RE: Auto updating daily delivery from in transit to hyphen

["William Gray" <wgray@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Jan,

If you have an item belonging at location A and it is returned at location B, is it possible to have the item checked in when it's scanned at A, then set in transit in the computer? We'd like to try this III option, but we're concerned about getting credited the statistics for items checked in, and in the current setup with items going into transit, we don't appear to get any credit for handling the items. How has your library handled statistics? I suppose our branches could just check items in in order to generate the statistic, but then items that are physically in-transit would appear to be available before they actually are...

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

William Gray
Library Technical Assistant
Greenwich Library



-----Original Message-----
From: Jan Sapp [mailto:Jan.Sapp@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2003 9:12 AM
To: IUG (E-mail)
Subject: FW: Auto updating daily delivery from in transit to hyphen



Michael,
I think my library was the first to ask III to turn this feature on after
loading Phase 2.  It would not work at first and took 4 phone calls to get
it functioning.
We have 2 locations.  The Clear In-Transit message is set to clear after 12
hours.  Innovative has to set the time for you.  As far as I know it is
across the board for all locations in your system.
There is an error log that needs to be looked at each day, but once you get
used to the different messages I think you will find that some of the
messages can be ignored. 
Items with holds do not get checked in automatically, they still have to be
checked in by staff.
We run a report every week or two that lists items over 4 days that still
show to be in transit.  We used to do this before the Clear In-Transit
message for the same reason we do it now--somehow, someway some items with
holds always miss getting checked in.  
Not checking items in from transit bags has saved a LOT of staff time.  Our
biggest fear was that we would see a large increase in the number of items
making it back to the shelves without being checked in, but this has not
happened.

Jan Sapp 
Carrollton Public Library 
Electronic Resources Coordinator 
972-466-3591 
jan.sapp@xxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jan.sapp@xxxxxxxxxx>  

 


 
-----Original Message-----
From: McClellan Jr., Michael C. [mailto:MMcClellan@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 5:17 PM
To: 'innopac@xxxxxxxxxx'
Cc: InnoCirc@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Auto updating daily delivery from in transit to hyphen


I would like to hear from any multi-branch systems using the option to have
the Innopac automatically update in transit status after a set period of
time.  An item belonging to agency a is returned to agency b.  Agency "a"
staff no longer have to check the item in from the daily delivery.  My staff
recoiled in horror when I explained how this works, primarily because of the
fear of an "automated" process and losing holds.  However a certain
percentage of material always gets back on the shelf still in transit and it
is incredibly time consuming to scan in the morning delivery.  

Can you have some libraries using it and others not or is it a system wide
setting?.  Can the time to change the status be adjusted onsite or is it a
help desk call?  I understand the system generates a report of material with
holds.  I assume this is because of the concern that something might go on
hold during the transit period from branch b back to a.  Can this be easily
worked into the workflow?  The savings of not checking in everything
balanced by having to look for specific items in a large number of delivery
boxes is a little hard to explain.  Can each branch print their own report?
Any insights would be appreciated.  We are examining everything due to
budget cuts.  We are also closing for a week in August and this would
greatly assist our post closing clean up.  We are already planning on global
updating out of transit but this might be easier.

Michael McClellan
Circulation Department Supervisor
Minneapolis Public Library
250 Marquette Ave
Minneapolis, MN  55401
612-630-6042


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