
Local transportation to and from the hotel to Keystone's offices will be provided.

Please contact Tracey Fye if you have any difficulty making reservations, or have any questions about accommodations.

Tracey Fye
Keystone Systems, Inc.
Email:
Phone: 1-919-782-1143 or 1-800-222-9711

Registration:

Please use the below Training Registration Form to indicate that you would like to attend.

To reserve your space please register before September 30, 2019.

How to count Active Patrons is one of those deceptively simple questions. Are you looking at just the patron main status, whether any activity was done on or by the record, or only those patrons that received a book? Does it matter what they received, or from where? Do you count everyone active right now, or everyone who has active at some point during the period? The exact definition of any given 'Active Patron' count will generally explain why these types of counts often differ.

As an example, and to help you understand NLS' upcoming data on patron growth, here's how their numbers were reached.

NLS Circ Status Summary

In the NLS Circ Stats Summary file we ran for everyone in October, the top portion includes a readership summary along these lines:

This leads with the total count of patrons at each library who "were served" according to their Last Served Dates (9256 patrons at FL1A).

The next columns are counting the number of unique patrons who received something from that library in that format (so 6618 audio books or magazines, 74 hard copy braille, 51 e-braille, 4567 from non NLS materials at FL1A). You can't add those numbers up because some patrons can be active in multiple formats, receiving both hard copy and e-braille, or both e-braille and audio books, etc.

The last column is "%NNNN," which is the percent of patrons who are active ("were served"), but did not receive something from that library in any format (15% at FL1A). For the total Active Reader count for your library, NLS will consider your Total active patrons count minus this percent. At FL1A, 9256 minus %15 leaves 8618: the total number of patrons who received something from FL1A specifically.

So why are some of your patrons getting their Last Served Date in at least one medium set, but not receiving anything from your library?

The biggest reason would be BARD. NLS did not want us to include the BARD transactions in the circulation data extract on the theory that they already had that information. So, if you have patrons who solely serve themselves through BARD, the loading of the BARD transactions updates their Last Served Dates--but NLS is only counting them on the BARD side, not in the count for your library.

Another possibility would be those patrons who signed up for a non-TBT subscription that was directly mailed. Since you started sending out MoC serials by Duplication, they shouldn't be a factor for the audio magazines portion. However, the braille magazines are still sent directly from NLS, and are not included in this report either.

Readership & Circulation

For further illustration of how much all of these little differences in definition affect the final numbers, consider the Readership & Circulation Report. 

On the R&C Report, the top section (Active Individual Readers and Active Institutional Accounts) is looking at patrons who are marked Active, or who have had their status changed at some point during the reporting period. The theory here is that you've had to work with those patrons in some way, so they should be counting toward your working total.

However, this is not "readership," which is what those Circulation numbers are looking at. The Readership section of the report is a little further down from the top. Here you'll see the patrons in each Medium, broken out by individual versus institution. So, you'd need to add those together to get the numbers for each medium. But once again, you can't just total each column to get the number of active patrons. What you'll get is the total number of active Media Profiles, and as you know, each patron can and often does have multiple Profiles on their record.

So what does all of this mean? 

• The Active Individual Readers count from the R&C Report is an accurate count of how many patrons at your library are in Active status or who you worked with in some way. (As long as it is run as closely as possible to the end date of the report. Running it any other time opens up a very large can of worms!)
• The initial Total from the NLS Circ Stats Summary is an accurate count of how many patrons at your library were served reading material of some kind.
• The initial Total minus the %NNNN is an accurate count of how many patrons were served reading material of some kind by your library specifically.

Each is a count of Active Readers--but because each is defined and figured differently, you can expect each number to be different. None of them are wrong, it's just a matter of figuring out which count best measures exactly what you want to measure.

For many years, Keystone offered regular Administrator’s Training sessions at our office in Raleigh. Not only did that allow us to give admins in-depth training on their own systems, but it also gave them the opportunity to get to know us and network with a few of their peers as they learned together.

However, travel costs are a barrier to some, and others are banned from business travel to North Carolina for political reasons. Then on top of that, we had a pandemic situation. The answer was clear...as much as we loved having you in person, it was time to offer admin training virtually.

We want to make sure attendees get just as much benefit from the online version as they did from attending in person. That means the online version need just as much hands-on, personalized, and interactive an approach as the in-person version did, including opportunities for discussion with the other attendees and introduction to several Keystone staff members. 

We hope this will allow more of you than ever before to benefit from admin training. Be sure to let us know if you’re interested in joining in!

Training Structure & Content

We took this opportunity to revamp and re-evaluate the structure of the training. Because the in-person version required attendees to stay here in Raleigh, it was kept to two (very busy, intense, somewhat demanding) days. To make it a little easier to absorb all of the information without eating too much into your schedules, we spread out the online version to four half-days running from 1:00-4:30 PM Eastern Time each day. The lesson plan itself has been updated from a progressive tour of the admin menu to a more module and task-oriented approach.

Library for the Bind & Print Disabled (LBPD) Administrator Training Agenda

• ​Monday
  • 1:00-2:30 PM Nightly Configuration
  • 3:00-4:30 PM Roundtable Discussion
• Tuesday
  • 1:00-2:30 PM Duplication on Demand Setup
  • 3:00-4:30 PM Catalog-focused Settings
• Wednesday
  • 1:00-2:30 PM Reports / Query / Excel
  • 3:00-4:30 PM Patron-focused Settings
• Thursday
  • 1:00-2:30 PM User Permissions
  • 3:00-4:30 PM WebOPAC Settings

Instructional Resource Center (IRC) Administrator Training Agenda

• Monday
  • 1:00-2:30 PM Catalog-focused Settings
  • 3:00-4:30 PM Patron-focused Settings / APH Census
• Tuesday
  • 1:00-2:30 PM Materials Requests
  • 3:00-4:30 PM WebOPAC / WebOrder 
• Wednesday
  • 1:00-2:30 PM Acquisitions / APH Integration
  • 3:00-4:30 PM Other Administrator Controls
• Thursday
  • 1:00-2:30 PM Reports / Query / Excel Security
  • 3:00-4:30 PM Specialized Notes & Census

Provided Training Resources:

All attendees receive a copy of the KLAS Administrator Training Manual and ongoing access to all session recordings. Finally, to help attendees orient themselves to each topic and come prepared to discuss their own settings and needs, we developed pre-class worksheets for each session. These worksheets are not checked or graded, it’s fine if attendees don’t have time to get through them all, but they will help ensure you get the most out of the training. 

For more information about what is covered, please see the Administrator’s Training – What to Expect article.

2025 KLAS Admin Training Sessions

• June 9-12, 2025 - Library for the Blind and Print Disabled KLAS Administrator Training
• September 8-11, 2025 - Library for the Blind and Print Disabled KLAS Administrator Training
• November 3-6, 2025 - Instructional Resource Center KLAS Administrator Training

Prerequisites for attendance:

• Attendee must have a KLAS Administrator role in their local system
• Attendee has authority to change records and policies for their KLAS system

Training Cost

The training costs $600 per attendee, which covers the staff time needed to prepare for and run the training session. You also receive the KLAS Administrator’s Reference manual, which will be mailed to you (or provided electronically if that’s more accessible for you), the pre-class worksheets, and recordings of each session.

Registration Form

To register for an upcoming session or express interest in another date, please fill out the following form:

• KLAS Administrator's Training Registration Form

If you have any trouble accessing the form or if you have questions, please let us know! We hope to see you soon.

Now that we have several confirmed attendees, we have scheduled the first online IRC / IMC Administrator's Training!

Upcoming Session

We're exited to announce to announce our first KLAS Administrator Training for Instructional Resource / Instructional Materials Center users in quite some time will be held Monday, November 28 - Thursday, December 1, 2022.

Prerequisites for attendance:

• Attendee must have a KLAS Administrator role in their local system
• Attendee has authority to change records and policies for their KLAS system

Training Structure & Content

The training is scheduled across the afternoon's of four days, allowing users from various time zones to comfortably attend, and allowing time for you to absorb and practice in-between sessions. Exact session topics and order is subject to change, but the current schedule is as follows:

Monday
1:00-2:30 PM ET: Catalog-focused Settings
3:00-4:30 PM ET: Patron-focused Settings / APH Census

Tuesday
1:00-2:30 PM ET: Materials Requests
3:00-4:30 PM ET: Acquisitions

Wednesday
1:00-2:30 PM ET: WebOPAC / WebOrder
3:00-4:30 PM ET: Other Administrator Controls

Thursday
1:00-2:30 PM ET: Security Control / User Permissions
3:00-4:30 PM ET: Reports / Query / Excel

For more information, please see the Administrator’s Training – What to Expect article.

Training Cost

The training still costs $600 per attendee, which covers the staff time needed to prepare for and run the training sessions. It comes with an Administrator’s Reference manual, which will be mailed to you (or provided electronically if that’s more accessible for you), pre-class worksheets, and recordings of each session.

Registration Form

To register for the upcoming session or express interest in another date, please fill out the following form:

• KLAS Administrator's Training Registration Form

If you have any trouble accessing the form or if you have questions, please let us know! We hope to see you soon.