Using Koha to manage equipment loans
We have several laptops, cameras and recording equipment that various members of staff use, take off site, etc. The current method of keeping track of them is inadequate, and I proposed that we use Koha for checking them in and out, placing holds, tracking use, etc; all functions Koha can do. We don't want the equipment to appear in the public catalogue, and I don't want non-library staff poking around in the nether regions of the library catalogue. But I also don't want the library staff to be burdened with keeping track of equipment that belongs to and is generally used by another department. I'd like to hear how other libraries have handled this. I am considering setting up another branch, just for equipment. Would it be easy to limit access to one branch but keep the main collection open for all? Or would I have to set up a completely different Koha installation? Our test site for instance is completely separate, limited to a couple of IP addresses, and the OPAC requires a login - something like that would work for equipment. -- Elaine Bradtke Data Wrangler VWML English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London NW1 7AY Tel +44 (0) 20 7485 2206 (This number is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London, England. If you wish to phone me personally, send an e-mail first. I work off site) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registered Company No. 297142 Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 305999 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" --Elvis Costello (Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52)
Elaine, you could setup a collection code that all the equipment is housed under, and then use the OpacHiddenItems sys pref to hide that collection code. That's a possible easy solution... You could also set up a separate branch and hide it from the public using the same sys pref. -Heather On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 1:12 PM Elaine Bradtke <eb@efdss.org> wrote:
We have several laptops, cameras and recording equipment that various members of staff use, take off site, etc. The current method of keeping track of them is inadequate, and I proposed that we use Koha for checking them in and out, placing holds, tracking use, etc; all functions Koha can do.
We don't want the equipment to appear in the public catalogue, and I don't want non-library staff poking around in the nether regions of the library catalogue. But I also don't want the library staff to be burdened with keeping track of equipment that belongs to and is generally used by another department.
I'd like to hear how other libraries have handled this.
I am considering setting up another branch, just for equipment. Would it be easy to limit access to one branch but keep the main collection open for all? Or would I have to set up a completely different Koha installation? Our test site for instance is completely separate, limited to a couple of IP addresses, and the OPAC requires a login - something like that would work for equipment.
-- Elaine Bradtke Data Wrangler VWML English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London NW1 7AY Tel +44 (0) 20 7485 2206 (This number is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London, England. If you wish to phone me personally, send an e-mail first. I work off site) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registered Company No. 297142 Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 305999 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" --Elvis Costello (Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52) _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
-- Heather Braum NExpress Coordinator Resource Sharing Librarian Northeast Kansas Library System hbraum@nekls.org "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." ~Alvin Toffler, *Rethinking the Future*
Thanks all, lots to think about, and some experimentation to be done. Since I'll be setting this up for the use of non-librarians, I'll have to keep it as straightforward as possible. But I'll see what the heads of departments have to say first before I spend a lot of time on it. On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 9:31 PM, Heather Braum (NEKLS) <hbraum@nekls.org> wrote:
Elaine, you could setup a collection code that all the equipment is housed under, and then use the OpacHiddenItems sys pref to hide that collection code. That's a possible easy solution... You could also set up a separate branch and hide it from the public using the same sys pref.
-Heather
On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 1:12 PM Elaine Bradtke <eb@efdss.org> wrote:
We have several laptops, cameras and recording equipment that various members of staff use, take off site, etc. The current method of keeping track of them is inadequate, and I proposed that we use Koha for checking them in and out, placing holds, tracking use, etc; all functions Koha can do.
We don't want the equipment to appear in the public catalogue, and I don't want non-library staff poking around in the nether regions of the library catalogue. But I also don't want the library staff to be burdened with keeping track of equipment that belongs to and is generally used by another department.
I'd like to hear how other libraries have handled this.
I am considering setting up another branch, just for equipment. Would it be easy to limit access to one branch but keep the main collection open for all? Or would I have to set up a completely different Koha installation? Our test site for instance is completely separate, limited to a couple of IP addresses, and the OPAC requires a login - something like that would work for equipment.
-- Elaine Bradtke Data Wrangler VWML English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London NW1 7AY Tel +44 (0) 20 7485 2206 (This number is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London, England. If you wish to phone me personally, send an e-mail first. I work off site) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registered Company No. 297142 Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 305999
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" --Elvis Costello (Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52) _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
-- Heather Braum NExpress Coordinator Resource Sharing Librarian Northeast Kansas Library System hbraum@nekls.org
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." ~Alvin Toffler, *Rethinking the Future*
-- Elaine Bradtke Data Wrangler VWML English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London NW1 7AY Tel +44 (0) 20 7485 2206 (This number is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London, England. If you wish to phone me personally, send an e-mail first. I work off site) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registered Company No. 297142 Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 305999 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" --Elvis Costello (Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52)
Hey Elaine, Elaine Bradtke <eb@efdss.org> writes:
We have several laptops, cameras and recording equipment that various members of staff use, take off site, etc. The current method of keeping track of them is inadequate, and I proposed that we use Koha for checking them in and out, placing holds, tracking use, etc; all functions Koha can do.
We don't want the equipment to appear in the public catalogue, and I don't want non-library staff poking around in the nether regions of the library catalogue. But I also don't want the library staff to be burdened with keeping track of equipment that belongs to and is generally used by another department.
I'd like to hear how other libraries have handled this.
At the BULAC, we lend laptops, ethernet cables (please don't ask why :)), headsets, remote controls to our patrons, for on-site use only. We put a specific itype for circulation rules : MATER (matériel informatique -> computer equipment). We have one record per equipment type (one for laptops, one for ethernet cables...). We don't want those equipments to appear in the OPAC. We use the OpacSuppression syspref. We defined a suppress index on field 942$n (we use UNIMARC, not sure about why this particular field, I'm not a libriarian :)) and all the MATER records have "1" in the 942$n field. No result in the OPAC, searchable in the intranet.
I am considering setting up another branch, just for equipment. Would it be easy to limit access to one branch but keep the main collection open for all? Or would I have to set up a completely different Koha installation? Our test site for instance is completely separate, limited to a couple of IP addresses, and the OPAC requires a login - something like that would work for equipment.
I'm sorry I can't answer this part, it's beyond our usage and I have no idea about it. Cheers, -- Nicolas Legrand Administration technique et développements du système de gestion de la bibliothèque Bibliothèque universitaire des langues et civilisations 65 rue des Grands Moulins F-75013 PARIS T +33 1 81 69 18 22 www.bulac.fr
We have some suppressed records already - mostly templates that I built for quick cataloguing of specific item types. My main concern though is granting access to the staff interface to non library staff. But if I'm really careful with the permissions It should be ok once we've got it set up. On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 10:36 AM, Nicolas Legrand <nicolas.legrand@bulac.fr> wrote:
Hey Elaine,
Elaine Bradtke <eb@efdss.org> writes:
We have several laptops, cameras and recording equipment that various members of staff use, take off site, etc. The current method of keeping track of them is inadequate, and I proposed that we use Koha for checking them in and out, placing holds, tracking use, etc; all functions Koha can do.
We don't want the equipment to appear in the public catalogue, and I don't want non-library staff poking around in the nether regions of the library catalogue. But I also don't want the library staff to be burdened with keeping track of equipment that belongs to and is generally used by another department.
I'd like to hear how other libraries have handled this.
At the BULAC, we lend laptops, ethernet cables (please don't ask why :)), headsets, remote controls to our patrons, for on-site use only.
We put a specific itype for circulation rules : MATER (matériel informatique -> computer equipment). We have one record per equipment type (one for laptops, one for ethernet cables...).
We don't want those equipments to appear in the OPAC. We use the OpacSuppression syspref. We defined a suppress index on field 942$n (we use UNIMARC, not sure about why this particular field, I'm not a libriarian :)) and all the MATER records have "1" in the 942$n field. No result in the OPAC, searchable in the intranet.
I am considering setting up another branch, just for equipment. Would it be easy to limit access to one branch but keep the main collection open for all? Or would I have to set up a completely different Koha installation? Our test site for instance is completely separate, limited to a couple of IP addresses, and the OPAC requires a login - something like that would work for equipment.
I'm sorry I can't answer this part, it's beyond our usage and I have no idea about it.
Cheers,
-- Nicolas Legrand
Administration technique et développements du système de gestion de la bibliothèque
Bibliothèque universitaire des langues et civilisations
65 rue des Grands Moulins F-75013 PARIS T +33 1 81 69 18 22 www.bulac.fr
-- Elaine Bradtke Data Wrangler VWML English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London NW1 7AY Tel +44 (0) 20 7485 2206 (This number is for the English Folk Dance and Song Society in London, England. If you wish to phone me personally, send an e-mail first. I work off site) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registered Company No. 297142 Charity Registered in England and Wales No. 305999 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" --Elvis Costello (Musician magazine No. 60 (October 1983), p. 52)
participants (3)
-
Elaine Bradtke -
Heather Braum (NEKLS) -
Nicolas Legrand