Best practice for registering pupils in a school library?
Dear Community, Here comes a non-technical question! I have some customers who are school libraries, and I'm wonder what is the best way to register pupils as patrons. I'm thinking sometimes it will be interesting to be able to group them by the year they are in (1. year, 2. year etc), and sometimes it will be interesting to group them by the class they are in (in Norway these will typically be called 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B etc). I'm also thinking that during summer it will be useful to batch delete all the pupils who left at the end of the spring semester. And of course, every summer all the pupils who have not left will have to be shifted up one class. So maybe it's better to avoid the classes alltogether and use the year they enrolled for something? One of the libraries in question has created patron categories based on class, so they have patron types called 1A, 1B etc - I'm not sure what they plan to do when everyone gets shifted up one class at the end of the spring semester... ;-) So again: How are y'all registering pupils in Koha? Best regards, Magnus Enger libriotech.no
I register students with planned graduation date. This makes it easy to move the student out the year of graduation. Darla Darla Grediagin District Librarian Bering Strait School District Unalakleet, Alaska Web Address : http://bssdonline.org/course/view.php?id=51 Blog: http://aklibrarian1.edublogs.org/ OPAC: http://opac.bssd.org:8282 On 10/5/11 11:11 AM, Magnus Enger wrote:
Dear Community,
Here comes a non-technical question!
I have some customers who are school libraries, and I'm wonder what is the best way to register pupils as patrons.
I'm thinking sometimes it will be interesting to be able to group them by the year they are in (1. year, 2. year etc), and sometimes it will be interesting to group them by the class they are in (in Norway these will typically be called 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B etc).
I'm also thinking that during summer it will be useful to batch delete all the pupils who left at the end of the spring semester.
And of course, every summer all the pupils who have not left will have to be shifted up one class. So maybe it's better to avoid the classes alltogether and use the year they enrolled for something?
One of the libraries in question has created patron categories based on class, so they have patron types called 1A, 1B etc - I'm not sure what they plan to do when everyone gets shifted up one class at the end of the spring semester... ;-)
So again: How are y'all registering pupils in Koha?
Best regards, Magnus Enger libriotech.no _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
On 5 October 2011 21:29, Darla Grediagin <dgrediagin@bssd.org> wrote:
I register students with planned graduation date. This makes it easy to move the student out the year of graduation.
Thanks for a quick reply! Funny thing: I got a direct reply with almost exactly the same answer too! ;-) Sorry for being slow, but how do you register the graduation date? Which field? Do you use extended patron attributes? Best regards, Magnus Enger libriotech.no
Le 05/10/2011 21:39, Magnus Enger a écrit :
On 5 October 2011 21:29, Darla Grediagin <dgrediagin@bssd.org> wrote:
I register students with planned graduation date. This makes it easy to move the student out the year of graduation.
Thanks for a quick reply! Funny thing: I got a direct reply with almost exactly the same answer too! ;-)
Sorry for being slow, but how do you register the graduation date? Which field? Do you use extended patron attributes?
For what it is worth, you could use categorycode to separate students from teachers and professionals, and sort1/sort2 or an extended attribute to store the year. All you would have to do afterwards is a script to bulkupdate that value based on a hash (defined for instance in a YAML file) that you would cron. Hope that helps. -- Henri-Damien LAURENT
At our school, I've set the category code of each patron type to the year of their graduation and the category name to the name of the year they are in. For example, Year 11 (the year of graduation here) has a category code of '2012' and and description of 'Year 11'. At the beginning of the year, we increment the description by one year. In the past, I've done this manually, but I'll probably set it up as a cron soon. Category codes that are less than the current year can be purged in bulk as necessary (also cron-able). At our school, students keep their same form tutor for throughout their years, so I store the intials of their form tutor in the 'sort1' field of their patron records, as forms here are designated by these initials. Obviously, if their form tutor leaves, I have to update this field via MySQL. I use sort2 to store their 'house', as all forms are divided into four different 'houses', so it's useful to be able to run reports on which houses are our top library users (for inter-house competitions, etc.) Naturally, from this it's probably obvious that whatever method gets the job done within the framework of your school is the 'best practise'. Even within my city, these frameworks vary widely... Emrys ________________________________ From: koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz on behalf of Magnus Enger Sent: Wed 05/10/2011 20:11 To: Koha list Subject: [Koha] Best practice for registering pupils in a school library? Dear Community, Here comes a non-technical question! I have some customers who are school libraries, and I'm wonder what is the best way to register pupils as patrons. I'm thinking sometimes it will be interesting to be able to group them by the year they are in (1. year, 2. year etc), and sometimes it will be interesting to group them by the class they are in (in Norway these will typically be called 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B etc). I'm also thinking that during summer it will be useful to batch delete all the pupils who left at the end of the spring semester. And of course, every summer all the pupils who have not left will have to be shifted up one class. So maybe it's better to avoid the classes alltogether and use the year they enrolled for something? One of the libraries in question has created patron categories based on class, so they have patron types called 1A, 1B etc - I'm not sure what they plan to do when everyone gets shifted up one class at the end of the spring semester... ;-) So again: How are y'all registering pupils in Koha? Best regards, Magnus Enger libriotech.no _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org <http://koha-community.org/> Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
Hi Marcus, We've got a number of schools in our shared Koha system. We started using Koha before extended patron attributes were available, so we steered our libraries to using the sort 1 and sort 2 fields of the patron record. We actually format and load the patron records on behalf of our library staff (we don't really like to let them muck around the system). We encourage the libraries to use the year of graduation rather than the grade level. Using grade level requires changing the records every year -- this isn't a huge problem, but it just means more work and more maintenance of the record. We use sort field 1 for year of graduation and sort field 2 for home room number or advisor name or whatever other information the schools deem pertinent. We have the sort fields display on overdue notices so the librarians can compile them and hand them out and we use the sort fields for reports of all kinds. We thought about using different patron types for each grade level but have shied away from doing that so far. It seems messy. We have talked with some elementary schools who like to control circulation by grade level -- so Grade 1 kids can take 1 book out for 1 week, Grade 2 kids can take 3 books our for 2 weeks, Grade 3 kids can take 5 books out for 2 weeks, etc. If any of these elementary schools end up joining our group and we cannot convince them to give up on the intensity of their circulation policies, then we probably will create patron types by grade level so they can control the heck out of their circulation. I hope this helps. Nora ________________________ Nora Blake MassCat Manager Massachusetts Library System P.O. Box 609 South Deerfield, MA 01373-0241 508-357-2121 x123 866-627-7228 Email: nblake@masslibsystem.org AIM: noraatmls -----Original Message----- From: koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Magnus Enger Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 3:12 PM To: Koha list Subject: [Koha] Best practice for registering pupils in a school library? Dear Community, Here comes a non-technical question! I have some customers who are school libraries, and I'm wonder what is the best way to register pupils as patrons. I'm thinking sometimes it will be interesting to be able to group them by the year they are in (1. year, 2. year etc), and sometimes it will be interesting to group them by the class they are in (in Norway these will typically be called 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B etc). I'm also thinking that during summer it will be useful to batch delete all the pupils who left at the end of the spring semester. And of course, every summer all the pupils who have not left will have to be shifted up one class. So maybe it's better to avoid the classes alltogether and use the year they enrolled for something? One of the libraries in question has created patron categories based on class, so they have patron types called 1A, 1B etc - I'm not sure what they plan to do when everyone gets shifted up one class at the end of the spring semester... ;-) So again: How are y'all registering pupils in Koha? Best regards, Magnus Enger libriotech.no _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
Hi Again Marcus, I forgot to address the piece about deleting the student records in batches. That's an issue that makes the staff at our school libraries twitch since they feel a strong need to make the records for graduated students go away as soon as possible. We sponsored development to allow for searching on portions of a patron file, creating a list of records based on criteria (like the presence of '2009' in the sort1 field) and then doing something to the list of patron records in a batch. Unfortunately for us, we sponsored this development when we were customers of LibLime and the resulting code is not very viable for use with Koha. Now that we have switched away from LibLime and are using the community-coded and sponsored version of Koha we will almost definitely look at a similar development project. Nothing like paying for something twice! If anyone is interested in partnering with us on a development project for maintaining patron records in batches, please get in touch with me. We'd love to share! Nora ________________________ Nora Blake MassCat Manager Massachusetts Library System P.O. Box 609 South Deerfield, MA 01373-0241 508-357-2121 x123 866-627-7228 Email: nblake@masslibsystem.org AIM: noraatmls -----Original Message----- From: koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Magnus Enger Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 3:12 PM To: Koha list Subject: [Koha] Best practice for registering pupils in a school library? Dear Community, Here comes a non-technical question! I have some customers who are school libraries, and I'm wonder what is the best way to register pupils as patrons. I'm thinking sometimes it will be interesting to be able to group them by the year they are in (1. year, 2. year etc), and sometimes it will be interesting to group them by the class they are in (in Norway these will typically be called 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B etc). I'm also thinking that during summer it will be useful to batch delete all the pupils who left at the end of the spring semester. And of course, every summer all the pupils who have not left will have to be shifted up one class. So maybe it's better to avoid the classes alltogether and use the year they enrolled for something? One of the libraries in question has created patron categories based on class, so they have patron types called 1A, 1B etc - I'm not sure what they plan to do when everyone gets shifted up one class at the end of the spring semester... ;-) So again: How are y'all registering pupils in Koha? Best regards, Magnus Enger libriotech.no _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
participants (5)
-
Darla Grediagin -
Emrys Minnig -
LAURENT Henri-Damien -
Magnus Enger -
Nora Blake