We've been getting quite a few questions and check-ins on the status of Institutional Acknowledgements, so I'm posting this as an official status page. In addition to getting the news out via the email listserv, this page will be updated as soon as the Institutional Acknowledgements are officially available.
Current Status:
NLS is not yet ready to receive the Institutional Acknowledgement, and we are still working on the PIMMS Sync updates to get it to them.
More info:
NLS has indicated that they will be requesting that libraries collect an acknowledgement from a legal representative of a school that NLS has an open collection. What NLS wants is the name, title, email, and phone number of the legal representative of the institution - i.e., the person with the ability to acknowledge for that institution.
This is new information being collected, so while we do have places we can store the information, the means to transmit this information to PIMMS is not yet in place.
When you receive an Institutional Acknowledgement:
Add an Alternate Contact with a subtype of Legal. Put the person's Job Title in the Description, put the full name in the Name field, and add the email and phone number in the appropriate fields there.
Also put a note on the record indicating when you received this acknowledgement. Once we are able to transmit the information to PIMMS, you can use those notes to officially add that acknowledgement to the record.
When we receive form data from NLS:
For those institutions that are submitting an acknowledgement online in response to NLS's email, Keystone is processing the file of those acknowledgements. As part of the process, we are adding the Alt Contact / Legal option and putting in a note with the subject line of "Acknowledgement" for ease of querying. If there is anything that calls for review (such as an Acknowledgement being provided for a Suspended institutional), we will contact you to let you know.
What's next:
Once the PIMMS transmission is built, the Acknowledgement can be added to the record exactly as it is for Juvenile patrons, with a Prompt triggered on the record's Main tab.
On Jan 1 or when you indicate that you are ready, we will be able to automatically block accounts without the Acknowledgement. Since institutional accounts don't generally have a birthdate, I expect the setup will be done by Patron Type (ex IP / Institution - Public School).
If anyone has questions about what institutions should or should not have the acknowledgement, or about forms or emails sent by NLS, please send those questions to them directly--but I'm sure the group would love to know what you hear back. Any other questions about how the Acknowledgement will work in KLAS can be posted here or sent to Customer Support.
