Online Ecard Registration Now Live

Online ecard registration is now live. This week NOBLE launched online ecards using a service from The Quipu Group. The ecard service provides a form to collect relevant registration information, verifies eligibility, checks Evergreen for duplicates, and immediately creates an active patron record upon successful validation. No staff intervention is required.

Ecards provide access to electronic materials and allow placing holds in Evergreen. Patrons can upgrade their card to checkout physical materials by visiting a library and presenting a photo ID to library staff. The Quipu service searches public data to verify that the patron’s last name is associated with the provided address. Business addresses will not work. Patrons will be assigned a home library based on their address and a confirmation screen and email will identify the home library. Duplicate checking will prevent patrons from signing up for multiple cards. Addresses in Massachusetts will be permitted but addresses outside Massachusetts will result in an error.

The library card is active immediately and good for 3 years. Patrons with a valid address but whose name cannot be matched to the address will be issued a provisional card good for 2 weeks. The ecard service emails patrons a welcome message that will include their newly assigned barcode number and a link to the home library’s website. Barcode numbers begin with a 5 and include the home library’s unique prefix.

A link to the form can be placed on library websites to promote the service: https://evergreen.noblenet.org/eg/opac/ecard/form

More details are available on the Ecard Page

Libby Enhancements to Magazines

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

Hello NOBLE Libraries

As I settle into my first day at NOBLE, I just want to say hello to everyone in the network and provide a brief introduction for those who have not yet had a chance to meet me.

Kathy Lussier photoMy name is Kathy Lussier, and I come to NOBLE as its new Executive Director having worked with member-driven library organizations for more than 20 years. Many of you may know me from the years I led the Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative (MassLNC), a project where I worked with NOBLE and other Massachusetts networks to move to Evergreen. After the three participating networks were live on Evergreen in May 2012, I continued to work with these networks to coordinate shared development projects, help network staff with their Evergreen implementations, and advocate on behalf of Massachusetts libraries in the larger Evergreen community.

Since leaving MassLNC in December 2018, I have worked as Executive Director for the SAILS library network in the South Coast area of Massachusetts. As much as I enjoyed supporting SAILS libraries as they supported the needs of their library users, I am thrilled to return to working with NOBLE libraries again.

I consider it a privilege to be in a position where I can go into work everyday to support libraries and help them provide new and innovative services to their users. I strongly believe in the mission of libraries to build information literacy skills at a time when the information landscape has become so complex, to provide equal access to information regardless of a person’s means, and to stand up for the intellectual freedom and privacy of all users. I am also an advocate for open-source software as a means to respond to the growing expectation of users while maintaining the fundamental values of the library profession.

When I’m not working, I live in Seekonk with my husband, Paul; my two adult children, William and Emily; and my cat, Q-Tip (named for the small bit of white on the tip of the tail of this otherwise black cat). I enjoy hiking, biking and baking. Now that my youngest has graduated from high school, we plan to move further north, most likely to a NOBLE community.

Over the coming months, I plan to visit the NOBLE libraries to become acquainted with everyone working in my new library community. I look forward to meeting all of you and working to support your libraries!

 

New Monthly List of Scheduled Reports

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 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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