update on Scribe and Gutenberg

Can you or the Libraries that are now on Scribe or Gutenberg tell us how they are doing? What kind of problems did you run into with set up or patrons?

When did the Libraries go to full duplication on demand after getting Scribe or Gutenberg?

Does Scribe or Gutenberg automatic download a file "on how to use the bookshelf" at the being of each cartridge? Do you feel that this is something that is necessary?

How many Libraries are on Scribe or Gutenberg that are up and running and how many are left to get one or the other?

When will Scribe be able to download BARD magazine or local produce magazine? We have patrons that only get magazine and it would be great to serve those patrons like the patrons that receive books.

Sorry for the delay in replying, I've been up skiing in Taos (recommended, and gives you an excuse to come visit us here in Santa Fe to say 'hi').

Our transition to Scribe-DoD here in New Mexico has been relatively painless. We've had the advantage of being able to take our time and slowly transition our patrons, as opposed to other programs who have needed to work on an accelerated time table. We have about 350 of our 1,600 patrons transferred after ~3 months, but I will emphasize those are 350 of our most active patrons. Our general philosophy has been to transfer patrons whenever they cannot be fully served by the old physical delivery system. Either all of our copies of their requested book are out, or it's an older title we don't have any copies left, or they just want more books than they are allotted with physical delivery. This lets us present DoD as a solution to their problem.

We do include an audio announcement at the beginning of each cartridge. We initially included a longer message with details of the DoD program on the first cartridge, and a short message about Bookshelf mode on every cartridge. However, based on patron feedback we've removed the 1-time-only announcement and made an even shorter initial announcement that describes sequential play first, and bookshelf mode as a back-up. The biggest problem we've had with this is that the announcement is treated as a book by the player. This means the player will announce "6 books", when it actually only has 5 and an announcement. (I just recently saw information about formatting the file as a "leaflet" to change how the player treats the file. We haven't been able to get that to work, but maybe Keystone staff have more info?) As a rule, we never transfer patrons without talking with them (or a caregiver), so nobody is surprised by the new system. We have a few low-volume patrons who we've set up with 1-book-per-cartridge DoD, but most have been willing to try at least 2-3 books per.

Most of the problems we dealt with have been resolved in recent KLAS updates, so I wont get into them. I will say I've had to spend a lot of time updating the cataloging on our locally produced titles. We were running into an issue with duplicate catalog records for our local books (once with our DNM number, once with the NLS DBC number). In the immediate we've manually gone through to add local subjects to the DBC records, as well as linking them to the matching DNM records to track Has Hads.

It's definitely a different workflow overall. We're getting fewer calls, but each patron order can take much longer because we need to select 10-30 books to fill their next couple orders. Some patrons have really embraced the new format, going to autoselect and requesting 10+books per cartridge on the theory that they will just skip whatever doesn't sound interesting. Other patrons are very excited about being able to have an entire series at once, or every book a particular author has written. What I find myself doing quite often is sending out cartridges themed by author or genre (e.g. 1 with cozy mysteries, 1 with Danielle Steel, and 1 with the Ali Reynolds series). We have no due dates, just a 5 cartridge limit, so patrons are welcome to hold onto a series and slowly go through it while cycling out the other cartridges to have some variety and fill new orders.

The DoD transition has been a good excuse to really revisit the nuts and bolts of how we serve our patrons. We've reviewed nightly settings (which I could make an entire post about), identified new local subjects, and are working on dramatic changes to our application. It's been a very positive process, and I think we've benefited from having to really look at how we operate.

Let me start off by saying, that those are great questions!!!

I could talk for days about using The Scribe and duplication on demand, but I'll try to contain things down to this posting as best I can. Since we are the original Scribe Library (in fact, we helped name it), we have quite a story we could tell all. For deeper discussion, I am happy to take things offline and discuss philosophy and such as well.
Sam has done a wonderful job talking about some of the experience from New Mexico. It sounds like they are off and running, which is great. I would encourage everyone out there to get off and running. I will tell you that your experience will vary (along with your mileage) depending on how large your library is. North Carolina has somewhere around 12000 patrons. Our transition over to Scribe-DoD in North Carolina has had some speed bumps, but I can say that was part of the fun of being the first adopters. So we got lots of issues out of the way for others. Our cool part has been helping with the development of the system.

From the beginning we convened a kind of committee from across staff to create the processes and procedures for this new type of service. We want input from across the library, to get buy-in and get all staff on the same page. We have a big binder filled with steps, procedures, etc. This really helped. Also we, from the start, gave the new service a name. We called it Books on Demand or BOD service. The reasoning is that a patron doesn't care what device, method, etc. for getting their books. They care about getting what they want most of all. Calling it something like Books on Demand just makes it easier for them to understand the concept. You want a book, we get for you on demand.
I also decided at the beginning to start some Key Notes Blog posts titled " Notes from The Scribe " early on in order to share our progress with this new system as it was being developed. At first there was lots of content to offer. Over time, it got a bit harder to contribute regularly with all the changes happening and things fell off. My plan is to do some more postings going forward, as I can. Much has changed since I last posted an article in April 2019 .

We started with a pilot project that put staff on the system in October of 2018. We then put a group of 20 patrons as a pilot on in December 2018. We rolled it over live in March 2019.
Our current timetable, now that we are live, is to move all 9900 digital audio patrons on to DoD by the end of December 2020. In reality, the active DB using patrons (those who have gotten consistent service in DB for the last 2 years) is around 7500 patrons. Currently we have 2750 patrons on the system. From a percentage perspective that works out to around 37% of our active audio patrons. Not bad. We hope to have everyone who use DB over but realistically, there may be soe stragglers.

Our method of conversion has been two-fold, all new patrons and transfers are put on the system to start. No bad habits to break and this is how they will know our service. The other prong is to roll over existing patrons 150 per week on a cycle. We use different criteria to pull queries of different groups. We started with DA1 users, who are already on nightly autoselection service, etc. From this we can get groupings of 900 patrons to work on at a time. We mail out letters in 150 batch sets each week, announcing the transition, asking patrons to contact us with any questions. Then the following Wednesday we take the prior week's 150 and move them over to the service. So far no complaints.
When we set someone up on the service we now let them have 3 cartridges, sent 1 each day regardless of how many come back. Each cartridge has 8 books standard. If you need more per cartridge you ask and we raise the number. Over time we will probably transition some folks to 5 cartridges each. We'll see how it goes. When we setup the service initially, we gave each patron 2 cartridges with 5 books to start. We also started out as Patron-Centric (the cartridge "belonged" to the patron) and then transitioned this past fall to the Recycling model.

Each cartridge has an announcement file (a leaflet) that explains this is a multiple book cartridge with instructions on how to skip this announcement in the future and to use the bookshelf. Every cartridge going out has had this "leaflet" on it since the start. No one has asked to not have it yet. That said, we do have a small group of patrons who just don't like the bookshelf and prefer one book at a time. For these folks we are starting to not include the leaflet announcement. This can be done by make it a hashad in KLAS.

Much like Sam has said, processes have changed across the board, but there have been improvements. For example, now the we are seeing Nightly autoselection service in the "daytime" we have a better understanding of how it works and also some issues that were happening have been resolved because we are more aware of things.
Call volume goes up and down. Using the Service Queue instead of the Request list takes some getting used to, but it works well. No that we are over 30% on DoD we are starting to see an impact on the number of mail cards run per day. The single cartridge books vs multiple book cartridge is impacting change on the number of books we actually send out per day. In the past, a normal monograph mail card run was anywhere from 1500 to 2000 each day. Now we are seeing numbers of 900 to 1200 each day. Duplication order cards have gone from 40 a day to 150 to 200 a day. Yesterday I added another batch of 150 patrons on to BOD service and today's mail card runs are 944 for monograph cards and 300 duplication order cards. At a rate of 8 books per order this means that our duplication order number of books is 2 to 1 version single books. That's significant.New tools and parts of the service keep coming and we are excited about how things are changing for the better.

I hope that this helps. As I said, I'm happy to talk about more specifics with folks as they get up and running.
So much still to say. Hard to organize all I have to say in just one posting.

Best,
Craig

Sorry for the extremely delayed response. I was on vacation and then had 12 Windows 7 computers I had to get replaced once I got back.

I am in Colorado and we are using the Gutenberg system. I think it is going very well. We started our pilot at the beginning of October and ran it for about 1 month. Then at the beginning of November we started converting the rest of our patrons to the duplication model (with the exception of our offender population). Our conversion was completed the first week of December and we are working with Keystone on a way to run the offender (inmate) cartridges done in a separate run.

Keystone has been very responsive and fixed many of the issues we experienced while getting things going. Of course, we were one of the pilot libraries so issues were to be expected. I would say the 2 biggest outstanding issues right now are the time it takes an order to be created through the service queue and the fact that we can't get our local books to work through Gutenberg right now.

I would say we've had a bigger issue with patrons complaining about the new system. Gutenberg automatically puts the NLS announcement at the beginning of the cartridges about the bookshelf, but we don't think our patrons are listening to it. Because we had so many complaints, our Director, Debbi, asked other Gutenberg libraries if they had also received a lot of complaints initially. A few of them said they had created their own announcements since they thought the NLS announcement was confusing to their patrons. Another library removed the announcement completely. We are looking at changing the message and received scripts from some other libraries to start that process.

I would be glad to answer any other questions you may have about Gutenberg.
Teresa

Could the libraries that are doing DOD post what they had created for their own announcements or scripts for the beginning of the cartridges about the bookshelf?

Do you add the announcement to each cartridge you download for a patron?

Could there be a "to skip over this announcement" press the play button to hear your book list???

Thanks

I'm happy to post the "script". Some notes first:

1. We are a Scribe library and this announcement goes on to every cartridge automatically. If a patron is only getting one book per cartridge (we have a couple) or if they tire of hearing the announcement each time, we make it a hashad on their account and they no longer get it on the cartridge.
2. Part of our announcement includes how to skip this announcement and just go directly to the bookshelf.
3. We decided, just because, to clip the how to use bookshelf portion and make it into an MP3 file you can download from our website. It is one of the most often downloaded audio items from our local download site.

Here is the script :
"Multiple Book Cartridge Announcement

You can skip this announcement by using the bookshelf feature at any time.

This multiple-book cartridge is directly tied to your account. It contains books that you requested from series you read, favorite authors, favorite subjects or anything that you asked for specifically. When finished, return to the library to get more books.

The bookshelf feature of your digital talking book player will allow you to access every book on each cartridge in the order you wish. To do so, press and hold the Play / Stop button (the large green rectangular button at the front of the player, in the middle) until you hear a beep and the word Bookshelf. Then press the Fast – Forward or Rewind buttons (on either side of the Play / Stop button) until the title of a book is heard. Continue this cycle until you find the book you want then Press the Play / Stop button to select that book.

To return the cartridge and get more books, simply flip over the mail card on the container, put the cartridge back in the container and place this in the mail. The sooner we get your cartridge back the sooner you will receive your next set of books.

To begin the first book, press the Play / Stop button after you hear the beep."

You can steal all you want from this.

Same as NC, we include the same announcement on every cartridge unless the patron only gets one book at a time. I'll usually mark the file hashad after speaking with a patron who clearly understands how bookshelf mode works, but we don't have any systematic process for when to stop including it.

The script of our basic announcement, which you are welcome to adapt or steal:
"Audiobook announcement.
This cartridge contains multiple audiobooks. When one book finishes, you can begin the next book by pressing the play/stop button after the 'end of book' announcement. You can also move between books at any time using bookshelf mode. To use bookshelf mode, press and hold the green play/stop button for 5 seconds. The player will announce ‘bookshelf’ and the title of the current book. You can then use the fastforward and rewind buttons to hear the titles of the other books on the cartridge. When you’ve found the book you’d like to listen to, press the play button and that book will begin playing." followed immediately by: END OF BOOK, PRESS PLAY/STOP TO BEGIN NEXT BOOK

There are annoying bits to how Bookshelf Mode works that I wish the NLS would update, but it doesn't seem worth it to discuss them on the announcement. Mainly I'd like for the announcement not to be treated as a book by the player. I'd also love it if the player would cycle back to book 1 when the patron presses FF on the last book, rather than going to the Player User Guide. Maybe in the next firmware update ...

You may want to check how your announcement is setup. Is it as a book or a leaflet? If it's setup as a leaflet it should always play first and it shouldn't count as a book on the cartridge. The count of books on our cartridges don't include the opening announcement because of this. If this isn't the case, then it's something else. If anyone would like an overview on how to make a leaflet, I'm happy to help out.

Thanks,
Craig

An overview on how to make sure it is set up as a leaflet would be very much appreciated! I believe we have it formatted as a very short book, which works but obviously isn't the ideal.

No problem. I had to learn about this a while back when we started producing all of our local magazines on one cartridge. We wanted a way to put an opening announcement on the cartridge. It's the same process for books.

Here are the nuts and bolts:

• Create the DTB containing your message
• Assign lf (lower case L and lower case F) in front of the 5 digit book number of the UID. Example: us-nls-lf00000. This causes the DTBM to recognize the message as the leaflet. It will not announce “End of Book.”
• Export the DTB from your authoring tool
• Locate the exported DTB
• Rename the OPF so that a hash sign (#) is the first character. Example: #00000.opf. This tells the player not to count the leaflet in the number of books it announces because it is an announcement
• Put the DTB in a folder
• Name the folder so that a plus sign (+) is the first character. Example +00-Notice. This tells the player that the leaflet should be played first, before all other books or messages
• Put the folder on your multi-book cartridges. The DTBM will recognize it as the leaflet based on the opf file name and it will play it from the beginning each time it encounters a cartridge with that file on it

I hope this makes sense. We use Hindenburg to produce our books and magazines.

Right now we are using the NLS recording. The text for that recording and also how to create a leaflet are located at:http://www.loc.gov/nlsold/networkdocs/leaflet.html

I also included the text of their message below. We think that since they talk about the bookshelf first it confuses patrons, so we're thinking about moving the "easy" instructions to the front of the announcement and then describe how to use the bookshelf.

We have Gutenberg set-up so it only puts the announcement on the cartridge if there is more than 1 book on the cartridge.

Craig and Sam - thanks for your scripts. I'll add them to the others I have to help us change the wording for ours.
Teresa

NLS Audiobook Announcement
This cartridge was prepared especially for you and contains several books that you have requested or books in subject areas in which you have expressed interest. You may select the book you wish to read from those available on the player’s bookshelf. To enter the bookshelf, press and hold the large green rectangular play/stop button near the player’s front edge for three seconds. When you enter the bookshelf, the player will announce the number of books on the cartridge and the title of the currently selected book. Press the rewind or fast forward buttons on either side of the play/stop button to locate the book you wish to read. When you hear the entire title of the book you wish to read, press the play/stop button and that book will be selected and start playing. When you are ready to read another book, return to the bookshelf by pressing and holding the play/stop button for three seconds. Use the rewind or fast forward to find the book you’d like to read, and then press the play/stop button to select it.

If you’d like to listen to the first book on this cartridge without accessing the bookshelf, press the play/stop button when you hear a beep at the end of this message. When you hear the player announce “End of book,” press the play/stop button to go to the next book.

Enjoy your books, and remember, to enter the bookshelf to select a book, press and hold the large green rectangular play/stop button or to play the first book, press the play/stop button when you hear the beep.

Apologies for not giving any concrete updates before this, as Georgia has been dealing with a large number of issues adjacent-to-but-not-directly-affecting DoD and other projects. One of those projects, however, is a comprehensive 'postmortem' report on the entire conversion process. It's not quite finished yet, but I'll be happy to send it to anyone who is interested once it is. In the meantime, to answer some of the questions that have been brought up regarding our experience with Gutenberg:

- We started out with a pilot group of 50 patrons. Once things were going well with them, and before the bulk conversion of existing patrons, GLASS RAs began starting all new patrons and transfer-in patrons on DoD. Initially 2 cartridges maximum per patron, 1 per day limit, 10 titles per cartridge. After we built up a sufficient 'backstock' of prepared cartridges, RAs were free to increase the number of cartridges any given patron can have. Generally 5 at most, although patrons who have a lot of difficulty with the Bookshelf feature have gone up to 10 cartridges with a single title each (I think there are less than a half-dozen patrons of this type).

- Gutenberg now has a "Repurpose On the Fly" option. When active, the Gutenberg will automatically format and repurpose any white cartridges that are either new (right from the supplier) or repurposed from our existing copy allotment collection. We can pull a cartridge right out of our old collection or box of new, apply the new DoD label, and immediately slot it into the Gutenberg. This was a massive timesaver.

- There have been a handful of patrons who were previously BARD-only that have decided to resume regular service with the new DoD model. Generally this is due to the wider variety of titles available in combination with needing to keep up with fewer physical cartridges.

- We have completely converted all individual patrons to DoD, the entire process taking about a month and a half. We will be converting all the Institutional Accounts probably within the next two weeks, with the goal of being converted 100% by February.

- We use the standard NLS provided announcements as discussed here and elsewhere.

- Patron response has been overwhelmingly positive. A couple of issues:
-- Some patrons confused and alarmed at the appearance of cartridges in the clear / translucent cases
-- A very small number of patrons reporting that the bookshelf feature "wasn't working", even after resets and re-insertions. A couple of these have eventually admitted that they also yanked the DoD cartridge out of the player while it was in the middle of updating the firmware after the first time it was inserted, and I'm willing to bet that this was the cause of those issues.

- Both Keystone and NLS have been very responsive to fix issues when they come up, both with coming up with short term fixes and implementing long-term solutions.

- The amount of work and staff time needed for this has been drastically reduced. Previously it would take a crew of 3 FTEs plus 2 - 6 part-time students most of a day to circulate about 1,000 copy allotment cartridges going out and check in the same number coming back. Now, it takes 3 FTEs working in sync about 4 hours at most to circulate 300-500 DoD cartridges a day.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer. Thanks!

Thanks everyone that shared the multiple book announcement. I used a little bit from each one of you and came up with script for our announcement.

---

This cartridge contains multiple audiobooks. When one book finishes, you can begin the next book by pressing the Play/Stop button after the player says, “end of book.”

The bookshelf feature of your digital talking book player will allow you to access every book, on this cartridge, in the order you wish. To do so, press and hold the Play/Stop button (the large green rectangular button at the front of the player, in the middle) until you hear a beep and the player says “bookshelf” and the title of the current book. Then press the Fast-Forward or Rewind buttons (on either side of the Play/Stop button) to hear the titles of the other books on the cartridge. When you’ve found the book you’d like to listen to, press the Play button and that book will begin playing.

Enjoy your books, and remember to return the cartridge and get more books, simply flip over the mail card on the container, put the cartridge back in the container and place this in the mail. The sooner we get your cartridge back the sooner you will receive your next set of books.

To begin the first book, press the Play/Stop button after you hear the beep.

SD BTBL

We changed a few things in our multiple book announcement since the first one I sent out on Friday. I want to thanks Craig for tells us how to make a Multiple Books announcement leaflet it worked great.

Sooo one more time...
This cartridge contains multiple audiobooks.
After each book finishes, you can begin the next book by pressing the Play/Stop button after the player says, “end of book.”

Or you can use the bookshelf feature, of your digital talking book player, which will allow you to access every book on this cartridge, in the order you wish.
To do so, press and hold the Play/Stop button (the large green rectangular button at the front of the player, in the middle) until you hear a beep and the player says “bookshelf” and the title of the current book. Then press the Fast-Forward or Rewind buttons (on either side of the Play/Stop button) to hear the titles of the other books on the cartridge. When you’ve found the book you’d like to listen to, press the Play button, and that book will begin playing.

Enjoy your books, and remember, to return the cartridge and get more books, simply flip over the mail card on the container, put the cartridge back in the container, and place it in the mail. The sooner we get your cartridge back the sooner you will receive a cartridge with your next set of books.
To begin the first book, press the Play/Stop button after you hear the beep.