Weekly Update – November 22, 2011

Welcome Newton County Public Library!

Newton County Public Library successfully migrated to Evergreen Indiana on Tuesday, November 22, 2011. Please join me in welcoming them!

Serving a population of 9,243, Newton County Public Library has three branches: Lake Village Memorial Township Library (Main branch, Lake Village, IN), Morocco Community Library (Morocco, IN), Roselawn Library (Roselawn, IN).

Evergreen Indiana now serves a population of 862,333 and includes 96 libraries (93 public libraries, 2 school libraries and 1 special library).

Circulation enhancements to the software in 2.1

• Transfer selected holds to a different title: It is now possible to select multiple holds on a given title and transfer them to a different title. Example: Your library acquires another copy of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, but as it is a new edition it must be cataloged as a new bibliographic record; however, you would like to spread out some of the holds queue from your current edition to the new edition.

• Mark patron as exempt from billing collections.

• Hold-driven recalls: It is now possible to define a loan period threshold (such as 60 days) so that if a hold is placed on an item with a loan period beyond that threshold, the system will automatically shorten the loan period to a specified value; change the fine rules; and send email notification to the person who currently has the item checked-out saying “A hold has been placed on this item, get it back before “.

• Grace periods are now stored in the database and set via circulation rules, rather than passed into the fine generation code, and can thus differ between different rules. They are also no longer based on a number of fine intervals, but are instead defined by their own specific interval. This can eliminate problems with closed date interpretation during grace periods.