Series Order... for Author picks?

The best way to ensure that a patron gets a series in order is to add that series as a preference. With a Series Preference, KLAS is careful to only send a series in order... however it does not consider series order when it is looking at Author or Subject Preferences, other than to skip series that the patron has a specific preference for.

For patrons who do not want to receive books that are later in a series as part of their Subject picks, the best thing is to create an exclusion for the "Sequel" subject for that patron. This will block them from receiving Subject picks that are not either stand-alone titles or book 1 in their series (so long as it is included in your cataloging, of course).

However, many libraries have their Author Preferences set to not consider subject exclusions, and you may have patrons that want to get all of an authors' books but only in series order. Some authors write a LOT of short series, making it difficult to add all of them to a patron's profile, let alone keep up with them over time.

It isn't a perfect solution, but you might consider checking the Serve Order for your PCC-Author program in Nightly Configuration. KLAS can check for appropriate and available author picks for each patron starting either with the earliest KLAS ID or the most recent. If most of your patrons seem to want their authors' newest books, even if they haven't had all of the older titles, you'll want that set to "Latest First." But if the majority seem more concerned with getting the books in order, switch it to "Earliest First."

And because there will always be exceptions, you can create special rules for individual patrons, allowing you to adjust things for those frequent callers who feel strongly about how they get their books.

That said, please chime in to let us know--do you have a lot of patrons that are concerned about series order, or do most of your patrons prefer the new titles? Does serving Author Picks in KLAS ID order get most of the series in order, or are there too many prequels and other series books that are, for whatever reason, not numbered in line with their series order? Do you have any tips for your peers having to do with series order, or any ideas for us about how we might improve things?

We want to hear from you!!

How about you give this query a try? This should give you records that have a series in the MARC record but not on Title-Bib:

Basic Tab:
Medium | Equals | DB
Series | Is Blank

Advanced Tab:
MARC Tag | Tag | Equals | 440
MARC Tag | Data | Is Between | 0 | ZZZZZZZZ