Access Services coordinator coordinating ‘Place Request’ and Call Slip problem resolution (September 2005) thank you for your help

How Can We Improve Service in OPAC Provide more / better information on the OPAC front-end Resolve Database (bibliographic) inconsistencies

Requests come in through OPAC

Selection Display In this case, there is only one BIB for the title (so the ‘selection screen’ is bypassed)

Place Requests for Library Materials ‘Request staff search or delivery’ is one of several wordings…..

This item is not available for Call Slip requests Other wordings include Call Slip, Eli Express, Paging, LSF Retrieval There is NO information about why the request could not be processed

The Place Request full screen as it appears to many readers The SEND button is placed before any guidance…

Place Requests come in via All PR s are sent (via filters) to a common inbox

Place Request Every must be looked at individually; there is no way – as of yet – to separate workflow

Place Request Response Typical response: reserves

PR Entry - Weekly Daily ‘tick’ sheet of Place Request causes

Monthly PR Excel Stats Daily tick sheet is accumulated into monthly spreadsheet (with comments)

PR Trend Graph Average = 169 per month over 28 months (Trend is upward with average of 194) High and low months are as one would expect

Fiscal Year Comparison Graph Fiscal year comparison validates numbers

Resolution Analysis Over approximately 20 months, categories of errors have been developed, tested and refined through daily testing ‘USER ERROR’ – enough information exists that the user could choose the correct option Is the information provided to the user? Is it clear? Is the correct choice encouraged? ‘modified’ responses are those that go beyond canned cut and pastes… July June 2007 StandardModifiedTotal USER ERROR SYSTEM LIABILITIES SYSTEM ERRORS PATRON REQUESTS82836 PATRON RESOLVED OTHER

Resolution Analysis ‘User Error’ = 69% ‘User Error’ is by far the greatest category of cause of Place Requests And it is the category that presumably can be most easily resolved (working with PIC) Remember: Place Request form indicates a failure in the request of some kind

Categories of User Error – Monthly Month to month analysis of ‘User Error’ shows the categories are consistent across months (with reserves not applicable July and August) ‘Recalls’ consistently account for approximately 15% of ALL Place Requests (or almost 20% including ‘in process’ recalls) Requests for Course Reserves account for 16% of ALL Place Requests (not including July & August)

Typical User Error – A&A A significant number of requests for A&A material have comments similar to this reader’s

System Liability System Liability: Not a User or Cataloging error; Voyager software may not be sophisticated enough to handle without manual intervention ‘Transit discharge’ items are in transit to owning library ‘On Hold’ items are on hold for a patron and cannot be recalled or held in the Public module Other includes ‘no items’, visitor recall of bindery item, insufficient ORBIS info, and overlaps at times into cataloging deficiencies

System Liability – Missing or Lost Items with status of ‘missing’ or ‘lost’ can only be handled manually We try to provide alternates wherever possible They are followed up with searches and replacement referrals

Bibliographic Problems The valid BIB does not have the item attached; the item was found with an old GEAC BIB using a keyword search

Search Form Lost, missing, split set items, items that have been in transit for a while, are placed on a search list Also, items that reveal questionable cataloging data, items ‘out on retrieval’ from LSF, purchase requests, and other items

Follow up - internal In addition to tracking individual requests with the patron, follow-up includes resolving cataloging confusion or errors (with the help of catalog.problems), consolidating split sets, ing departmental pseudo-patrons about recalled items, identifying need for additional reserves material, identifying high usage materials to transfer back to CCL, notifying other libraries of cataloging problems, and more. The item is part of a partially analyzed set (and had been mistakenly marked missing); search on the cover record reveals a ‘split set’

Current entry to Request Form There is no indication why the request could not be processed in ORBIS

Proposed Entry to Request Form Assumption 1: Users would prefer to receive their material as quickly as possible Assumption 2: In order to receive material more quickly, they will use the system as efficiently as they can

Current Request Menu Does not apply to all above Inconsistently framed

Proposed Request Menu (kinda’)

Call Slips By default, Call Slips that can not be fully validated are routed to the SML Call Slip Daemon

LSF Call Slips Reports Batch Incomplete Report (3 per day) Items Requested from LSF but Unavailable Report (3 per week) Also, Call Slips that can not be resolved in the LSF Call Slip Daemon are sent via two reports to Access Services Access Services removes the Call Slips from the LSF Daemon/s and prints them ‘Batch incomplete’ Call Slips do not have barcodes

Call Slip data collection

Call Slips Processed Graph Average = 158 per month

LSF v Non-LSF Call Slips 62% of Call Slips Processed are ‘failed’ LSF Call Slips

Major LSF Categories FY LSF109563% Drop Down Menu error60455% MFHD mismatch or split set17516% Out on ret or not on file878% Other lib626% Analytic v cover383% Other12912%

Enumeration / Drop Down Menu Error LSF can only process items via barcode; no barcode is provided if the patron neglects to use the ORBIS drop-down menu

Request Staff Search or Delivery - current -

Request Staff Search or Delivery - proposed - May add processing time ? Possibly disable when item loc = LSF? Using this area may increase response time (especially for LSF items) – please use the ‘select an item’ drop-down menu when possible

LSF – Not on File LSF ‘Not On File’ are items that are not accessioned in the LSF/GFA software; most often they are items within a split set where the MFHD location is LSF

Call Slip Categories Analysis ‘Drop-down menu’ reason accounts for 36% across all call slip ‘failures’ The next biggest categories are ‘split sets’ (13%), other LSF (19%), item-type mismatch (lsf location ‘flip’ failure – 8%), and requests for non-circulating material (7%).

Split set & item-type mismatch If there are discrepancies of any kind between item-type, item location and holdings location, the call slip request will require intervention

Bibliographic data errors In this case, the problem appears to be a split set but the BIB reveals it is a monograph…

SMLBAB Call Slip Failures Requests for Babylonian collection items account for 7% on average, with spikes of up to 20% The first item in the drop-down (and the default item when the drop-down is not used) is the non- circulating Babylonian copy. Even if the patron wanted to use the drop-down menu, there is no correspondence to the search results

Many of the items have no enumeration or chronology Holdings record indicates the volumes are published monthly, (and indicates we have the year 1992) but there is nothing that indicates how the reader can request this Additionally, the items that do have enumeration are not sequenced properly (so sequencing does not help resolve this request either) Enumeration / Chronology

Ambiguous Instruction

LSF Request for use at…? Not only is the wording ambiguous, not all restricted collections are represented And not only is the user frustrated, collections (such as AOB) are not able to offer the service they would like to

AOB request What does this instruct the patron to do? The collection is not represented on the drop-down ‘library location’ list

AOB, for example, would benefit by a direct link to their online request form AOB online request form

The investigation continues…. Patterns continue to emerge: Bindery, Carrel, Cover Records, non-circ charged items, ‘in-transit’ status, ‘in process’ inconsistencies…

How Can We Improve Service in OPAC Provide more / better information on the OPAC front-end Resolve Database (bibliographic) inconsistencies