Author: Elizabeth Thomsen

Upcoming Training and Upgrade Sessions in November and December

Evergreen, Training

Training sessions in November and December:
(Online via Zoom)

November 19, 2 – 3 PM: List Maker: Making Bookbags of Selected Titles
Learn to use the List Maker to create a list of titles in the bookbag format, which you can share with patrons to make it easy for them to select titles, see what’s available, and place holds. This is a great way to create a list that matches titles from a book display, award list titles, staff picks, or titles related to any season, event or theme.    Here’s an example of the bookbag format: Snowy Days
Registration

November 21, 10 – 11 AM: Meet Me at the Corner of Cat and Circ
How does the system decide how much to bill a patron for lost material?  Why do we get so many alerts at the circ desk (or why don’t we get more?)  What does Age Hold Protection mean, and how is it set up?  What happens to missing and lost items — do they stay in the system forever?  How do parts work?  This session reviews how library loan rules work, and which elements of cataloging affect how circulation works.  It is aimed at both circulation and cataloging staff (especially the designated representatives) and administrators.
Registration

December 3, 10 – 11 AM: Making Most Popular Books Lists
Learn how to use circulation data to create lists of the books, DVDs, etc., that circulated the most for your library, in the past year (or any time period.) These can be as general as adult fiction, as specific as cookbooks or can be lists of the most popular authors based on the checkouts of their titles. 
Registration

December 5, 10 – 11 AM: Gemini AI: Hands-On Workshop
Gemini AI is Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot, available to everyone with a Google Workspace account at https://gemini.google.com. In this session, you’ll learn how Gemini (and other AI chatbots) “think” and what kind of tasks they can do as we work together through guided exercises and sharing screens.
Registration

Evergreen Upgrade Sessions:
(Online via Zoom)

NOBLE is upgrading to Evergreen 3.13 on Sunday, January 5. In these upgrade sessions, NOBLE staff will share the details of the downtime and provide an overview of new features to expect in the next release. Please bring along any questions you may have about the upcoming upgrade.
(Online via Zoom)

December 11, 10 -11 AM: Registration
December 17, 2 – 3 PM: Registration

Summer Training Schedule

Training

We have several training sessions coming up this summer on Evergreen, List Maker, Google Workspace and OverDrive. All are online via Zoom, will be recorded and will be repeated in the fall.

You can see the full list, divided by topic and with registration links, on this document:
NOBLE Training Schedule

If you prefer a chronological view, you can see the training sessions as well as other meetings and events on the Staff Information System Calendar

Libby Enhancements to Magazines

Libby, Overdrive

It’s now easier than ever to find, read and manage magazines in Libby. Now you can find a magazine, open it, browse through the pages and start reading without checking it out. When you close the magazine, you’ll have the option to subscribe and have the latest issue automatically appear in the new Magazine Rack view under Shelf.

Here’s a good introduction to the new magazine options aimed at patrons:
A New Way to Enjoy Magazines in the Libby App

And here’s the updated Libby Help section on Magazines with answers to frequently (and not-so-frequently) asked questions: Libby Help: Reading Magazines

New Monthly List of Scheduled Reports

List Maker

The new monthly report of scheduled reports ran at 4 PM today, and will continue to run on the 10th of every month.  The email message has the subject Scheduled List Maker Report Check and it lists every scheduled report that has your email address. 

The email message has the report name followed by a unique link.  Clicking on this link take you right to the information about the report with two options: Turn Off Report and Edit This Report.  


Choose Turn Off Report if you no longer need the report, or just want to stop it from running for a while, 

Choose Edit This Report if you want to make a change, for example, adding or removing shelving locations, adding a column, etc. 

Once you’ve edited the report, you have two Save options: Update Scheduled Report and Schedule New Report. Using Schedule New Report lets you clone one report as the basis for another.  For example, you may have worked out a perfect report of some kind for adult nonfiction, and you want the exact same report for adult fiction.

One immediate reason to edit some of your scheduled reports is to opt out of the daily emails.  This is a new option, just for daily bucket/bookbag reports.  Just click on the report link, click on Edit Scheduled Report, scroll down to the email address, check the opt-out box, and click Update Scheduled Report.

Please let me know if you have questions!

New Libby Feature: Deep Searching

Overdrive

OverDrive has added a great new feature called Deep Searching that automatically kicks in when a patron searches our collections for a book we don’t own. Instead of just telling the patron there are no hits, it does the following:

  • Title Owned by Another System: If the patron has multiple libraries (consortia) associated with their account in Libby, Deep Search checks to see if any of the patron’s other sites has copies of the title. If one or more of the other sites has a copy available, the Borrow option will display and when the patron can borrow from any of the any site that has it available: CW MARS, for example.
  • Title Not Owned by Another System: If the title is not owned by any of the patron’s libraries, Deep Search checks to see if it matches a title available through OverDrive. If it does, it gives the patron the Notify Me option. This adds a smart tag to the title and if the title is added by one of the patron’s systems, they will be notified.

OverDrive administrators can see a list of the titles with Notify tags added by their patrons for possible Advantage purchases in the new Patron Interests Manager in OverDrive MarketPlace. This can be automated and customized for different selectors — for example, you can set up a plan to automatically create a report or cart for all Adult Fiction and Adult Nonfiction titles that have at least 4 Notify tags from Beverly patrons, with all sorts of combinations of limiters.
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