Key Notes

Our KLAS Users' Group officers contacted some KLAS users to ask them to share how their library / organization is faring and what policy, service, or other changes they may have enacted in response to library closure or limited staffing related to Covid19. We welcome submissions from any KLAS user who wants to share their experience during this time. Please contact Chandra Thornton, President, KLAS Users' Group or Drea Callicutt, Keystone Systems if you're interested in contributing a post.

Our next guest blog post in response to this request is from Sam Lundberg, Reader Advisor, New Mexico State Library, Library for the Blind & Print Disabled.

COVID-19 and the New Mexico Library for the Blind & Print Disabled

In large part because of our small size and flexible staff, the New Mexico LBPD has been able to stay open and continue service to all ~2,600 of our patrons. Of our 7 staff members, 5 are working from home and 2 are coming into the office daily, but never at the same time. One staffer handles all of our physical delivery, along with outgoing and incoming mail each morning. Meanwhile, the other staffer handles all DoD and equipment orders each afternoon. All of our RA work is done remotely, with our phones going directly to voicemail which we check repeatedly over the course of the day.

With New Mexico closing down hard and fast, we were able to see the shutdown coming and prepare as best we could. One of the biggest things we did was send out our newsletter early. We had a mostly complete draft ready, which we edited to include our COVID plans on the front page and rushed to get sent out. This, along with our voicemail recording, alerted each patron to the two basic facts that 1) we are still open, and 2) things will be delayed a bit. We had a minor panic attack when all staff were ordered to stay out of the State Library building on Friday of the first week, but we were quickly able to be designated as essential and limited staff allowed to return to the building on Monday.

One adjustment we made to accommodate our new staff schedule, with the help of Keystone, was to reschedule some of our nightly functions related to DoD so that they run mid-afternoon. This allows us to check in DoD cartridges and then have new orders created for those patrons the same day, preventing us from adding on an additional day of delay beyond the 4 days we are already quarantining all incoming mail.

Our patrons have generally been very understanding. We have several patrons who normally insist on a callback, or will call repeatedly until they catch a live RA, instead leave a voicemail with their order. I know I really appreciated this because those first couple weeks were rather frantic with patrons trying to order as many books as possible as nursing homes and other facilities across the state went into lockdown. We are right in the middle of our year-long DoD transition, and this provided great motivation to move many more patrons to DoD service. While we have not increased the cutoff values for our patrons across the board, we’re regularly manually assigning books well above our usual limits.

We are still calling back patrons when necessary, especially for BARD support and other more detailed problems. To avoid patrons being able to gather staff personal phone numbers, our RA responsible for the majority of callbacks set up a Google Voice temporary phone number, which she can set to “Do Not Disturb” during non-work hours. This has been an effective, if ad-hoc, solution.

This whole circumstance has offered up opportunities to tackle a few large projects that we’ve had on the back burner. Series sequence cataloging, flushing out our local subjects, and contacting inactive patrons, to name a few. We’ve also gotten involved in the Rating Unrated Books project, which is a nice change of pace when you need it.

I think we are in a stable place as a library and should be able to continue service at our current level for an extended time, although not at the highest level of service we’ve pushed hard for recently. There is outreach we’ve had to scrap and, while review of local narration projects continues, current narrations are on hold. Even though we cannot speak with every patron, we are still getting books out. Our staff will keep going like this as long as we need to, with the continued resilience and creativity necessary during these extraordinary times.

Our KLAS Users' Group officers contacted some KLAS users to ask them to share how their library / organization is faring and what policy, service, or other changes they may have enacted in response to library closure or limited staffing related to Covid19. We welcome submissions from any KLAS user who wants to share their experience during this time. Please contact Chandra Thornton, President, KLAS Users' Group or Drea Callicutt, Keystone Systems if you're interested in contributing a post.

Our next guest blog post in response to this request is from Michael Lang, Director, State Library of Kansas, Talking Books Service.

March 16 – March 20: The Scramble

Kansas Talking Books began quarantining incoming items on Monday, March 16th. Our initial procedure was to disinfect all incoming items, scan them into a quarantine shelf, while wearing gloves, and let them sit for seven days. We did this for one week.

On Tuesday, March 17th at 4:00 p.m., Kansas Governor Laura Kelly held a press conference announcing the two week closure of all state offices beginning Saturday the 21st.

We emailed all of our residential facilities and individuals to alert them to our closure and encourage them to order more books and/or sign up for BARD. We identified heavy users and assigned them more books. We encouraged any patrons who called to order extra items. We discussed increasing out nightly cutoff for all patrons but weren’t sure we could get that many books pulled. For the next three days, we pulled twice our daily average. On Friday afternoon, Keystone ran a second round of nightly autoselect, and we did a full second pull.

Regrettably, this left patrons without email addresses and who didn’t call in underserved during, what would become, a four-week period with no outgoing items. Many of our patrons also don’t realize we are part of a state agency and might not have realized the governor’s order to close applied to us. This news was also overshadowed in the same press conference that she announced the closing of all school buildings for the rest of the school year.

March 21- April 5: The Shutdown

For the following two weeks, staff went home with instructions not to work. Our voicemail message started that we would reopen on the 6th. Our mail was delivered as usual to Emporia State University, where we are located, and held in the mailroom separated by date received. During this time, Emporia State University closed all buildings to the public.

I monitored emails and signed patrons up for BARD when possible.

April 6 – April 19: The Reset

State employees were instructed to return to work on April 6th, remotely if possible or on site if not possible but deemed safe, to provide missions essential functions. I returned to work with a skeleton crew of rotating circulation staff. Circulation staff checked in the books and equipment that we received during our two week closure.

RA staff began working from home, accessing their voicemails and returning call from their cells phones using blocked numbers. Eventually, we were able to get 3 of the 4 remote staff’s VOIP office phones hooked up in their homes. They are able to receive and return calls from their office numbers. The fourth person has a work issued cell phone so that she no longer has to call from a blocked/unknown number. RA staff continued to assign and reserve books for patrons during this time. They also encouraged patrons to try to use BARD as uncertainty in our operational status remained.

Additionally, with all campus buildings locked down, the postal service is not delivering to campus. ESU staff pick up the mail on Monday and Thursday. We were informed on April 13th that they would no longer be picking up our books and equipment but will still pick up our paper mail on Mondays and Thursdays. I must go to the post office to pick up our items.

April 20 – Present: Doing the Best that We Can

On April 20th, we began mailing out books and machines. In those first two days, circulation staff prepped and pulled almost 5,000 items and I delivered 56 bags of mail to the post office using my mother-in-law’s Ford Ranger. I am now delivering and picking up mail at the post office daily. We are allowing returned books and machines to sit untouched for at a minimum of four full days in our library before being handled by staff. Monday’s mail is sorted on Friday, Tuesday-Thursday on Monday and Friday’s mail gets sorted on Tuesday. It’s really messing with our daily procedures but we’re making it work.

The State Library has a contract with Splashtop, which provides remote access to desktop computers. During the week of April 20th we were able to get remote staff set up so that they can work on their desktop computers remotely from home. This allows them to access our network drives, networked printers, and some of our audio editing software. RA staff are also prepping for summer reading, cataloging, and editing audio as time allows. They will be working remotely until at least June 1.

Our KLAS Users' Group officers contacted some KLAS users to ask them to share how their library / organization is faring and what policy, service, or other changes they may have enacted in response to library closure or limited staffing related to Covid19. We welcome submissions from any KLAS user who wants to share their experience during this time. Please contact Chandra Thornton, President, KLAS Users' Group or Drea Callicutt, Keystone Systems if you're interested in contributing a post.

Our first guest blog post in response to this request is from Danielle Miller, Director & Regional Librarian, Washington Talking Book & Braille Library.

COVID-19 and the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library

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We are all experiencing a crisis most of didn’t imagine we would be in, and might not have felt adequately prepared to manage. These are unprecedented times and our libraries are vital resources for our patrons, yet many of us are finding we are having to stop, decrease, or modify services to our patrons in response to the pandemic. Washington State was the initial U.S. coronavirus epicenter. Home to the first case of coronavirus, and the first death on February 29th was in King County, where the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL) is located. On March 2nd there were 14 more cases, 6 more deaths, and schools began closing. In response to the growing concerns about patron, volunteer, and staff safety, that same day we implemented new procedures in handling our mail. All books, including DBs, braille, LP, and any new items, were checked in or processed using gloves. Incoming materials were then set aside and marked with the date and were quarantined (not put into circulation or inspection) for eight days. PCC or our proto Duplication on Demand patron cartridges were checked in like others, using gloves, and then the cartridges were disinfected and received new (previously unused, or not used for a period longer than 8 days) mailing containers. Machines were disinfected and also dated and set aside for a period of eight days before going back into circulation.

On March 3rd we sent a message to our volunteers about all the safety measures we were implementing at WTBBL and letting them know they only needed to come if they felt comfortable doing so. We were open and operating as normal, but adding precautions for everyone’s safety. Our maintenance custodian was disinfecting all door handles, tables, water fountains, and frequently touched surfaces at least three times a day. The surfaces and chairs in the audio recording booths were being disinfected throughout the day. We added Kleenex and hand sanitizer in multiple locations throughout the building, as well as adding hand sanitizer and disinfecting wipes in the audio booths. We also put up notices in the building and at the volunteer sign-in station describing the precautions we were taking. We did see a decline in the number of volunteers coming to the library, but many still came, especially volunteer narrators and reviewers.

By March 15th, there were 772 confirmed cases and our Governor announced that all entertainment and recreational facilities, including bars and restaurants, were to close. The next day, WTBBL closed to the public and all volunteers. All staff continued to come to work and perform their regular duties and we continued circulation of materials as usual while following the safety measures previously outlined. On March 17th, the number of cases had jumped to 1,009 and we were anticipating that the Governor would soon issue a stay-at-home order. Worrying we would could be sent home at any time and not be able to send out materials, we decided to do a surge in our circulation to push our extra books to our patrons.

For all patrons with cutoffs between 4-16 books, we increased them all by four books. Our average daily circulation is between 1,200-1,500 items and we raised our daily circulation cutoff from 2,500 to 4,000. So on March 19, 20, 23, and 24, we did circs of over 4,000 digital books. More than we have ever done! This push got four additional books, over 16,000 cartridges to almost 4,000 patrons. We had started our push to get extra books out just in time, as on March 23rd, Governor Inslee announced a “stay home, stay healthy,” order effective March 25th, and currently in effect until May 5th but may yet be extended.

Beginning March 25th, all staff started working remotely. We are checking our voicemail remotely, encouraging people to sign up for BARD if that is an option for them, checking and answering our WTBBL email, approving BARD applications and providing BARD support by email, and posting to our social media. Some staff are also working on various cataloging projects, our Audio Book Production Department staff are working on editing and review as they can, and we have some transcription work for our Braille Department in progress.

For many staff, they are working on taking trainings and staying current on email. For the most part we have not been able to access the building, but as of April 15th, we were able to resume the delivery of our returned book mail and our First Class mail. On our first day we received 20 hampers of books. We will be receiving our mail delivery daily and I will be going in three days a week to process First Class mail. Unfortunately, we are unable to send out any books at this time. We are all hopeful we can begin to return to work and start circulating books again on May 5th. The digital divide experienced by so many of our users, and the many, many voicemails begging for books we can’t send demonstrate what an essential service our patrons believe we are. As soon as we are given the all clear, we’ll be ready to be all hands on deck to get through all our returned materials and start sending out books again, so that all may read.

COVID-19 has thoroughly upended almost all of our "typical" workdays, routines, and daily lives. It's affected each of us in very different, but very substantial ways. This Spring brought changes to how Keystone and many of our libraries operated. We've seen shifts in patron service models, circulation policies, and staffing scheduling and environments. In the last month, some agencies began to open back up and deal with the repercussions of limited staff, quarantining materials, backlogged items waiting to check-in, etc. while others may be facing another shift as state reevaluate their plans to reopen with the newest surge of cases. No matter where your organization or staff are in this process, we're doing our best to continue supporting you. Yet, we also know we aren't the ones dealing with the day-to-day, and only others in similar circumstances can relate and offer the best advice for you at this time. Therefore, today I am taking some time to again share relevant COVID-19 related KeysNotes blog posts from our staff as well from other KLAS Users.

The posts are in order from oldest to most recent.

Keystone Authored KeyNotes COVID-19 Related Posts:

• Important Coronavirus Info
• Working Remotely Tips & Tricks
• Working Remotely Tips & Tricks Part II
• A Note from James, plus Tips & Tricks Part III
• Tips & Tricks - Back to the Stacks

Yet, we also know we aren't the ones dealing with the day-to-day, and only others in similar circumstances can relate and offer the best advice for you at this time. Therefore, here are the words of your colleagues written in response to our request for input about what policy and procedural changes they've made in response to this unprecedented shift in how we all function.

KLAS Users Authored KeyNotes COVID-19 Related Posts:

• COVID-19 and the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library
• COVID-19 and the Florida Braille and Talking Book Libraries
• COVID-19 and New Mexico State Library, Library for the Blind & Print Disabled
• COVID-19 and the California Department of Education Press
• COVID-19 and State Library of Kansas, Talking Books Service
• COVID-19 and TN RCVI
• COVID-19 and the Arizona Talking Book Library & Instructional Resource Center
• COVID-19 and NC LBPH

• Bonus Post

In March, Keystone staff shared something a bit more lighthearted and published some of their favorite recipes to cook in their home kitchens while self-isolating. You can check them out in this post: Keystone Quarantine Kitchen

Previously, we've shared a number of guest blog posts on how COVID-19 is affecting KLAS libraries and resource centers. Since then, there has been plenty of re-opening, re-closing, and re-evaluating as each state and all of their associated agencies work to find the best course of action.

We recently reached out to our original guest bloggers for an update on their situation. Read on to see how things have progressed in Washington, New Mexico, and Kansas.

And if you would like to share how your library / organization is faring, and what policy, service, or other changes you have enacted in response to Covid19, we still welcome submissions from any KLAS user. Please contact Chandra Thornton, Past President, KLAS Users' Group or Drea Callicutt, Keystone Systems if you're interested in contributing a post.

Sam Lundberg, New Mexico State Library for the Blind & Print Disabled

I said in my original post that New Mexico would be able to hold at current levels, and that's basically what we've done. Books are going out and coming in, processed by two staff members who are never in the building at the same time. We're also answering the phone live thanks to call forwarding and Google Voice, providing full RA service from home. Small, random things like sending out a paper application are more difficult than they were before, but we're in a sustainable place.

The only real change we've had is that we're finally wrapping up our conversion to DoD. After 9+ months of slowly transitioning patrons one conversation at a time, we're finally bulk converting our remaining patrons. It is very exciting to finally be going fully to Scribe for book delivery, although the fate of our carousel system is now very much an open question.

(Read the original New Mexico post)

Danielle Miller, Washington Talking Book & Braille Library

On June 2nd, our Governor approved a waiver request for the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library to begin circulating books and materials during Phase 1 of our “Safe Start” plan. On June 4th, we resumed circulation with four staff returning to work to join the director. We had over 40 mail bins of returned books and equipment that still needed to be checked in and thousands of patrons waiting for books. Working as a team, everything was checked in and everyone was served in record time. Circulation was operating normally, with all staff wearing PPE and following safety protocols. The director was still checking voicemail daily and responding to patrons, and most staff were still working remotely.

When our county moved into Phase 2, on June 29th, more staff were able to return to the library. We were able to start answering the phones and resume regular readers’ advisory. Some staff continue to work from home and the library is still closed to the public and to volunteers. We are busy answering phones, circulating books, continuing work in our Audio and Braille Departments, and all staff at the library are helping with book inspection daily. We are looking forward to the time we can have all of our staff together and slowly bring our volunteers back. Ensuring everyone’s safety is the highest priority, and we want to do what we can to avoid another disruption in circulation.

(Read the original Washington post)

Michael Lang, State Library of Kansas, Talking Books Service

Present: Still Doing the Best that We Can

We are still working with the model we implemented in April.

The circulation staff and I are working on site. We are allowing returned books and machines to sit untouched for a minimum of three full days in our library before handled by staff. The good news is that mail is again being delivered and picked up at our building by the USPS. No more daily runs to the post office in my mother-in-law’s truck.

RA staff are still working remotely; answering phone calls, emails, updating catalog records, editing audio, creating book lists, and looking for online continuing education opportunities. Our VOIP phones and splashtop connections are saving us from the early frustrations we were having. If there is something they need to do onsite, they can schedule a time with me to come in to work. They will return onsite fulltime when the following criteria have been met:

• The ESU Memorial Union is open
• Lyon County enters the phase out stage of Gov. Kelly’s Ad Astra recovery plan
• The State of Kansas enters the phase out stage of Gov. Kelly’s Ad Astra recovery plan
  
  

Our volunteer recording program is on hold until further notice. Circulation staff are recording our local magazines to keep them as current as possible.

Cases are currently trending upward in Kansas. On July 15, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly announced that public schools will not reopen until after Labor Day.

Emporia State University buildings are scheduled to reopen to the public on August 3rd, masks will be required for everyone on campus. Students will return beginning August 12th. They’ve shut off the water fountains in our building.

I feel like we’re managing to serve our patrons pretty well. The turnaround time is a little slower for books, but increasing cutoff limits for underserved patrons keeps most people in books. Most patrons have been very understanding. I think our biggest loss will be outreach. All outreach events for the year are cancelled. Trying to find new avenues to reach prospective patrons is difficult. If you’ve got any advice, we’d love the help.

(Read the original Kansas post)

A Customizable (Accessible) Bibliography Generator, that was Dan Malosh of MN's request on the Forums about two weeks ago:

Would anyone else benefit from a customizable bibliography generator in the Cataloging module?

My library would love to have this capability for our large print books and DVDs. With regards to large print titles, we imagined employing fields like, author, title, KLAS ID, publication year, and genre …and maybe annotation.

This sparked a lot of interest... and then Sam Lundberg of NM chimed in to let us know about his rather ingenious method for doing just this, using KLAS's standard Export to Excel function and Word's Mail Merge.

The best part (at least in my opinion): once you have your Word template set up, you can simply select the exported Excel document from any catalog query or book search results to get a booklist that is nicely formatted to your exact specifications! The only thing this can't do automatically is generate the BARD link, though someone familiar enough with manipulating Excel data can add that prior to importing the data into Word, provided they do it the same way every time.

Learn how to create your booklists by following Sam's instructions, and give it a try with his example template and export:

• Mail Merge Booklist Instructions
• Example Booklist Template (on opening, you will be prompted to select your data source, which should be the Excel file below)
• Example KLAS Export

I don't know about you, but I'm imagining the possibilities already. If you build a template of your own for any KLAS export, I hope you'll share it with the Users' Group here!

You probably know that you can move and sort columns in basically any browse table in KLAS; however, did you know that it is also possible to add or remove columns as well?

When you export a browse table, you have the option of exporting either Visible or All Fields. As that suggests, each browse table includes many columns that are usually hidden. KLAS Customer Support can adjust your library’s configuration, hiding or revealing these columns. While simply moving columns is sufficient for most situations, it affects only the specific user that made the change. A customized browse, on the other hand, affects all users at that branch.

If there are columns that are never needed by your library, you could save the time and confusion of having every reader advisor move them to the far end of the table. For example, columns for the “local branch,” “main branch,” and “all branches” are useful for multi-branch systems, but single-branch systems only need one of the three.

Even better than removing columns is the option to add columns. If there is a column in the “export all fields” results which you would like to be included in the table (for all users at your branch), Customer Support can make it visible. A few columns that libraries have requested are:

Email Address in Patron Find

If you send your newsletter by email or want to alert all patrons in a certain city to an event, you can make exporting the email list faster and easier by including patrons’ Email contact in the Patron Find.

Title Status in Book Search

If your Reader Advisors want quicker access to whether a book is Active, In-Process, or BARD Only, the Title Status column can be added to the Book Search Results.

Have you noticed any columns in the “export all fields” results that your library would like to see in the visible fields? Have any visible columns been confusing your staff, and ought to be tucked away? Contact Ks7 to request a customized browse table—make sure to specify which browse you are working with, the column you need, and where you would like its default location to be. A screen cap is always helpful!

And if a customized browse table is too much commitment (or hasn’t been approved by your supervisor), brush up on how to move and sort columns to make the best of what’s already there.

As thunder sounds over the Keystone offices and we enter peak hurricane season, it seems like a good time to revisit our Disaster Preparedness and Recovery procedures.

We’ve posted about this before, and the 2018 Post is still applicable, so feel free to have a look back at that one. But technology is ever-evolving, and we’ve been keeping up. Here’s an overview of some changes:

7.7 Procedures

The back-end changes in KLAS version 7.7 mean that creating and restoring backups is a different process from 7.6. As 7.7 was being created, new procedures were researched, tested, and implemented to ensure that data would be well-maintained going forward.

Cloud Storage

We have increasingly been pivoting to storing back-ups in the cloud, so that they are safe and retrievable no matter where disaster strikes.

Keeping that data secure and private is of course a high priority. We’ve also done extensive testing on the best methods for generating those backups and restoring them, so we can be confident that all the data is being kept, that it’s refreshed on the right schedule, and that we can get it back in place on our local servers ASAP if needed.

Finally, those cloud servers need routine maintenance and updates. As we need more of them, that has made a lot more work for Lee, who keeps on top of regular system updates for all of our servers including the cloud-based ones. So, he has also implemented a new system that will allow him to enter commands or initiate updates in one place, and have them out to all of the cloud servers at once. (I wouldn’t mind something like that for my chores... imagine doing one load of laundry and when you’re done, two loads are clean!)

New On-Call App

Finally, our on-call staff have switched to a new monitoring app, ensuring that they will continue to be notified right away if something goes wrong with the servers and any emergencies can be dealt with as quickly as possible.

It was only a matter of time. In December one of our own, John Owen, contracted COVID-19 and spent two weeks off of work fighting it. Thankfully he recovered and has not experienced any of devastating or long-term side effects.

Troubled by the lack or therapeutics available to COVID patients John jumped at the chance to help one of the most vulnerable communities. As soon as he was able, he donated his plasma that now contains the antibodies that can help those who are critically ill have a better chance at recovery.

John said this about his plasma donation:

“I’ve done it once and found out that I can continue to donate plasma every seven days until my annual limit. One small needle prick and an hour in a recliner is nothing compared to the chance that my donations can help critically ill patients have a fighting chance at recovery. This disease is no joke, and I am so thankful that my wife and family have so far been spared.”

Some photos John took during the donation procedure and of his "badge of honor" stickers. 

Keystone is excited to announce that we've signed an agreement with the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) to allow our Scribe Duplication on Demand system to unlock the white, pre-loaded NLS cartridges for repurposing.

Our developers have already begun working on adding this feature to KLAS and expect the initial release of this new functionality to be in the next month.

We plan for the unlock process to be very simple. When you plug a cartridge in to the Scribe to duplicate onto it, the Scribe will check to see if the cartridge needs to be processed. If the cartridge is one the system hasn't seen before, it will process it, ensure we can unlock it, and then follow the NLS guidelines setting the passphrase to be consistent across the network for all repurposed NLS cartridges.

For any cartridges that can't be processed as part of duplication, there will also be a separate mode which allows staff greater control, ensuring all cartridges can be processed and unlocked.

We know this functionality is something our current and future Scribe libraries have been hoping for, and we're thrilled to now be able to bring it to you! Be on the lookout for a Weekly Wrap-up in the near future which will detail exactly which KLAS release includes the capability for Scribe to unlock ALL NLS cartridges. 

Please be sure to let customer support know if you have any questions about the timeline or implementation process.

NLS has requested that we (and the other NLS providers) extract and submit some data for them to review. For each of our NLS Libraries, we will be providing NLS with the following statistical information on October 1.

We will be generating these data files for NLS and submitting the information to NLS directly, so you don't need to do anything. We will also send a copy to each library, so you know what was sent to NLS and can review the data for your own information.

Readership: a list of all patrons that received materials from the library during Fiscal Year 2020. The list will include the Patron PIMMS ID, whether they are marked Individual or Institution, and whether they received at least one of the following during FY 2020:

• Digital Audio book
• Hard Copy Braille book
• E-Braille brook
• or Network Library collection item

Note that audio and hard copy braille readership activity includes both books circulated by the library and magazine subscriptions sent by NLS. Network library collections include large print books, descriptive videos, and local magazines. BARD download activity is not included, as NLS already has that information.

Circulation: a count of all circulations this year broken out by library and by medium: Talking Books on Cartridge; Hard Copy Braille; and E-Braille on Cartridge. Circulation counts include counts for book/monograph circulation only. Local magazines/serials sent on cartridge are not part of these counts.

Note that Audio circulations are a count of the number of titles sent on cartridge instead of the number of cartridges sent. Hard copy braille circulations count the number of volumes sent, e-braille is the number of titles sent.

A note about the Readership & Circulation Report: Be aware that the number of people in the Readership list we provide to NLS probably will not match the total from your Readership & Circulation report. The R&C report total includes all accounts that you have updated that year, even if they did not receive something. With that in mind, if you have questions about how these lists do and do not line up with your R&C report, please let us know.

This is a guest post by Sam Lundberg - Reader Advisor for the New Mexico State Library for the Blind & Print Disabled, and current President of the KLAS Development Advisory Committee.

We’ve had a lot of interest recently from across the community for Nightly AutoSelect to be more “series smart,” and not send book 3 in a series before a patron has had book 1.  I’m among the chorus that’s been asking for this since the beginning of DoD, but I think it is worth talking about exactly how we want this to work.  There are a lot of different ways that Nightly could be series smart, each with a different impact on the patron experience.

I’m going to lay out a few of the ways that I’ve thought of, along with advantages and possible drawbacks. I’d love to hear what others have been thinking on this subject, and I’m sure Keystone would appreciate knowing exactly what we want, rather than a vague mission to make it better.

As a preface, I have no idea how practical any of these solutions are from a programming side.  I’ve tried to lay out specific rules that an algorithm could follow, but that doesn’t mean they would be easy, or even possible, to put in place.  Some of these rules may also bog Nightly down to a crawl, requiring more time to run each night.  This is a thought exercise to figure out exactly what we, as a community, want, rather than a menu of actual possibilities.

Option 1 

1a) “First in the series only”

• When Nightly picks a title by Subject, it checks the “series sequence” field and excludes any book with a value greater than 1.

This is basically what is accomplished by libraries that use a “Sequel” subject code.  Autoselect wouldn’t send out any sequels, which would exclude a large number of books from popular authors who write primarily or exclusively series. For context, I just ran a query and found that 321 of the 564 mystery titles we’ve added this year have a series sequence between 2 and 999.

Since this would be based on a Nightly setting, it would be library-wide rather than patron by patron.  However, if KLAS also adds the ability to customize Nightly Functions by Serve Code, you could create an “AutoSelect No Sequels” serve code and an “AutoSelect All” serve code and select the appropriate one for each patron.

1b) “First or next in series only”

• When Nightly picks a title by Subject, it checks the “series sequence” field and excludes any book with a value greater than 1 UNLESS the patron has a “HasHad” for the previous book in the series..

Like 1a, except that subsequent books in a series can be sent if the patron is caught up in that series.  This would help increase the available possible selections for series-heavy genres like Mystery.  However, there is no mechanism for a patron to catch up on a series once they have missed a book, or for new patrons to get started on a long-standing series, without a specific request or Series preference.

Option 2

2a) “Not this book, but this series”

• When Nightly picks a title by Subject, it checks the “series” field and instead sends out the earliest book in that series not marked as “Has Had”.

The idea here is that, instead of sending out book 7 in a series, Nightly would go back and send out book 1 (or book 5 if the patron had the first four books already).  This method would ensure that patrons are still able to access series books, but will always do so in order.

However, because the book Nightly initially found isn’t being sent out, there is no “Has Had” record added to that title, so Nightly will keep finding that book and sending books from that series over and over and over.  How much of a problem this is will be very contextually dependent.  If you use “Latest First” service for Subject, the books Nightly finds will change constantly.  

But if you use “Earliest First” and don’t update your KLAS ID Ranges often, then nightly will check the same books every time.  For instance, if your KLAS ID range starts at DB090000, Nightly will find Joanne Fluke and Stuart Woods at 90001 & 90002 respectively, so patrons with a mystery Subject preference would receive those entire series in rapid succession under this scheme.  And given the prevalence of this sort of long-standing series, patrons may receive a large number of older titles as they are bumped back 20, 30, 50 books in a series.

2b) “Not this book, but where I left off this series”

• When nightly picks a title by Subject, it checks the “Series” field, locates the item with the highest series sequence in that series with a “Has Had” record, and sends the next book.

2a would fill in gaps if a patron skipped books or started with book 15. 2b wouldn’t fill in gaps, but would select the next book after the highest numbered book the patron has read.

For example, if a patron has read books 1, 2, 4, and 8 in a series and Nightly wants to send them book 10, 2a would instead send book 3, while 2b would send out book 9.

Option 3

3a) “Not this book, but this series, but not too often”

• When Nightly picks a title by Subject, it checks the “series” field and instead sends out the earliest book in this series not marked as “Has Had” UNLESS a book in this series is already in the Service Queue or a pending order, in which case Nightly will skip this title and series.

See Option 2, except that the frequency of a series being sent is gated by the length of the service queue, rather than the frequency the queue is refilled.  If the patron’s service queue is 30 books long, you know there will be at least 30 books between each book in a series.  However, this makes more sense for long running series than for short trilogies.  I could see wanting to have different behaviors based on the length of the series, but that is getting complicated to keep track of.  Keep in mind, this only applies to Subject and possibly Author.  Books selected by Series, Request or Reserve would not have this same gating.

3b) “Not this book, but this series, but not too often, and picking up where I left off”

• When nightly picks a title by Subject, it checks the “Series” field and instead sends out the next book after the highest number book in the series marked as “Has Had”, or book 1 if the patron has not read any books in the series.  UNLESS a book in this series is already in the service queue or a pending order, in which case nightly will skip this title and series.

Like 2b, this option just differentiates between filling in the gaps in a series or continuing from the highest numbered book a patron has read.

Option 4

4) “This book and this entire series”

• When nightly picks a title by Subject, it checks the “Series” field and queues all unread books in that series.

This could work well for shorter series, especially trilogies with a tight story, but would create a very hit-or-miss situation when dumping an entire 20+ book series.  As with 2b, I worry that having a cutoff point for different behaviors would create confusion and unexpected outcomes.  I think it would be possible to catalog our way out of this problem, flagging series as either a tight story or as episodic/procedural, but that isn’t something every library, including NM, could commit to.  This rule would also need to differentiate between sequence 0 books (which are often more a collection and less a series) and numbered series. 

Practically, I don’t think this could work as the default option given the sheer quantity of long-running series, but I could see this as an alternative that specific patrons would want to opt-in to.

Option 5

5) “Just care about what is in the Queue now”

• When Nightly picks a title by Subject, it checks the Service Queue for any books in the same Series.  If another book in the queue is in the same Series and has a higher Series Sequence, the new book is placed ahead of the book already in the queue, rather than at the end.

Basically, if Nightly is trying to add book 2, and book 3 is already in the queue, book 2 is slotted just ahead of book 3, rather than at the end of the queue.  This would only address the issue of patrons being sent books out of order in immediate proximity, such as when several books in a series are added at once by the NLS.  Limited potential help but also limited potential harm.

So what option (listed above or something else entirely) would you want?  

A big consideration is do we want this to be patron-by-patron?  Or do we want it to be library-wide?  And what do we want to be the default behavior vs. the opt-in behavior?  Should this apply only to Subject selections, or Author as well?

Personally, I’m in favor of option 3b “Not this book, but this series, but not too often”.  I think it addresses the core problem of books being sent out of order while avoiding any big drawbacks.  It isn’t perfect, and will be clunky for short series, but that’s what Author Preferences and Reader Advisors are for.  That said, I’m sure there are all sorts of circumstances I’m not accounting for that should be considered.

What are your thoughts?  How, exactly, do you want Nightly to be series smart?

Our developers have been very busy lately, implementing Gutenberg, ironing out eCommerce, and gearing up to start converting IRC / IMC customers to version 7.7, among other things.

But amidst all of that, we’re still listening for your feedback—and even relying on it more than ever!

So here are a few notes on how you are helping guide us forward.

1. KDAC (KLAS Development Advisory Committee

KDAC has some new members! A big welcome to Sam Lundberg of New Mexico Talking Book Library and Shawn Lemieux of New York State Talking Book & Braille Library, and thank you so much for lending us some of your time!

So, what goes on in a KDAC meeting? We spend a lot of the timesharing what we’ve been working on that month (making your KDAC representatives a great source of “insider information” about what we’ve been up to), as well as our plans and expectations about what’s coming up next. Through all of that, we’re listening to their feedback and taking notes about what they think of new features, what questions they think need to be addressed, and their suggestions on prioritization.

We also frequently have questions for them: should we pursue Option A or Option B to fix a specific issue? How can we make this or that easier? If we did things this way, would that cause any problems for you?

KDAC has been a big help in steering and refining our development, so I’m especially excited to find out what the new voices will bring to the table this year.

(Want to learn more about KDAC, view a list of all current members, or review the new guidelines? It’s all in the KDAC Article.)

2. Webinars & Other Non-Conference Stuff

I’ve been happy to do several Q&A webinars with the Users’ Group, and we’ve had a lot of positive feedback (thank you all so much!)... but I don’t want mine to be the only voice you hear.

Are there topics you want to hear about, or something you’d like to share? Whether it’s a new initiative at your library, your experiences implementing Duplication on Demand, or a discussion focused on a specific area of KLAS (like Serials or Accounts), we want to hear your topic ideas!

If you’d rather collaborate with another user or a Keystone expert, don’t hesitate to suggest it anyway; we’d be happy to help out or help you find someone who can.

A very easy way to weigh in on all this is to fill out the 2019 KLAS Users' Conference Follow-up Survey! Yes, even if you didn’t attend the 2019 conference!

If you’ve completed the survey and think of something new, or something that didn’t fit in the form, you are also very welcome to email us at Keystone or any of your Users’ Group officers, or you can post about it on the Discussion Forums.

However you go about it, thank you for helping guide us and making KLAS and your Users’ Group better and better!

We wish you a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season! May you in find joy and warmth in the holiday lights and comfort knowing a new year is just around the corner! From our homes to yours...here's to a cheerful holiday and a fresh 2021!

Our office will be closed Thursday, December 24, and Friday, December 25, 2020 in observance of Christmas. Regular support hours will resume on Monday, December 28, at 8:00 AM ET. The office will also be closed on Friday, January 1, 2021 for New Year's. Regular support hours will resume on Monday, January 4, at 8:00 AM ET.

If you need to arrange special support hours for these days, please call or e-mail us as soon as possible.

Yesterday, we had our first Holiday office party since 2019. It was wonderful to get everyone back together, share some delicious food, and exchange some gifts. But we also did something totally new and unique: George, who joined Keystone as a developer earlier this year, brought in some liquid nitrogen, and led us in a science experiment! 

We started off with a demonstration of the super-cold liquid's properties, with Katharina(our newest Customer Support Specialist) submerging a rubber ball, freezing it to the point that its once-flexible molecules were too densely packed to bounce back. Instead, when she dropped the ball, it broke apart with a loud crack!

[Video description: George dons heavy-duty protective gloves, and picks up a bottle of liquid nitrogen as he explains its properties. The Keystone staff, mostly dressed in festive holiday outfits, are gathered in a circle to watch. The nitrogen steams and boils as soon as it hits the bowl. George helps Katharina gear up in the gloves and safety goggles, then gives her a rubber bouncy ball to hold with long metal tongs. Katharina carefully dunks the ball in the nitrogen, holding it under as the liquid boils around it. Once the boiling subsides, she pulls it out, holds it straight in front of her, and drops it on a metal plate. On impact, the ball splits into three even chunks.]

Once the ball returned to room temperature, the pieces were once again soft and squishy. But the best part of the experiment was up next: ICE CREAM!!!

As the liquid nitrogen was poured into the much warmer bowl of milk and sugar, the ingredients were rapidly chilled, and the nitrogen boiled off, keeping everything light and fluffy. Within minutes, we had delicious, freshly-made soft serve! 

[Video description: a long table holds two bowls with a chocolatey liquid in them. Katy and Mitake take turns stirring one bowl, while James and John C. work on the other. They are all wearing rubber gloves and safety glasses. While explaining what to do, George helps each pair get set up with a folded napkin to hold the metal bowl with, since those bowls are about to get very cold. The nitrogen is stored in tall thermoses, just like you might use for coffee or soup. More chocolate is added, and once the ingredients are ready, James and Mitake start pouring in the nitrogen. So much white fog steams up, that you can no longer see the other contents of the bowls, and James, Mitake, and George have to keep fanning the bowls for Katy and John to see what they're stirring. Gradually, the liquid mix in the bowls thickens and ices up into soft serve.]

While we can't invite all of you to the office for dessert, we hope that you all will have the chance to share some holiday joy and wonder of your own--whether it comes in the form of a science experiment, a gift exchange, or just a chance to catch up with friends and family.

From all of us to all of you, Happy Holidays!

[Video description: a collage of close-up photos of the ice cream making process surround a video clip from another angle. The photos show the table with everyone preparing to make the ice cream, the Keystone staff gathered around filming or watching, bowls being held tight and stirred just as the ingredients start to form up, and finally a bowl of delicious-looking chocolate ice cream.]

Welcome to the "Hot off the Press" blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she will be sharing her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

Hot off the Press: Part 1

A little delayed, but as promised we are sharing our experience of converting over to Gutenberg duplication as our main circulation method. This first installment will cover our pre-planning steps.

Our Director has been excited about using duplication on demand since she first heard about it. Knowing this and also knowing our KLAS server was reaching end of life and would not support KLAS 7.7, I began conversations with both our IT department and Keystone as early as December 2018 with a plan to have our server replaced by June 2019. I also started discussions with our security officer and our network administrator about DoD to ensure we would be able to use the equipment on our network without issues.

In May 2019, we found out we had been chosen to be the self-hosted pilot site for Gutenberg integration with KLAS. Our IT department had set-up a new virtual server for me and agreed to allow Keystone to submit an image to be placed on the server to run KLAS. Their caveat was that they would not provide support since the software didn’t conform to standards. Since they have never provided support for our servers anyway, I didn’t see this as a problem.

Things we needed to think about between finding out about the pilot and getting the Gutenberg equipment in September:

• Placing an order for additional mail cards beyond what NLS provides
• Preparing cartridges and containers to use for DoD
  • Placing labels on unused cartridges and containers
  • Stripping labels from used cartridges and containers and replacing with new labels
• Notification of patrons – we did a blurb in our newsletter and that was our only notification to patrons.
• Selecting patrons for the pilot (if you do one)
• When to start new patrons on DoD (we started new patrons when we started the pilot)
• When to zero out copy allotment so no new books come
• How to cut-over patrons once the pilot is complete
• Initial default number of books on a cartridge and default number of cartridges (We used 10 books/3 cartridges per patron as our default)

Both NLS and Keystone have documents of things to consider during planning stages. NLS also has a great overview of the necessary IT requirements. Once I received this document, I forwarded it to our Security Officer and Network Administrator to ensure there would be no problems in using the Gutenberg equipment on our network. I think opening these lines of communication early helped the process go more smoothly.

We were finally able to convert to KLAS 7.7 on August 19, 2019. This gave us about a month to iron out any issues before receiving our equipment from NLS on September 20th.

"Hot off the Press" is blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she will be shares her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

The first post in the series is here: Hot off the Press: Part 1.

Hot off the Press: Part 2 - Setting up and testing the Gutenberg Equipment

Warning: a little geeky

On Friday, September 20th, our shipment of equipment arrived from NLS. We received:

• 2 Gutenberg workstations with monitors, keyboard, and mice
• 2 scanners – 1 for check out, 1 for returns
• 2 sets of 20 cartridge slot toaster racks
• 2 sets of USB hubs to attach the toaster racks to the computers
• 2 surge protector power strips
• Lexmark Printer

All of the items are clearly marked with tags to show you how to connect everything.

Back of the Toaster

USB Hub

Hub Top

Computer Back

I immediately set-up the equipment so we could begin testing since I was scheduled to be on vacation the following week. NLS sends instructions in an email of what to do once the equipment arrives. One of the functions on the Gutenberg equipment is a “health check” app. In my hurry to get everything set-up, I forgot to run the health check and contacted both NLS and Keystone to let them know the equipment was installed and turned on.

Picture – HealthCheck_LI (screen shot of Gutenberg desktop with HealthCheck icon circled)

John C. contacted me and asked if I had run the health check since they were unable to connect to our Gutenberg equipment. Since we received two machines, NLS sets one up as the main computer (called CO1A and set with a static IP address) and the other as a secondary computer (called C01A-2). When I ran the health check I found that CO1A wasn’t connecting to the VPNs it needed to access.
I came in on Monday so we could troubleshoot the problem. I contacted our Network Administrator and had him monitor the firewall and traffic coming in and out of the Gutenberg machines using the static IP address we gave CO1A. He could not see any traffic being blocked or any firewall rules preventing access to the system. While I was on the phone with him, I was also having email conversations with NLS and Keystone staff about the problem.

Finally, during a conference call with John C and Mark at Keystone, Mark made a comment about CO1A not connecting to our DNS server. I looked at the settings on the machine again and realized the IP address for our gateway server had been entered as the IP address for our DNS server. Once I corrected the IP address in the settings for CO1A rebooted it, everything starting working. Then Mark and John C worked their magic to finalize the connection and push a test order through the system.

So lesson learned – double check all the settings on the Gutenberg machines very carefully once they are received and set-up.

Up next: Testing the system

"Hot off the Press" is blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she will be shares her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

The first two posts in the series are here:

• Hot off the Press: Part 1
• Hot off the Press: Part 2

Hot off the Press: Part 3, The Pilot

We received our equipment on a Friday and got everything working on the following Monday. Even though we had the system working on Sept. 23rd, we didn’t do any testing until I returned to the office on Sept. 30th.

When the Gutenberg system is first installed, it is operating in “sandbox” mode and is connected to the preview database for KLAS. We tried to push through a few orders for staff from the preview database, but they weren’t being copied onto cartridges. It was finally determined that KLAS and Gutenberg weren’t syncing with each other so the orders weren’t getting processed. Once Keystone restarted the syncing process, the orders came through. So on Oct. 2nd, we switched from sandbox to production mode so we could really test the system by starting the pilot.

We began the pilot with 50 existing patrons. For the existing patrons, we decided we would send out 2 cartridges with 3 books on them so we could get them back during the month long pilot and test the return part of the system too. We also made the decision to not send books out to new patrons about a week before we started the pilot. So since the end of September, all the new patrons have been put on the duplication model. New patrons were set-up to receive 3 cartridges with 10 books each on them.

On Oct. 3rd, we sent out our first 76 DoD cartridges! Yay!

The most consistent problem we noticed in the first few weeks of running Gutenberg was that daily KLAS and Gutenberg would stop syncing and we’d have to contact Keystone to restart the process. Because the problem was so consistent they wrote a temporary fix to automatically restart the service each morning to try to help with the process. Within 2 weeks of starting the pilot the problem has been solved and a fix applied during an update of KLAS.

We also had problems with serving walk-in patrons due to the time it would take to process an order. At first, Keystone and Gutenberg were only syncing every 15 minutes. So we would place an order and potentially have to wait up to 15 minutes to see if the order synced or not. If it didn’t sync and we needed to contact Keystone to restart the service, another 15 minutes would pass. Many times we would just pull individual books from the shelves and check them out using front desk since we are unable to assign books to a duplication patron. However, I believe the sync times have been cut down and we don’t usually have problems serving walk-ins now. An order for a walk-in patron, will be sent fairly quickly, even if we are still in the midst of making cartridges for the day. So mail room staff have to check mail cards as they scan each completed cartridge to look for the walk-in patron’s order.

A big learning curve came in how to best figure out how to set the nightly settings for DoD, since it works a little differently than it did before. When I would call Nancy, she would tell me “theoretically” it should work this way. I had to just make adjustments and then see what happened afterwards. Luckily our pilot patrons were very understanding during the process.

Other minor problem we encountered (that have all been fixed now):

• Service queue was adding all the books in a series, even if the patron had already had them before.
• Service queue was adding oldest books from request list, when we had the system set to add the newest books first.
• KLAS would allow orders larger than 4GB, which would then sit on Gutenberg since we didn’t have a cartridge big enough to copy the order
• Duplication orders were still being processed for patrons with a block on their account.

On Oct. 22nd, we participated in a conference with NLS, Keystone and Georgia to discuss how we felt things were going with our pilots. Both of us agreed that there were some minor problems, but nothing to prevent us from moving forward with beginning to convert the rest of our patrons over to DoD. We decided to start the conversion process at the beginning of November with the goal of being completely done with the conversion by the end of the year.

Statistics for our pilot (10/3 – 11/1):

• 644 cartridges sent out
• 192 patrons on DoD
• 91 cartridges returned

Up next: Converting existing patrons

"Hot off the Press" is blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she shares her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

The first three posts in the series are here:

• Hot off the Press: Part 1
• Hot off the Press: Part 2
• Hot off the Press: Part 3

Hot off the Press: Part 4, Converting existing patrons

On November 4th, we began the process of converting our existing patrons over to the duplication model. We decided to go with our high-demand patrons (we have a separate patron type for high-demand) first, followed by students. Then we worked on converting the remainder of our patrons based on the number of books they were receiving. We initially set patrons up to get 1 cartridge with 10 books on it.

The first day I converted 100 patrons over. However, I realized that in order to complete the conversion by the end of the year, we would need to convert more than that each day. After discussing this with our mailroom supervisor, it was decided to convert 200 patrons each day.

As I ran queries in KLAS to find the patrons I needed to convert, I created Excel spreadsheets with lists of 200 patron ID’s and saved them as text files with the date I was converting them to DoD. Then I could pull the query into KLAS and use the Batch Update Profile tool to convert all 200 patrons at one time. Then I would scroll through the records to verify everything looked like it should.
One of the problems we had early on was duplication orders being sent to patrons that had a block on their account. As I was scrolling through the patrons, I would find those patrons and make their digital book service inactive so no cartridges would go out. Once the problem was fixed in KLAS, I changed all these patrons back to active for digital books, so those that had an automated date to restart service would get a cartridge.

One week after a patron was converted to DoD, I would to run the same query again and bump their number of cartridges up to 2, and after another week, set them to our max of 3 cartridges. We gradually increased their number so they didn’t get all 3 cartridges at once and also to try and not overwhelm mailroom staff.

Most days, we were getting around 250 orders. We figured once our conversion was done, we would get somewhere between 300-400 cartridges per day. In order to try and meet those numbers and see how it would affect mailroom staff, I upped the number of patrons being converted to DoD to 300 per day.

Around mid-November, we noticed that KLAS and Gutenberg didn’t appear to by syncing again. Orders we created in the morning we not being sent to the Gutenberg machines. We were unable to serve walk-in patrons because their orders wouldn’t go through. After looking into the problem, we discovered that the batch manager was being overwhelmed with creating service queues for the patrons I had converted that morning. After figuring out this was the problem, I didn’t do conversions until after 3:30 in the afternoon. John C. at Keystone also mentioned putting something in place on KLAS so the service queue would function more efficiently (not sure if this was done or not).

Around the same time, NLS had problems with one of their servers, and our duplication order didn’t run in the morning. Because I had converted patrons in the morning, our order didn’t start copying until 3:30 in the afternoon. That caused us to have almost 1000 cartridges the next day. I guess it was a good test for how much duplication we can get done in a day.

With this large order, we realized the copying process went fairly quickly and we could easily make this many cartridges each day. However, printing the mailing cards took most of the day. So we decided to invest in a 2nd printer to alleviate the bottleneck at the printer.

On 12/3, I converted the remainder of our individual patrons to duplication and also the 200 organization accounts we had on automated digital book service. This resulted in our largest duplication order of 1,015 cartridges, although I’m not sure why. Once this conversion was done, I spent the next 2 weeks moving all the patrons up to 3 cartridges each. The process was completely done by 12/11/19, which worked out great since we needed to be closed the week on 12/16 due to a building maintenance issue.

Statistics for 11/4/2019 – 12/31/2019:

• 15,721 cartridges sent out
• 3,790 cartridges returned
• 4,711 patrons received duplication cartridges

Up next: Problems and ongoing issues

"Hot off the Press" is blog series from guest blogger, Teresa Kalber. Teresa is the Network Systems Administrator at Colorado Talking Book Library. In this series, she shares her library's experience being one of the first two KLAS libraries to implement NLS' Gutenberg equipment.

The first four posts in the series are here:

• Hot off the Press: Part 1
• Hot off the Press: Part 2
• Hot off the Press: Part 3
• Hot off the Press: Part 4

Hot off the Press: Part 5, Problems and ongoing issues

Here is a recap of some of the issues we have/are experiencing with Gutenberg.

Service Queue/Order issues:

• With DoD, patrons now have to the entire collection on BARD. Because of this they are getting books in subjects they may not have been before and also getting a lot of the newer books. We get a lot of RA calls for patrons saying I would never order books like this. The RAs go through their subjects and work with them on getting them the type of books they like. This has brought up the issue that there is no easy way to empty the service queue. Each item must be deleted one at a time. If all the items are deleted out of the queue, KLAS hangs up and usually needs to be restarted.
• Because of the issue above, we are still in flux as to the default number of books we want in the service queue and where the refill point should be. This has also been problematic for us as it results in cartridges going out with less than the 10 we have them set for.
• When RAs are trying to create an order for a patron, it takes our system over 5 minutes to open the “Create Dup Order From Queue” screen. This makes it difficult to create orders for patrons when also taking phone calls because of the time involved. Many times they will have to make a note and go back and create the patron’s order later.
• Cartridges will go out for our on-demand patrons, so we need to have their NS Cutoff set to 0 to prevent that from happening.
• Local Recordings:
• We have been working with both NLS and Keystone to figure out how to get our locally recorded books that are not on BARD to work with Gutenberg. We think we have come up with a solution, but it will take some time to implement.
• Keystone is also working on having functionality for Serials in place for Gutenberg so that we can put our local newsletter on the duplications cartridges.

Cartridge Errors:

• When the service queue is filled, it will select books from our local recordings for patrons. Because we had not solved the problem with our local books, this would cause the cartridge have an “error” status. There is currently not a way to run reports or queries in KLAS to find these errors and make sure those patrons are getting service.
• Also for cartridges that are in error status – the books on the cartridge are not added as a has-had to the patrons record since the cartridge never got checked out. But since the cartridge is on the orders tab, those books are not eligible for selection. There is currently no easy way to get those books back on the service queue.

Gutenberg Hubs:

• Sometimes a cartridge is scanned and the internal and external barcode have not been linked. There is a way to configure a port on the Gutenberg machine to plug in a cartridge and have that connection made. NLS is now sending out the machines with this port already configured. Ours was not sent that way and I had to create the port myself. Once I configured the port, Gutenberg stopped recognizing the first hub in the toaster rack attached to that computer. I don’t know if the two events were related since we have ongoing issues with Gutenberg not recognizing hubs at various times. We are working with NLS on this. It’s a fairly simple fix, but it is an issue.
• Offender (Inmate) Accounts:
• We handle our offender mail separately from our other patrons’ mail. Because of this, we have not converted our offenders to duplication service since we don’t currently have a way to run their cartridge orders separately from the rest of the orders.
• Cartridge issues:
• We ordered a supply of cartridges from Perkins to help with the problem of large orders being created. The Perkins cartridges do not have external barcodes on them. We had to work with NLS to figure out a way to be able to use these cartridges with Gutenberg. Since we placed the order, KLAS put a fix in place to prevent orders larger than 4GB to be sent to Gutenberg for copying.
• We also ran into problems trying to repurpose the green cartridges we purchased to use. NLS had to make a setting change in Gutenberg for us to be able to use these cartridges with the system. However, we have to go into another computer, plug in the cartridges and unlock them with the DTB Protect software before we can use them with Gutenberg.

I hope you enjoyed my posts on our conversion experience. Both Debbi and I have documents we kept during the process that we would be happy to share. I’ve also started a post in the discussion forum if you have questions or would like me to cover something not included in these posts.