2 Different Issues: Patron Card Number / Library of Congress Call Numbers
Hi, All! I deeply apologize for the length of this message... Here at Northern Marianas College (NMC), we are still currently using *Koha version 3.14.11.000* (*definitely* time for an upgrade, I know; we are aiming to do so within the next few months). Meanwhile, I now have two (2) separate Koha issues with which I need your advice / assistance. I'll try to describe each one as succinctly as possible; here we go: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Patron Card Number: In the past, when creating a new patron profile for non-students (i.e., Faculty, Staff, and/or Public Community Members), the "Card Number" field in the patron record has always been auto-generated (with a lengthy number) for us. In our case, we get something like "2132132132132198" -- easy enough. Yesterday, however, that card number (2132132132132198), or possibly the one generated after it -- 2132132132132199 -- seems to have been the very last number (i.e., non-student profile) that we are able to produce, at the moment. After successfully creating the "2132132132132198" for this person (one of our brand-new Library staff members), we tried creating another profile for our *other* brand-new Library staff member; his Card Number was auto-generated as 21321321321321*99,* but...it never took. No matter how many times we tried to create his new profile with this auto-generated number, we simply kept getting the same resulting message after clicking "Save": "This patron does not exist." Finally, I tried manually editing the number by one digit, changing the second digit ("1") to "2" (thus, making the Card Number 2*2*32132132132199); this WORKED. Still, we faced the exact same issue today when trying to create a profile for a new public community member / patron, and even replacing digits doesn't seem to help, at this point. I am sure this has *something* to do with the *16-digit character limit*, and I've been doing some reading in the message boards re: card number field length here <https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=13178>, but I'm not sure whether or not I've found "the answer" to provide to our IT Department (who are graciously working to help me solve this problem, on the back-end). Koha was established and installed as our ILS by my predecessors (who are no longer here), so I don't know where this semi-obnoxious pattern of "213213213213..." came from, but I assume it was an arbitrary decision they made during set-up. I'd like to "re-set" this somehow (if possible), but I'm willing to do just about anything to resolve the issue, according to your recommendations. Can you help? 2. Library of Congress Call Numbers: Stranger still in our current "Koha crisis" is the fact that the Library of Congress Call Numbers (LCCN) are not currently visible in our OPAC (the front end) *or* the back end of our ILS. In both our OPAC and our administrative back end, Call Numbers are not present (as they once were) in the "Normal view" of our catalog records; they *are* still there in the "MARC view" and "ISBD view," but our users don't know to look there. This is a crucial issue that we need to resolve as soon as possible... I should mention that this issue could *potentially* be a result of the changes to our campus infrastructure: In late October 2018, Super Typhoon Yutu -- a category 5(+) storm -- struck and devastated the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Our College suffered extensive damage, campus-wide, and the technical / technological infrastructure of our institution has largely had to be rebuilt completely, piece by piece. With that said, many re-connections, re-configurations, and other changes (re-wirings, "switch-arounds," "switch-backs," etc.) have occurred under IT in the process of recovery. Our Library's server, which powers Koha, just came back up and "on" a few weeks ago, and there have been myriad changes / adjustments to it as well as to the Library's network(s), which may be triggering this obscurity of data in Koha (i.e., item location / Library of Congress Call Numbers, in this case). Thoughts? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any advice, suggestions, and/or specific resources you can offer would be tremendously appreciated. I will be sharing ALL relevant information with our IT Department... Thanks, Koha Fam! Sincerely, Sam Crawford --------------------------------------------------------- *Samuel Judson Crawford*, M.M., M.L.I.S. Academic Librarian / Interim Director of Library Programs and Services Northern Marianas College P. O. Box 501250 Saipan, MP 96950 Phone | 670.237.6798 Fax | 670.234.0759 samuel.crawford@marianas.edu -- Start Smart. Start at NMC. Visit the Northern Marianas College website at www.marianas.edu. <http://www.marianas.edu> This message and any attachments may contain proprietary and, or confidential information. Any review, reliance or distribution by others or forwarding without express permission is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and destroy all copies.
Hi Sam, 1. Patron cardnumbers. That's a unique problem. My suggestion to you would involve resetting all the patron cardnumbers. If your cardnumbers are arbitrary and not printed on cards or used by patrons to login, then you can reset these cardnumbers. I would set the cardnumber to the borrowernumber for each patron. Then set your autonumber system preference to 1. They system will then generate cardnumbers and increment them from a much smaller number (unless your borrower table auto_increment value is sky high). update borrowers set cardnumber=borrowernumber 2. Loc callnumbers. Where are you storing the LC callnumbers? In the item record 952o or in the bib record 050ab If they were in the item record, they would be in the items table, and if they are not displaying, I would suspect data corruption of some sort. If they are in the bib record, you may have had some custom xslt set up that was specifically displaying the tags you used to store the callnumber in the bibliographic record. Have IT look for some xslt files. You may have a clue in the system preferences OPACXSLTDetailsDisplay and XSLTDetailsDisplay. These may display a file name or path to file to assist in your search. -Joy On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 2:22 AM Samuel Crawford < samuel.crawford@marianas.edu> wrote:
Hi, All!
I deeply apologize for the length of this message...
Here at Northern Marianas College (NMC), we are still currently using *Koha version 3.14.11.000* (*definitely* time for an upgrade, I know; we are aiming to do so within the next few months). Meanwhile, I now have two (2) separate Koha issues with which I need your advice / assistance. I'll try to describe each one as succinctly as possible; here we go:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Patron Card Number: In the past, when creating a new patron profile for non-students (i.e., Faculty, Staff, and/or Public Community Members), the "Card Number" field in the patron record has always been auto-generated (with a lengthy number) for us. In our case, we get something like "2132132132132198" -- easy enough. Yesterday, however, that card number (2132132132132198), or possibly the one generated after it -- 2132132132132199 -- seems to have been the very last number (i.e., non-student profile) that we are able to produce, at the moment. After successfully creating the "2132132132132198" for this person (one of our brand-new Library staff members), we tried creating another profile for our *other* brand-new Library staff member; his Card Number was auto-generated as 21321321321321*99,* but...it never took. No matter how many times we tried to create his new profile with this auto-generated number, we simply kept getting the same resulting message after clicking "Save": "This patron does not exist."
Finally, I tried manually editing the number by one digit, changing the second digit ("1") to "2" (thus, making the Card Number 2*2*32132132132199); this WORKED.
Still, we faced the exact same issue today when trying to create a profile for a new public community member / patron, and even replacing digits doesn't seem to help, at this point.
I am sure this has *something* to do with the *16-digit character limit*, and I've been doing some reading in the message boards re: card number field length here <https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=13178>, but I'm not sure whether or not I've found "the answer" to provide to our IT Department (who are graciously working to help me solve this problem, on the back-end).
Koha was established and installed as our ILS by my predecessors (who are no longer here), so I don't know where this semi-obnoxious pattern of "213213213213..." came from, but I assume it was an arbitrary decision they made during set-up. I'd like to "re-set" this somehow (if possible), but I'm willing to do just about anything to resolve the issue, according to your recommendations.
Can you help?
2. Library of Congress Call Numbers: Stranger still in our current "Koha crisis" is the fact that the Library of Congress Call Numbers (LCCN) are not currently visible in our OPAC (the front end) *or* the back end of our ILS. In both our OPAC and our administrative back end, Call Numbers are not present (as they once were) in the "Normal view" of our catalog records; they *are* still there in the "MARC view" and "ISBD view," but our users don't know to look there. This is a crucial issue that we need to resolve as soon as possible...
I should mention that this issue could *potentially* be a result of the changes to our campus infrastructure: In late October 2018, Super Typhoon Yutu -- a category 5(+) storm -- struck and devastated the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Our College suffered extensive damage, campus-wide, and the technical / technological infrastructure of our institution has largely had to be rebuilt completely, piece by piece. With that said, many re-connections, re-configurations, and other changes (re-wirings, "switch-arounds," "switch-backs," etc.) have occurred under IT in the process of recovery. Our Library's server, which powers Koha, just came back up and "on" a few weeks ago, and there have been myriad changes / adjustments to it as well as to the Library's network(s), which may be triggering this obscurity of data in Koha (i.e., item location / Library of Congress Call Numbers, in this case).
Thoughts?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any advice, suggestions, and/or specific resources you can offer would be tremendously appreciated. I will be sharing ALL relevant information with our IT Department...
Thanks, Koha Fam!
Sincerely,
Sam Crawford
--------------------------------------------------------- *Samuel Judson Crawford*, M.M., M.L.I.S. Academic Librarian / Interim Director of Library Programs and Services Northern Marianas College P. O. Box 501250 Saipan, MP 96950 Phone | 670.237.6798 Fax | 670.234.0759 samuel.crawford@marianas.edu
-- Start Smart. Start at NMC. Visit the Northern Marianas College website at www.marianas.edu. <http://www.marianas.edu>
This message and any attachments may contain proprietary and, or confidential information. Any review, reliance or distribution by others or forwarding without express permission is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and destroy all copies. _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
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participants (2)
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Joy Nelson -
Samuel Crawford