Hello Everyone,
A few notes for the week…..
Hours at Health Sciences Library
We have posted information about our closure on Sundays
effective May 1st.
Please pass along any client concerns or comments to Susan
or myself.
Best Wishes to our Student Assistants
Many thanks to our student assistants, Mary, Kathleen,
Jessica, Amy, Krystal, Jenna, Robin, and Anna, who have provided so much
service and work on countless projects over the fall and winter terms.
We couldn’t do it without you!
Congratulations on completion of another term, and very best
wishes with finals.
Summer Schedules
Our summer student scheduling will begin May 1st.
Evening student shifts will be 6:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. and
Saturday student shifts will be 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
ProQuest for Word and RefWorks
Glenn was in this week and updated the public computers in
the service area (including our back up workstation at the desk), with ProQuest for Word to support the new RefWorks
platform.
Bad Debt
We have received the following information from Lucille
Wallace at TFDL regarding “Bad Debt Client Accounts”
1.
Accounts that had been billed prior to
April 1, 2011 and were still outstanding as of June 2, 2014, were put through
SIRSI as a Bill Paid with the payment type Bad Debt; these payments were
processed from March 20-26, 2015. This initiative was set by LCR Accounts
to reduce the receivables showing as owed to LCR for the fiscal year end.
There were 800+ accounts cleared, $169,086.41 was cleared, have not yet
documented the number of books to be cleared off patron records. These
items will be cleared off once year end is complete, plan to start the week of
April 6th.
2.
The accounts that had been submitted as
either a Registrar’s Withhold or Collection Agency account will not have these
accounts released as paid; as far as the Registrar or Collection Agency know,
these accounts are still owing and need to be collected.
3.
The patron status will remain at or be set to
Barred; a Note will be on the patron record advising that the account was
written off but still needs to be collected. The amount written off and
any details for the number of books that were cleared off will be
included. Details for the fines can be found under the Bills tab on the
patron record, select Paid, should the patron query what they had been charged
for.
4.
Any books on the patron record will be
discharged, their item type set to Libonly, their location set to
Missing. I will be sending a list of those items belonging to branch
libraries to the appropriate branch so that you are aware of what has been cleared
off as a result of this account write off process.
5.
If a patron does settle their account due,
please advise Lucille Wallace via e-mail the paperwork required to advise the
Registrar or Collection Agency can be completed.
What this means is that there may be some client records
that show up as ‘barred’, that do not show any outstanding items in checkout or
bill screens since they have been cleared as bad debt. These clients
still have an account to be paid.
Staff are asked to keep an eye out for clients with a
‘barred’ status. All details of the account still owing should be listed
in the Extended Notes screen. If you accept payment, there would be no
‘fine payment’ action in Sirsi, but we would add a Note in the extended info
screen with amount paid, the record would be changed from ‘barred’ to ‘OK’ and
an email would need to be sent to Lucille Wallace with client and transaction
details.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
LibAnswers
We
are continuing to learn a bit more about norms for entering reference questions
into LibAnswers.It has been confirmed that transactions captured by other systems do not need to be entered in LibAnswers.
Answered By: If you are at the desk, logged in through our generic account staff are still asked to select their name form the drop down list when they enter a questions. Student assistants will leave the generic Health Sciences Library in the answered by field, but will add their initials to the notes box.
Questions form AHS clients: = Please use Community as client type, but add AHS to note field.
Pre-defined questions: Have you used the toggle switch to see the set of pre-defined questions and save yourself some typing? These includes questions such as: Money on card, or room booking and many more.
Clear fields: You can clear fields in two ways. One, click submit and clear, or, if you click submit then decide you would like to clear the fields, use the ‘clear fields’ option below the “boxes”
Any questions staff have come across that seem tricky to categorize?
Next week sessions
·
Ben King
Want to learn more about 3D
modelling for visualizing health research? Join us on
Monday, April 20,
2:30-3:30.
Room HSC G801E (Access through the
Bacs Centre)
·
Public Service meeting
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
2:00 – 3:00
HSC 1459
·
MLA Webcast: THE DIVERSITY OF DATA
MANAGEMENT: PRACTICAL APPROACHES FOR HEALTH SCIENCES LIBRARIANSHIP
12-1:30 in 1459
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
12:00 – 1:30
HSC 1459
TFDL Intern Visit
A MLIS intern Robyn Gray from Dalhousie University, who is
working in TFDL Collections for a few weeks, will be visiting Health Sciences
Library on Monday morning. I will try to introduce to staff who are available.
