8.3 - Notice Reports
Introduction:
Each member Library is responsible for their own patron
notice reports, including Hold, Overdue, Assumed Lost and User Announcement
reports.
Notices may be sent to patrons by post, email, or
SMS/phone message, according to the Library’s operational procedures, and the
text used in Notices may be customised for each Library.
8.3.1 - Scheduling Notices
Notice
reports must be scheduled in consultation with the Systems Administrator to
ensure they do not conflict with any other reports. If running a sequence of
email and printed Notices (and possible SMS if that service is used), care must
be taken to schedule the reports in the correct order, and to allow enough time
between each report so that they do not overlap. Notice reports should be scheduled in the following order:
- SMS Notices - to be run before midnight. Libraries have the option to run SMS Hold notices during the day to capture holds returned, but there should be at least one report run after the library closes to capture any remaining ones.
- Email Notices - to be run after midnight.
- Print notices - to be run early in the morning.
Note that SMS and Email notices will only be sent to users who have either SMS Contact Info or an email address configured in their records. Print notices, if run, are a backup, and will go out to any users who are left over, or if either the SMS Email reports failed to select the users or failed.
8.3.2 - Overdue Notice Guidelines
In order to facilitate the return of overdue items, and thus ensure equitable access to items across the consortium, the following minimum standards for the scheduling of Overdue Notices must be met:
Pre-Overdue Email Notices
Every
library should configure a “Pre-Overdue” email notice, to alert all patrons
with email addresses that their items are coming due. The minimum setting for
this would be for notices to be emailed at least three days before items are
due.
Where
used, pre-overdue notices greatly reduce the number of items that become
overdue.
1st Overdue Notice
An
initial overdue notice should be sent no later than 7 days after items are due.
Such a notice may be in any format, or combination of formats (Email, SMS,
Print or phone message(through an external vendor)). If only in one format (such as Email),
subsequent notices should cover all formats to ensure all users receive a
notice.
The
number and frequency of subsequent notices may be determined by the library
service. If only one notice is being sent, then every user should receive a
notice.
Assumed Lost Notice
An
Assumed Lost Notice/Invoice should be generated no later than 42 days after an
item is due. Libraries who wish to send email notices must still run the Assumed Lost report to generate the Lost bill and change the status of the items, but follow it up with an HTML Bill Notice to send the email detailing the Lost bills..
Items that have been made LOST, and are more than 3 years (36 months) overdue, will be further dealt with by a monthly Process Long Overdue Items report. These items will be discharged from the user record, set to DISCARD, and the user will be billed for the replacement cost of the item.
Debt Collection
If a
Library subscribes to the Unique Management Debt Collection service, patrons
with Assumed Lost items should be sent to Debt Collection no later than 21 days
after the Assumed Lost Notice has been sent.
Unresolved Claims Returned Reports
Items
that have been “Claimed Returned” by patrons remain on the patron’s card as an
inactive loan. It is the responsibility of every library to follow up on Claims
Returned items that were issued by them after a period of no later than 6
months.
Every
library should run at least one Unresolved Claims Returned report every month.
This may be done by using either the Assumed Lost or Process Long Overdue
reports, according to local requirements.
· If a Library intends to bill the user for the unresolved Claims Returned item, the Assumed Lost report
should be used. This report marks the item as LOST-ASSUM, retains it on the
user record as an inactive loan, and bills the user for the replacement cost of
the item. A notice/invoice is produced for the user.
· If the Library does not wish to bill the user for the unresolved Claims
Returned item, the Process Long Overdue report should be used. This report
discharges the item from the user record and assigns a Current Location of
MISSING to the item. A note is added to the user record detailing the missing
item.
In
either report, Claimed returned items should be selected if they have a Claims
Returned Date of no later than 6 months (generally 3 months), before the running of the report (i.e.
a date selection since the beginning of the system up to six months before the
report runs).
If any
of the items selected are intra-library loans, the owning library will be reimbursed for the cost of the item, in the annual Libraries Victoria invoicing.
8.3.3 - Notify Via Selection
User
Category 6 (Notify Via) is used to determine the notice delivery method by
which a patron receives Overdue and Hold notices. The following Category
policies are available for selection:
- EMAIL
- EMAIL-NSPM
- PHONE
- SMS
SMS Notices are via the Symphony SMS Notice report "Send Text Messages and Log Counts" (logsmsmessage). Users MUST have SMS Contact Information added to their account.
EMAIL-NSPM
(“Email, No Spam”) is an option available to patrons who wish to receive email
notices, but want to be excluded from any broadcast email announcement messages
which libraries may send out from time to time.
PHONE notices may be run and either sent by a third party service such as DirectComms, or the user contacted manually by staff, according to the Library's preferences/protocols.
Patrons
who have NO User Category 6 policy will default to receiving notices by
traditional post.
Each
Library Service is required to schedule a separate Notice report for each
delivery method, selecting patrons based on the appropriate User Category 6. In
general, notice reports will be scheduled in the following sequence:
1 - SMS Notices - The Symphony SMS reports must be scheduled prior to midnight the evening BEFORE the other notices run. Libraries may opt to run Hold SMS reports two or three times during the day to alert users of holds as they become available.
2 - Email Notices
3 - Phone Notices
4 - Postal Notices
8.3.4 - User Selection in Notice
Reports
To
ensure all users receive notices for holds and overdue items, a consistent
approach must be taken by all participating Shared Services public libraries
when configuring notice report selections.
· Hold notices will be sent by the library where the Hold is available for
pickup.
· Overdue, Assumed Lost, Bill and Debt Collection notices will be sent by
the library where the items were borrowed and where the bill is owed.
To do
this, each Library service will use the following selections for their reports:
Hold Reports
Hold
Selection –
Pickup Library
Date Available
Number of Notices = 0
User
Selection –
User Profile - BLANK (or exclude specified
Profiles)
Overdue/Assumed Lost Notices
Charge Selection –
Charge Library
Date Due
Number of Notices (as required)
Date Claims Returned (NEVER)
User
Selection –
User Profile – BLANK (or exclude specified
Profiles, according to policy)
Bill Reports
Bill
Selection –
Bill Library
Number of Notices (as required)
User
Selection –
User Profile - BLANK (or exclude specified
Profiles)