From the desk of James Burts, CEO, Keystone Systems:

Oh, for the good old days of just writing software…..(aka logistics and parts availability for the KLAS Scribe)

*wistful sigh*

It’s times like these I look back longingly when Keystone only wrote software. Like many other companies, supply chain issues (especially motherboard availability) have plagued us recently making the production of Scribes and Scribe mini frustratingly slower than desired. 

Months ago, we had a lengthy period where we had problems getting our Scribe tower parts produced, because the design file was corrupted. We got that resolved, and thought we were into clear sailing. Unfortunately, it feels like the world conspired against us, and we are now fighting parts availability issues we don’t have any control over.

The manufacturer of the cases we use for the Scribe Mini shutdown their production facility to re-tool and introduce some new models—one of which we are quite interested in. We stopped being able to receive any of those cases in early December, and now expect to get a shipment in the next week or two.

The motherboards we have to use in the Scribe have become extremely difficult to get our hands on. We have been waiting for several weeks for our most current order, and expect it will take perhaps another month to finally receive them.

The company that made the system we use to control the LED light strips went out of business due to slumping sales in the pandemic. We are working to create a replacement for this component with a much more commonly available Raspberry Pi microcontroller, but we had to write the software to have the Raspberry Pi do the things we need.

The power supplies we use in the Scribe Mini have also been very difficult to purchase.

Things have been improving lately. We expect to receive a shipment of Scribe Mini cases in the next week or so. Our Raspberry Pi version of the light controller looks to be more reliable, and development should be wrapped up on it in the next week or so. We plan to installed it at a beta site or two shortly.

Our biggest issue remains motherboards. We have a number of orders outstanding, and our best hope for anything beyond just one motherboard is looking to be at least a month away.

From my current perspective, I’m really missing the good old days that didn’t include shipping and logistics headaches as we strive to provide a quality product for you. However, we’ll push through this and look forward to getting more Scribes built and put to work for your libraries and patrons as soon as possible.

Hello, KLASusers! Although we are in an off-year between full KLAS Users’ Conferences, we still want provide opportunities for you to keep up-to-date on KLAS New Features, provide feedback and development requests, and network with each other. With that in mind, just like our last non-conference year, we are working with the Programming Committee to facilitate monthly webinars and will be hosting a “bite-sized” mini-conference this summer.

This began with last month’s Keystone-presented webinar on Cataloging for Duplication, and will continue following a pattern of one LBPD user-presented, one IRC user-presented, and one Keystone-presented webinar per quarter.

APH Roundtable Webinar

For this quarter’s IRC webinar, we have a Roundtable on the APH Census, with discussion on how you go about the census process and how KLAS can better support that work. That roundtable is scheduled for Tuesday, February 22^nd, at 3pm Eastern Time, and will be moderated by Jared Leslie, Director of Media and Development at the Foundation for Blind Children in AZ, along with Sally Shreck, Specialized Media Coordinator at the Maryland School for the Blind IRC, and Allen Huang, Director of Accessible Instructional Materials and Outreach Services, and Kathy Segers, Educational Consultant, at Tennessee Resource Center for the Visually Impaired. We hope you’ll be able to join in, learn from their approaches, and provide your own perspective!

Connection details will be posted about one week before the webinar.

Save the Date: KLAS Mini-Conference

Like 2020’s mini-conference, we plan to take an afternoon in early May to share Keystone Updates and KLAS New Features. This year, we are also adding a second afternoon, which will include a Users’ Group Meeting to review and vote on a bylaws change, and a few user-led Birds-of-a-Feather sessions.

We plan to stagger IRC, General, and LBPD content as much as possible to ensure you get as much out of this as possible with the least time investment. While the exact schedule is still to be determined, we currently have the week of May 9^th (the week before the NLS Conference) earmarked for our two-day, bite-sized, online mini-con.

Admin Training

While broader webinars and networking events are great, sometimes you need a more specific, hands-on, deep dive into KLAS and how to make it work best for your specific situation.

A fantastic way to do that is to join us for Administrator’s Training! 

This year’s dates for Admins at LBPD libraries are:

• June 6-9, 2022
• September 12-15, 2022

We want to host a session for IRC Admins as well, but we need you to help us set the dates! If you can commit to a session, please let us know so we can work with you to set up dates.

Our Online Administrator's Training article has more info about training structure, pricing, and a link to register. Because of the significant time investment needed from Keystone staff to host Admin Training, we will need at least two confirmed attendees for any session to proceed.

2020 and 2021 were a challenging time for many of us, including our KLAS Users' Group Program Committee. Many members joined the committee with the intention of helping to plan an in-person conference. Then COVID happened, and we all came together to plan and execute a fully online conference instead. This shift meant evaluating and learning new software, preparing presenters for the new format, rethinking the conference schedule, and more! I am more than grateful to those who did this work. Understandably, when it came time to start planning content for this year, all but one committee member was ready for a break and stepped down from the committee.

In the past few months we've assembled a new team to plan ongoing content for our KLAS Users! Yesterday afternoon they met for the first time. Four new faces who have never served on a KLAS Users' Group Committee before, a new Users' Group Officer who is beginning their first term, and one seasoned Officer / Program Committee member are coming together to help bring you new webinars, online roundtables, and more in the next year!

2022 Program Committee Members:

• Jared Leslie, KLAS Users' Group Vice President & Program Committee Chair, Arizona Instructional Resource Center
• Michael Lang, KLAS Users' Group President & Former Program Committee Chair, Kansas Talking Book Library
• Lori Brown, Wolfner Talking Book and Braille Library (Missouri)
• Amanda Trawick, Alabama Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
• Kate Kosior, South Dakota Braille & Talking Book Library
• Crystal Grimes, Oregon Talking Book and Braille Library
• Katy Patrick, Keystone Systems
• Drea Callicutt, Keystone Systems

1/25/22 Cataloging for Duplication Webinar

As their first piece of business, your new Program Committee scheduled a Keystone-presented webinar for Tuesday, January 25 at 2 PM Eastern / 11 AM Pacific. During this online training session, Katy Patrick will be discussing "Cataloging for Duplication" including handling withdrawn titles, updating new title records without physical copies coming in, and what eDocs are and where they come from. Mark your calendar now so you can join us Live! Connection information will be shared closer to the webinar.

What topics / presenters do you want?

Now, our newly reformed committee wants to ask: What kind of content you want? Is there a particular topic or presenter you'd like to hear about / from? Do you have something you'd like to present about, or are you willing to moderate a Roundtable or Birds of a Feather session? 

Comment on this post or send an email to any committee member to share your thoughts, requests, and input! 

It’s been another turbulent, often-difficult year, but once again, we’ve made it through. In fact, this year has seen a number of highlights for us! Here are a few of my high points:

We’ve revamped KLASusers.com to modernize it, make it more easily searchable, and present content by topic instead of by format. We’ve recently made another big stride towards this goal by adding the tag listing to the Knowledge Base and News areas, allowing you to easily browse some of our top topics.

We hosted our first-ever all-online KLAS Users’ Conference, allowing us to not only hold this years’ conference safely, but to include more of our users than ever before. We learned so much from this experience, and I’m sure we’ll benefit from that experience even if and when we move back to a primarily in-person event.

We continued to improve Duplication on Demand to make it as reliable, customizable, and powerful as you’d expect from KLAS. This included adding the Duplication Orders by Status report, new options for managing patron’s Service Queues, check-in alerts, and even (in our latest update) customizable sound support for Scribe systems, along with countless smaller tweaks, bug fixes, and “quality of life” improvements.

For our IRC customers, we have a strong start on integration with APH’s ordering system, which will allow you to submit Purchase Orders directly from KLAS, with Catalog integration coming soon as well. If you missed our update on this project earlier this month, make sure to check out the recording!

I could go on and on, but I’ll leave it here for now. After all, it’s about time to be closing the door on 2021, and looking ahead to the possibilities and promise of next year. Until then: best wishes for a happy and healthy 2022!

Keystone Systems continues our analysis of the remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2021-44228) related to Apache Log4j (a logging tool used in many Java-based applications) disclosed via GitHub on 9 Dec 2021. As we and the industry at large continue to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of this threat, we want to relay our current standing, mitigation of, and continued diligence to defend against this and other potential attacks.

In addition to monitoring the threat landscape for attacks and developing customer protections, our operations team has been analyzing our products and services to understand where Apache Log4j may be used, and are taking expedited steps to mitigate any instances. Currently, we have identified one piece of software core to the KLAS application that was vulnerable.  The vendor that produces the software identified has provided mitigation steps for the Log4j threat, and those actions have been put into place in Keystone’s hosting environment.  For Keystone’s self-hosted customers, if your IT has allowed us access to your system, we are rolling out this action as well. 

If your IT department has questions, or for self-hosted customers that would like to apply the correction themselves, please don’t hesitate to contact Keystone.  If you are interested in the technical details for the affected software, please see the vendor’s security report.

As always Keystone will continue to utilize industry best practices to keep your databases as safe as possible.  Those practices include daily network and penetration scanning, enterprise class anti-virus software, daily malware scanning, and a dedicated patching schedule.  If you, or your IT department, have any questions about Keystone’s security practices please submit a request for our annual SSAE SOC II audit report. 

Thank you,

Lee Higley
IT Manager
Keystone Systems

Last week we announced the creation of a new KLASusers IRC listserv. This week, we want to share / remind you of the various ways KLAS Users can connect with one another, and how to subscribe to each:

1. KLAS Users listserv
2. KLAS IRC Users listserv
3. KLASUsers.com discussion forum
4. Comments on KLASUsers.com articles

KLASusers listserv

The KLASusers listserv is open to any and all KLAS Users, whether you're a library director, an IRC inventory clerk, a member of your organization's technical support staff, or anyone else who uses KLAS. Keystone staff typically send out our Weekly Wrap-up to this listserv every Friday which includes info about new articles and forum posts on KLASusers.com, MARC record updates, info about the current KLAS release, upcoming webinars and other online training opportunities, etc.

User discussion is also welcome and encouraged! However, please remember: Replies will go to the entire listserv. To reply only to the sender, use the "reply to sender" link in the email footer.

The easiest way to get signed up for the listserv is via the KLASUsers listserv subscription page, or you can send a list of names and email addresses for your organization to .

KLAS IRC Users listserv

Last week we shared info about our shiny, new KLAS IRC Users' listserv. We hope any and all instructional resource / materials center staff who use KLAS will subscribe to this more focused e-list. We will share the KLAS Users' Weekly Wrap-up to it which will contain both IRC and non-IRC related information to it (including the latest release, so you can stay up-to-date), but otherwise it be strictly IRC-relevant communications. If you haven't already, be sure to sign-up ASAP via the KLAS IRC Users' listserv subscription page.

User discussion is also welcome here, so long as it is IRC related.

KLASUsers.com Discussion Forum

Our discussion forums have been an integral part of KLASusers.com since it's launch. The benefits of the forums over listservs for sharing information include threading, the ability to subscribe only to desired areas, and a more easily browse- or searchable archive, compared to searching your inbox for an email you remember possible getting at some point. We encourage you to post questions, ideas, resources, and suggestions to the forums. Available categories for posts are based on the different KLAS modules, various parts of the KLAS User community (Ex: RA, IRC, AT, KLAS Novices, etc.), and even Keystone services.

Anyone can read the forums, but you must be signed into klasusers.com to create a post or reply. To request a klasusers.com account for yourself or a new staff member, please send an email to  and include the following:

• Full Name
• Desired Log-in Name
• Email Address
• Name of Library / Organization

KLASUsers.com Article Comments

Did you know that if you reply to an article on klasusers.com, it will automatically become a forum post that Keystone staff and other users can view and respond to? Yes, you do have to be logged into klasusers.com to post a comment or question, but it's a great way to get clarification on a post, share your insight or feedback, or start a conversation relating it.

Hey, IRC KLAS-users! We’ve got several things of interest for you this week including:

• an updated Intro to KLAS user guide for IRCs
• an upcoming webinar to talk APH Integration
• and best of all, a shiny new email listserv

Let’s talk details...

Intro to KLAS for IRCs

I’ve just posted an updated version of this user guide to the Knowledge Base. It includes an overview of all the main KLAS screens and some of its primary functions. You’ll find the download on the Intro to KLAS for IRC Users page.

Note: This manual was originally designed for print, and the images are not described. If you use Assistive Technology or otherwise cannot benefit from undescribed screenshots, please see the AT Reference Document as well for contextual information and text-only screen contents. 

Upcoming Webinar

Don’t forget! The 12/14/2021 APH Integration Update Webinar is coming up fast, and we’d love to see you there. During this session, we plan to demonstrate KLAS screens, discuss planned workflows, share development updates, take suggestions, and answer questions.

Not sure what the APH Integration is, or wondering how it will help? Something in particular that you really, really hope it will do? Don’t miss this chance to get the inside scoop and make sure we know your priorities!

KLASusers-IRC Listserv

The main KLASUsers email listserv is available to anyone and everyone who uses KLAS... but with the transition to Duplication service, the need to keep up with NLS cataloguing, and just being a rather large and well-acquainted group, the LBPD / Talking Book Libraries tend to dominate the discussion.

We love hearing so much from them and seeing them use the list to work with each other, but we understand that you don’t need all that cluttering up your inboxes.

In an attempt to facilitate communication with and amongst our KLAS IRC Users', we've setup a new e-list specifically for you. We will cc: the new e-list with the KLAS Users' Weekly Wrap-up each Friday, which contains the latest KLASUsers.com content, release updates, forum posts, etc. for ALL KLASUsers. Otherwise, all emails to this list will be kept IRC-specific.

We hope you’ll subscribe to the listserv and join the discussion!

On Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at 3 PM Eastern / Noon Pacific Katy and Kyle will be offering a live webinar focused on sharing information and details about the integration between KLAS and APH's ordering system and catalog of products. During this session, we plan to demonstrate KLAS screens, discuss planned workflows, share development updates, take suggestions, and answer questions. We invite any and all Instructional Resource / Instructional Materials Center users to mark your calendar now and join us for this special Keystone webinar!

• Date: Tuesday, December 14, 2021
• Time: 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time / Noon Pacific Standard Time
• Zoom Meeting Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87018666883?pwd=WUZhSW5YVTBwRmxlVnRIQlpwZHhjUT09

If you have any questions or comments you wish to submit in advance, you can send them to:

In the meantime, we invite you to review the recordings of the APH 2021 KLAS IRC / IMC Users' Meeting from 10/12/2021 and the recent KLAS IRC / IMC Users' Roundtable held on 11/3/2021 during which we discussed the current status of the KLAS / APH Integration Project.

Full Connection info:

Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87018666883?pwd=WUZhSW5YVTBwRmxlVnRIQlpwZHhjUT09

Meeting ID: 870 1866 6883
Passcode: 632597
One tap mobile
+19292056099,,87018666883#,,,,*632597# US (New York)
+13017158592,,87018666883#,,,,*632597# US (Washington DC)

Dial by your location
        +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
        +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
        +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
        +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
        +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
Meeting ID: 870 1866 6883
Passcode: 632597
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kda33PJihT

Have you noticed something new over on the Knowledge Base?

With the KLASusers redesign, we hoped to help you find resources without needing to navigate a bunch of menus or know how the specific content you were looking for was formatted. To do so, we condensed the site into just two areas (the Knowledge Base and KLAS News) with the expectation that users could find specific content using the search box or clicking through Tags.

This works well for some, but not for others. It didn’t help that articles were not displayed newest-to-oldest, but by subcategory.

Well, we've added something we think is going to be a big help!

There's now sidebar on the left side the Knowledge Base, and it’s also coming soon to the KLAS News section. This isn’t a menu—you don’t need to figure out the one right path to get to the article you want. Instead, it’s a listing of Tags, and an article can have as many Tags as it needs to describe the content.

We hope these Tag lists will help you browse the site more easily, whether you’re after something specific or just seeing what’s available. 

If you know exactly what you’re looking for or looking for something that isn’t in the tag list, you can still use the Search box to navigate the site as well. There are a couple tags with little (or any) content just yet—consider it a peek at my to-do list. I plan to fill in the Knowledge Base even more over time, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if there’s a tag you think we should add, please let us know!

This is a guest post by Maureen Dorosinski, Librarian / Production Supervisor, Florida Bureau of Braille and Talking Book Library Services.

The question:

Meagan from FL1M had a question: “Do we have exclusions for certain dates? Many of our patrons are auto select from their preferences, but only want books from a certain time period.”

Nancy at KLAS suggested we could set up subject codes based on dates. For example, instead of putting everything in the "Bestseller" category, a Bestsellers of the 1990s, Bestsellers of the 80s, category.

First Stop:

Nancy completed a process of setting up the bestseller codes for the various decades. She set the following in place, and filled them:

• BEF50 / BEN50 - fiction and nonfiction prior to 1970
• BEF70 / BEN70 - fiction and nonfiction from 1970 - 1979
• BEF80 / BEN80 - fiction and nonfiction from 1980 - 1989
• BEF90 / BEN90 - fiction and nonfiction from 1990 - 1999
• BEF00 / BEN00 - fiction and nonfiction from 2000 - 2009

In putting these codes on the titles, she also removed the generic BES, BEF and BEN codes, so what is remaining in those subject headings are the more recently published titles.

Second Stop:

Since NLS uses an amalgam of LA Times, New York Times, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists to tag books, our cataloger Dina took things to the next level and further populated these tags from NLS by searching all the New York Times Bestsellers, and adding the appropriate subject headings to previously unnoted bestsellers.

To streamline the process, she went to Bookshare.org. They have a section of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles from the NYT list, these lists round up the titles without repeating them, and can be filtered by year and month.

Going Forward:

Nancy says the automatic codes being used are BES, BEF and BEN.  When MARC records come in, those are updated.  If, in your review, you see a recently added title that was originally published in 1970, you might want to add the 1970 bestseller code to it, but other than that, those should stay pretty static.  And yes, remind the RAs that these categories exist, for either selection or exclusion.

Maybe another library could continue, Dina says we'll have to add subject headings for the 2010s and (eventually) the 2020s and assign them as appropriate. Maybe you will share their queries with us to import!

Get Bestsellers By Decades at Your Library:

I have attached the text queries with all the books we have tagged in each of the categories. To apply them in your catalog:

1. Add the new subject codes as listed above to your catalog using Headings Maintenance.
2. Import the first query file.
3. Use the Change Headings - Query Set tool to apply the new heading to the Query Set and remove the old heading.
4. Repeat for each of the query files.

I’m sure KLAS would help out if you need them! 

Downloads:

• Query Set Text Files
• Bestsellers Source and Links

Thank you!
Maureen in FL

The 2021 KLAS Users’ Conference presentations are now available for download!

In case that feels a little late in coming... no, we didn’t just forget. In fact, the presentations have been available to attendees this whole time, along with the full session recordings, on the PheedLoop conference platform. The reason these presentations are now available here as well is to make them available to those who were not able to join us for the conference.

We want to make sure that those who pay to attend the conference get ample value for it, and plenty of justification for their state agencies. The conference is not a profit-generating event for Keystone, but those registration fees are necessary to cover expenses, whether those expenses are for online event hosting or in-person. With an online conference, there was concern that, if the full recordings were available to everyone, funding agencies may wonder why they should pay for you to attend live sessions at the next conference.  

However, we also know that you don’t necessarily choose your funding agency or their restrictions, and many states have very real budget constrictions. We don’t want to leave those of you who can’t attend the conference in the dark!

In committee discussion, this was identified as our solution: the conference presentations (but not the full recordings) would be made freely available after a delay.

We hope this is a help to those of you who weren’t able to join us (without causing trouble for those who were)!

Not sure where to start? We had a fantastic slate of presentations this year, but here are a few of my personal recommendations:

TLDR; Too Long, Didn’t Read

Have trouble keeping up with all the KLAS New Features? Just want to make sure you haven’t missed something important? This session was a look back at some of the best improvements and new features of 7.7, hosted by Nancy and yours truly. In addition to the presentation, instructions and an example user.ini are also available, due to request during the live session.

Nightly Configuration: Understanding How Titles Make It To The Service Queue

Sam Lundburg did a lot of research and testing and knocked it out of the park with his deep dive into Nightly Configuration for Duplication. If you want to know more about how Nightly chooses books for the Service Queue and how you can adjust it to work in your favor, don’t miss this presentation! (Note: please do not hesitate to contact Keystone Customer Support for assistance with your Nightly Configuration.)

X MARCs the Spot: Subject and Series Mapping in KLAS

If you have questions about subject mapping or just wonder what the deal is with the subjects that do (or don’t) show up with new MARC records, read up on it here. Erin Pawlus and Dylan Calhoon share their experiences and lessons about Subject and Series mapping, with plenty of great takeaway information.

P.S. Google Drive Tip

Did you know you can download multiple files from a Google Drive all at once? Due to the number of files available, we felt that this feature would be worth hosting the files on Google rather than on KLASusers itself.

Select all of the files you want (using shift or control), then use the menu icon and choose Download. Google will collect all of the selected files into a zipped folder and start the download automatically.

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?

Today, I want to share a few items of particular interest to our Instructional Resource / Instructional Materials Center users including the upcoming users' meeting at APH, an update about our APH integration project, and a new IRC addition to our Users' Community. Read on for more info about each.

KLAS IRC / IMC Users at APH 2021 Annual Meeting

As you have probably heard, the 2021 American Printing House for the Blind Annual Meeting will be online again this year. 

• KLAS IRC Users' Group Meeting at APH 2021: Tuesday, October 12 at 3:00-4:30 PM Eastern / Noon-1:30 PM Pacific

We are hosting the 2021 KLAS IRC / IMC Users' Meeting on our Zoom account.

Meeting Agenda:

• Keystone Update & Current Customers
• Community, Training & Events
• New KLAS IRC Features
• Upcoming Development
• Questions & Discussion

Meeting Invite:

Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88072964152?pwd=NUltTVdISVRBS0VuS0Fud2VsUTZmQT09

Meeting ID: 880 7296 4152
Passcode: 167077

Dial-in for audio:
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kkZmZM6Wu

September 2021 APH Integration Status Update

During our August 24 KLAS New Features Webinar Katy shared the latest info on our ongoing project to integrate KLAS with APH's catalog and ordering system. We know many of you are excited and anticipating the completion of this integration project (as are we) because it means much less data entry and duplication of effort for your staff.

I asked Kyle Honeycutt, Manager of Software Development, for any additional updates he may want to share with our IRC / IMC users. This is what he said:

Using a tool called "PostMan," I have been able to successfully retrieve catalog information, post orders to their test system, and retrieve status of orders. I am in contact with APH and their contractors regarding what information is mapped in which fields, and what criteria to query on to retrieve exact catalog availability. Once all these questions are answered, the next step will be adding calls to these services within the KLAS programs.

Basically, we are using a known testing tool to confirm that the services work as expected, and that we know exactly how to consume them. Then we will introduce the complexity of consuming the processes from within KLAS.

What that means is: we're making good progress and using known tools and processes to accomplish the integration. At this point, our development needs to verify the item information being pulled from APH's catalog is identified correctly and then setup the service to pull it into KLAS in a logical manner.

New IRC Installation

Finally, I want to welcome a new instructional resource center to our KLAS Users' Community!

The West Virginia Instructional Resource Center began their implementation of KLAS this week with an onsite visit from Marion and Mitake. We're excited to work Debbie and her staff in the next few months as we learn their workflow, policies, and process and how to best make KLAS work for their organization and clients. 

We're excited to have them on board, and hope you'll join us in extending a warm welcome.

During our latest New Features Webinar, we had a question about getting the complete list of all languages recognized by PIMMS. Here are some things to know about that list:

• The list that PIMMS adopted is based on the ISO 639-2 Bibliographic list, a standard list maintained by the Library of Congress. There are 487 languages on this list.
• This list is designed to represent all the languages that you might expect to find a book written in, but it is not necessarily a list of all spoken languages.
• The code values in the ISO-639-2 list are used in MARC records to indicate the language(s) of a title.
• The code values that PIMMS accepts are numeric codes, instead of the alpha values that represent the standard they are attempting to match.

There are also some things to consider regarding language codes in KLAS:

• The list of Patron Language codes (PatLang) are mapped to the numeric PIMMS codes.
• The list of Language Codes for title records (LangCode) are mapped to coincide with incoming MARC data.
• The local codes for Patron Languages and Language Codes for title records need to match for Nightly and Book Search exclusion checks.
• The list of values in a drop down are sorted by Code Value instead of description.
• The more values you have in a list of codes, the more difficult it gets for your staff to use.
• Changes to a Code list are not applied retroactively; clean up needs to be made on all affected records.

In short: there are a ton of language possibilities out there. However, when you balance out the needs of your patrons, your collection, and your staff, the only languages you really want to have in KLAS are the ones you need right now.

You can certainly add more languages than you have now without causing headaches—and we’re happy to help you do it! Languages that your patrons speak, that appear in the collection, and/or that you want to track interest in should definitely be added to your code lists.

Just know that too many languages can make things complicated, and too many changes later on can be a pain.

If you want the long version, read on for more details.

Difficulties of a Long List

Having “too many” options in a drop-down field introduces some really interesting ways to mess up data entry. For example, while the full list of PIMMS languages was briefly available, one patron was given “Middle English” as their default Language! The more options there are, the easier it is to accidentally select the wrong one, either by misreading or mis-clicking.

In addition to the unwieldiness of such long list and the ease of selecting an unintended entry, these lists sort by code not full description. This means you should take care with how you setup the codes, or the list will not be in a straightforward, alphabetical order.  Once you get more than 30 or so entries in a combo-box, having a logical sort order becomes very important! For example, browse through the list of states on the Contact tab. The state codes are well-known—but they don’t sort the same as the names of the states. If you weren’t already familiar with them, could you easily use this field? What if the states weren’t in order at all?

Getting back to the list of languages that you are managing in your database – another thing to keep in mind is the way a language might be referred to by a patron vs its official name or designation. Many libraries have had Cambodian in their Patron language list for years as C or CAM but the Marc value is khm for Khmer. Serbo-Croatian was previously used for what are now distinguished as four different languages whose official codes are based on the spelling of the language in that language – hence HRV for Croatian. The MARC code is PER for Persian but the language is frequently referred to as Farsi.  

Will those codes help your staff browse to the right part of the list? It’s important to understand how patrons might ask for materials in these languages, and choose local codes and descriptions such that your staff can match what a patron is saying to the proper selection.

Fortunately, the Code Files allow you to use a local code for the Patron and Catalog modules while still mapping to PIMMS and to the codes used on MARC records. Think about the local codes you may want to use, and how can use them to enforce a reasonable sort order.

Remember: selecting logical, well-sorted codes, and then selecting the right one from the list every time will be easier the shorter you keep the list.

Changes to Code Files are not retroactive

Code Files can be tricky to deal with, especially in cases where you are dealing with large numbers of records, mapping between modules, and mapping with both PIMMS and MARC records. If you’re up to it, you can add to your PatLang codes, but we recommend you leave the LangCode file to us—and don’t go hog wild changing the codes.

Here’s why:

Code Files aren’t like Headings. Headings are linked on each record; when you update a Heading, the changes appear on each record. Codes get stored on each record instead, and the Code File simply defines what that code means. If you change a Description, that’s fine! But if you change a Code, all the records with the old code still have the old code. Records with the old code won’t be able to find it in the Code File to define it, triggering error messages and generally breaking things.

Plus, for this Code File, mapping must be maintained between the Patron and Catalog modules. Doing so means Nightly can match the patrons’ preferred Language to the Language on title records.

So, if you want to change one of your language codes:

1. Add the new Code to the PatLang Code File, setting the CMLS Lang Code to match the code you want to update.
2. Find all of the patrons with the original Code on their record, updating each of them to use the new Code instead.
3. Only delete the original Code from the PatLang Code File once it’s no longer associated with any
4. Repeat the process in the LangCode file, with the catalog records, making sure to maintain the CodeXref (MARC record mapping).

Or... better yet, have us do it.

Any time you need a language added to the list, or if you want to adjust the local codes in use for sorting the list, please send the details to Customer Support at , and we’ll take it from there.

Policy Changes are also not retroactive – About Bilingual Titles

While you’re thinking about all this, here’s one last thing to keep in mind:

In the past NLS issued MARC records for bilanguage titles with a combined code, such as E/S or S/E for books with both Spanish and English parts. That policy changed! According to NLS, these books are now given a language code reflecting the “primary” language of the title, even if one or more additional languages are included. For example, “Drivetime German” which is marked as E/G in a number of databases, is primarily in English (with some German) according to NLS. Meanwhile, “eTicket Ingles” is a Spanish title (which also has English).

New MARC records arrive cataloged this way. It’s up to you whether you want to update their records to reflect the bilingual nature of the titles, or want to update your back catalog to use the approach of cataloging the primary language.

For more information about this, or advice on how to apply changes in the direction of your choice please let us know!

Since 2018, we've made an annual post detailing our infrastructure and planning efforts to serve your library, your staff, and your patrons after a natural disaster, and share the additional improvements we've made in the last year to our Disaster Preparedness and Recovery plans. We've spent a significant amount of time building infrastructure, reviewing procedures, and planning for an untimely incident. For this year's post, we starting with our most recent upgrades and working backwards to our original September 2018 update.

2021 Updates & Improvements

To prepare for this year's post, we asked Lee what he felt were important updates or changes made in 2021, or for any other info he wants the KLAS Users' Community to know about our efforts. The two items he mentioned are:

1. The recovery process is the the same as before, but note that restoration of databases is sequential (per server), not parallel. So, while a one-hour recovery for a database at top of the queue is possible others at the bottom of the list will have a longer wait as the recovery process works through the list.
2. We have added weekly server snapshots to our AWS backup servers. For an end user, this makes no difference to restoration, but it makes Keystone staff's jobs infinitely easier.

2020 Updates & Improvements

Much of what we put into place as part of our disaster preparedness plan in 2020 is what allowed our staff to begin to work from home in March of that year and continue to do so even today and for the foreseeable future.

On September 1, 2020 posted a list disaster recovery and preparedness process and infrastructure improvements we'd make over the past year such as:

1. Cloud-based databases running in multiple regions, to better place the system geographically near the library
2. Incremental transaction data backups happen every 10 minutes
3. Database backups are saved in the local region, as well as to a separate region. If a database hosted on the east coast has a disaster, there is a copy of the database backup in another region.
4. Database backups are saved to the local server, as well as copied to S3 storage
5. Database backups are also copied from Amazon's data centers to Google Storage
6. A new automated system restoration process which had been manual prior to the beginning of 2020. As an automated process, it takes about an hour while the previous manual process took 10-12 hours at a minimum.

2019 Updates & Improvements

On August 15, 2019, we shared the news of some additional steps we'd taken to further enhance our disaster preparedness and recovery efforts including:

1. Back-end changes to KLAS 7.7 to it quicker and easier to create and store database back-ups
2. A move to storing back-ups in the cloud, so they are safe and retrievable no matter where disaster strikes
3. A new monitoring app so staff can be notified right away if something goes wrong with the servers and any emergencies can be dealt with as quickly as possible

2018 Updates & Improvements

Our September 11, 2018 our first Emergency Recovery & Disaster Preparedness Key Notes Blog post was written as we faced the threat of Hurricane Florence and shared details about we'd implemented at that point including a combination of both procedural and physical preparedness such as:

1. A gas-powered generator at our office
2. Redundant internet providers, firewalls, and network routers
3. Daily backups of data to our on-site servers
4. Weekly data backups stored offsite
5. Encrypted database backups on AWS S3
6. VOIP Telephone system to allow staff to work remotely
7. Keystone Status Page to communicate database availability, even if we’re unreachable
8. Contingency plans and equipment needed for remote database and customer support

As you may have heard, PIMMS recently added a large number of new Patron Language codes. This will be great for getting data and statistics on non-English-speaking patrons... but it also provides an opportunity for much better patron service!

Like many opportunities, though, there's a bit of challenge too. In KLAS, Patron Language (aka PatLang) is not like Subject or Author preferences. There is no Nightly Program that goes through, finds books in a patron’s preferred language or languages, and assigns them or adds them to a Service Queue. Instead, Language is one of the options for every other program to check against.

Most Libraries have Nightly set up so that Requests and Reserves ignore language, but Subject and Author have to match. This allows any patron to request a book in a language they don’t usually receive, but ensures that automatic selections will be in their preferred language (or languages).

This also means for patrons who speak a language other than English or Spanish, there will be few-to-no books available by AutoSelect. NLS is working to fill out the foreign language collection, but for now, Nightly will find few (if any) Mystery books for a patron speaking only Cantonese, and few (if any) Romances for a patron who only speaks Polish.

So how do you ensure that your Cantonese- and Polish- (and Everything Else)-speaking patrons get books?

First, they need to have the specific language(s) they speak on their profile. If they have a Patron Language of just “Other,” NLS won’t know what languages are most needed, and you won’t be able to match up that patron with any books in your catalog. That patron will only ever get Requests and Reserves (potentially including Series, depending on your Nightly configuration).

Second, you need to make sure they have a preference setup to find books matching their language. At this time, our recommendation is to have Subject headings for each of your Patron Languages other than English and Spanish.

This allow you to add the subject “Cantonese Books” to all titles in Cantonese and give your patron a preference for any/all of those books. This is much more efficient than needing to either give your patron preferences for every subject you might get a Cantonese title in or manually doing a book search and adding requests for the patron every time a new batch of Marrakesh titles are added.

Additionally, a patron with both English and Polish as Language preferences and both Romance and Polish Language Books as subject headings will receive a mix of Romance books in English and whatever's available in Polish. 

Hopefully the foreign language collection will eventually be large enough you can send foreign language titles by actual subject preferences. But, for now, this approach will ensure patrons get what you have. Plus, NLS will get the statistics on what languages are most needed, steering their collection development to the benefit of your patrons—a very win-win scenario.

Please let us know if you have questions, any time you need more Patron Language options added to your list, or if you need help setting up Subject headings for specific languages. 

We planned to offer our next KLAS New Features webinar on Thursday, August 19, but after learning NLS will be offering "Training for finding Marrakesh Treaty materials on BARD" that afternoon we chose to postpone rather than conflict. Then, we moved it to Thursday, August 26 only to learn of another NLS training as well as APH's EOT meeting to be held that afternoon. After consulting with the KLAS Users' Group Officers and Program Committee, we chose to reschedule a second time based on their feedback.

Therefore, the next KLAS New Features webinar will now be held at 3 PM EDT / Noon PDT on TUESDAY, August 24.

We were so excited with the attendance at the 2021 KLAS Users' Conference last month and wanted to make sure as many of y'all as possible join us for our upcoming live webinar, so here ya go! Below is all the relevant info. We hope you'll be able to join us!

SAVE THE DATE for our next KLAS New Features webinar!

Who: Any and Every KLAS User! We'll be covering the latest new features and functionality for our IRC, LBPD, and others. 

What: KLAS New Features Webinar

When: 3 PM Eastern / Noon Pacific Tuesday, August 24

Where: Keystone's Google Meet

Meeting link: https://meet.google.com/yhp-whfr-tyf
Dial-in for audio: +1 662-547-1247‬ PIN: ‪316 831 303‬#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/yhp-whfr-tyf?pin=2972669584815

If you have any questions you'd like us to answer, or other input please feel free to comment on this article, post on the discussion forums, or send us an email. To receive a calendar invite, please send an email to  Drea () with your request. This webinar will be recorded and posted to klasusers.com for later review. 

Let’s talk training!

We try to have lots of resources available for everyone, and of course our Customer Support team is always happy to answer questions, but we think the availability of online webinars and other training opportunities are also incredibly valuable. That’s especially true between conferences, as we are now on a biennial schedule.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what’s coming up, and what other opportunities are available for you.

Upcoming Webinar

Our next Keystone-presented Webinar is scheduled for Thursday, August 19^th at 3pm Eastern Time. I’ll be covering New Features released since the conference, so if you haven’t been keeping up with those Release Lists (or if you have questions about any of the new features) please make sure to join us!

As usual, if you can’t make it, the session will be recorded and posted here on KLASusers to view at your convenience as well. I’m always happy to take questions or requests ahead of time if there’s something specific you want me to address.

Possible Future Webinars

We plan to continue regular New Features webinars, but what else would you like to see in terms of Keystone-presented webinars?

We’re likely to do the occasional open Q&A Session and perhaps a dedicated Duplication Q&A. We’re also discussing a webinar series specifically for new users. Would these be valuable for you? What other topics would you benefit from the most?

Please let us know in the comments section or send us an email describing what you hope to see from us!  

Custom Webinars

Of course, while webinars open to the full Users’ Group have their advantages, sometimes you need something more specific for your staff or organization. Customer-specific webinars can get deeper into just your questions and provide answers and training tailored to your settings and workflow.

To support the transition to Duplication, we're offering Duplication Training webinars to each library as they get their duplication equipment. But, we also know one-hour likely isn't enough to learn everything you need to know. If you need a refresher or follow-up session, please let us know and we'll get something scheduled. 

Need something else? There's the option of arranging custom webinars or a webinar series on whatever topic you need--whether it's new staff training, review, or something in-between. This is a paid service, so let us know if you're interested and we'll send our current online training rates.

Other Training Options

Want to be sure you have regular training built in the budget? You can include a set number of Training Hours in your contract to be scheduled as needed during the year. This is a great option for libraries with a lot of turnover or special projects, or who have a harder time getting one-off expenses approved. 

Finally, with vaccinations widely available we can start offering In-person Training again. Like custom webinars, in-person training is flexible for your needs with the added benefit of introducing us to your space and helping us learn your workflows and systems a whole lot better. This is our preferred option for Assistive Technology Training since it allows us to set up the AT user's workstation and software in addition to talking them through using it. 

I hope this breakdown has helped you understand how Keystone can help you and your organizations keep up to speed! Please let us know what Webinar topics you'd like to see from us--and get in touch if you need a quote for something tailored to fit.

You've likely already seen a link to the 2021 KLAS Users' Conference Attendee Feedback Form created by the KLAS Users' Group Officers and Program and Logistics Committees. With this being such a different year, it's more important than ever for us to hear from you!

In addition to getting feedback from attendees, though, both Keystone staff and the committees have each gotten together to discuss their own observations about the conference. By digging into the conference's schedule and content, as well as the PheedLoop platform, we can make sure we learn from what went wrong and take note of where we got it right.

Today I want to share some of our notes from these conversations so you know what's been our minds. (Agree? Disagree? Have thoughts on something else entirely? Please let us know--starting with the Feedback Form!)

Schedule

No schedule will be perfect for everyone, but our discussions looking back on this trended positive. We managed to offer a lot of sessions, and time them reasonably for everyone, regardless of time zone. Other ideas were discussed, but on the whole, this schedule seemed to work well for an online conference, with one exception: the month of June can be a difficult time for IRC / IMC KLAS Users to attend. 

We also had split opinions on the strict enforcement of session times. On the one hand, it kept everyone on track and moving. On the other hand, it also resulted in some pretty abrupt cut-offs... as did ending sessions manually without accounting for the 10-second broadcast delay--sorry about that! 

Content

We were thrilled with the amount and variety of user-proposed and user-led sessions! The Keystone staff especially appreciate the effort made by the committees to recruit and involve more users throughout the conference. 

One complication we identified was that some sessions applied to more "tracks" or topics than we'd initially thought, and ended up scheduled against too-similar content. It's probably impossible to avoid schedule conflicts entirely, but one idea from our discussion was to provide a better way for the presenters themselves to identify the topics their session will cover and / or intersect with. 

Platform

While we were satisfied with the PheedLoop virtual event hosting, there was definitely plenty to discuss on this front. It was a little surprising which features generated a lot of interest, and which fell flat. We made sure to consider whether that was the platform itself, people taking time to learn it, or just a matter of leaving time for it. For example, the Networking rooms were barely touched. If we want to try them again, we need to make sure there's a designated session block instead of expecting people to give up their valuable breaks to try it (especially since many people need to use those breaks to keep up on their day-to-day work). 

We really liked a lot of their back-end and event management tools, but we have a long list of suggestions, feedback, and feature requests to pass on to the PheedLoop team. One strong positive: since signing on with PheedLoop, we've seen a lot of activity in terms of useful updates, so we're very hopeful that it will get better and better over time.

Final Thoughts

Virtual conferences have their pros and cons. Going online meant a lot of expanded access to new user presenters (plus other attendees) who may not have been able to attend otherwise. On the other hand, we saw mostly very familiar names, in the chat boxes and especially unmuting and speaking up in the Zoom sessions. It's impossible to replicate a lot of in-person conference experiences, but we wondered if we were doing enough to help new attendees get to know the Users' Group and feel comfortable participating.

Remember: this is your conference--so don't be afraid to let us and / or the committees know what we're doing right, what can get better, and what we haven't even thought of. We hope to hear from you!