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319 results found

  1. Because our library does not use fines, having the "Failed to acquire fines payment lock. If not cleared, fines payments cannot be processed" message is of no utility for us. We'd love multiple users to be able to view a patron record without this message showing up.

    7 votes

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  2. Staff assisting any customers who cannot pickup all their ready holds at once, would benefit from seeing and sorting the expiry date of holds in the patron's holds list. This will assist with preventing their holds from expiring and being placed again.

    7 votes

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    An item's status and pickup expiration date are displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the Holds page as an item is highlighted/selected. While you can't sort by the expiration date, this information is displayed on screen for staff users.

  3. For some fragile items that we don't want to put in transit (e.g. telescopes, vinyl records), we want to be able to limit check-ins to the owning location. We can communicate these limits to patrons on our website and through signage or labels, but we'd like there to be an option within Sierra to generate a pop-up (with an option to override) so staff are alerted to tell the patron they have to bring the item back to another location.

    7 votes

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  4. Persistent Column Resizing in Summary Tab:

    Currently, users can resize columns in the Summary Tab (Orders, Items, and Holdings) during a session. However, these adjustments are not retained after the session ends, requiring users to reapply their preferred column sizes each time they log in.

    I propose an enhancement to allow users to permanently save column resizing preferences across sessions. This feature would greatly improve usability and efficiency by enabling a more customized and consistent interface tailored to individual workflows.

    This enhancement would benefit users who frequently manage data within the Summary Tab by reducing repetitive actions and ensuring a…

    7 votes

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  5. When matching on an ISBN for record loading, it should be possible to limit the match to the first 13 (or 10) digits. There are often extraneous data in 020 subfield |a. There are now other subfields where that is supposed to go, but it frequently ends up in |a anyway, and then your record loading won't match.

    7 votes

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  6. Improve diacritic searching in Sierra to include Semitic languages, especially Arabic! We have a fair number of Arabic books in out collections, and a large Arabic community, but Sierra support for Arabic characters does not seem complete. We often find that Arabic letters in Sierra is replaced by a white square, which seems to mean that the character is not supported. The names appear fine in Vega but the non supported letters do not seem to be indexed in the search results. This is an important language for members of our community and support for it is important in our…

    7 votes

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  7. We're currently dealing with a known issue in Sierra 6.2, where volume holds aren't being added to paging lists. Having discovered it on our end fairly recently, we've asked staff to continue running their paging lists for other items, but use the Manage Holds function to find & fill volume requests.

    The problem is that the current search retrieves such a high number of items. And while the search results display counts of the title number of holds, & the total number of bib, volume, & item level holds, you cannot currently limit them & make the Manage Holds report…

    7 votes

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  8. Currently, the ability to override a hold block is governed by permission 92.

    A hold might be blocked for a number of reasons. Staff might attempt to place more than the max number of holds allowed for a customer. They might place a hold for a customer on an item they already have checked out, etc.

    One scenario especially has been problematic for as long as I can remember:

    A patron finds an item on the shelf & takes it to a service point to check out. It turns out that this item can satisfy a hold placed by another…

    7 votes

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  9. Several years ago we adopted context logins. We have established that a 1 tier login will not work for us.

    CURRENT STATE : Our Regional Library consists of 39 branches in almost as many cities. To distinguish the branch of our Sierra users we currently use a two-tiered login. This login process allows us to continue to use generic branch accounts while meeting our obligations to protect customer information. The two-tiered login allows us to collect branch-specific data and apply unique user settings, options, and settings.

    The drawback is that our staff must login twice and it may pose an…

    7 votes

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  10. Searches of Innovative databases that contain authority records using Z39.50 search do not return authority records.

    The ability to search for an authority records would contribute to the quality of the database and make it easier to generate linked data.

    7 votes

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  11. Would love to see the word "replacement" changed to a word that gets at the actual status. Currently the charge type of "replacement" is used for a long overdue item that has been billed or a damaged item that has been billed. To find out if the item that has been billed is damaged or just hasn't been returned you have to go into the item record to see if a damaged note has been added.

    7 votes

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  12. I know that there is a product called External Patron Images that would allow patron photos to display in their records. I am wondering if a similar product exists for documents (such as PDF)? For some of our lending items, patrons must sign a user waiver to agree to the terms and conditions, and we currently have a two step process to verify if this has happened each time they come in. It would be good to be able to add the scanned image of the waiver to a patron record for easier verification.

    7 votes

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  13. We have a large consortia set up. Many clients are not required to bring their library card to the library circulation desk/s. When the library staff are searching for patrons with common surnames, quickly identifying their branch's patrons can be difficult - staff suggest adding a filter for home library or limiting the browse to their statistical group in their logins will limit the number of mistaken attempts to open the incorrect borrower record.

    7 votes

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  14. One of the major advantages of Sierra is it's flexibility. Particularly the Sierra fixed fields. Sierra allows those fixed fields to be used in non-standard ways, but the API loader does not have that flexibility. If you try to load records with unexpected data with the API, the load will fail. The API MARC loader does not have to validate MARC. Sierra has never really validated MARC. Don't start now. The API should allow the same weird non-standard data as the rest of Sierra.

    7 votes

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  15. Libraries use Decision Center to determine what is not circulating or what has been at the Branch for a long time without circulating.

    The new "item status date" added in Sierra 6.0 could help Decision Center identify items that were moved to a branch but have not been checked out (eg. items get to the new branch by using CIRCA's item status change from "checked in" > "in transit" > and then are checked in at the new branch)

    Reports that would benefit from this would be the Maintenance Report or any report that lists a "created date" and "last…

    7 votes

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  16. We're interested in evaluating how well our Floating Collections are performing to see if it's benefiting specific locations or ranking specific location codes preferably, but not necessarily limited to, change of circ or transit wait time post-float at branches to determine what should and shouldn't float for that branch going forward based on past performance. Besides the drought report in Decision Center, this information appears to be lacking. We'd like for reporting capabilities to be added to its data to help inform decision-making in terms of tweaking Floating Collections location codes to keep and which to return to non-Floating going…

    7 votes

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  17. Staff are really appreciating the addition of a 'Previous' button to the record creation process which allows them to back up and fix a mistake without having to go all the way through the process before returning to make a correction. Staff would like to see similar functionality within the Receiving process. We receive using the process that combines creating the item with receiving.

    Currently, for receiving an item, it will prompt you through the boxes to fill in the required information.  As you proceed through, if you make a mistake or skip something you have to cancel and start…

    6 votes

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  18. I recently learned that the fields included in the Expanded Display for patron records (when you rollover/click the i next to the record) are hard coded.

    I found this unfortunate, because what's shown in the Expanded Display differs depending on where you're viewing it, which in the case of patron records is either going to be in the Search/Find a Patron view or the Check Out mode view.

    Examples of where I see room for improvement here:

    1) When I search for a patron by name & come up with dozens of people with the same name, an identifier like…

    6 votes

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  19. Right now NCIP for Symphony, Voyager, Polaris, Koha and Evergreen all accept ISBNs, but Sierra's does not.

    6 votes

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  20. Ability for patron to add money to their Sierra patron account (via self-check) to pay for future fines, fees, and printing. We are looking to go mostly cashless, but some patrons aren't able to get credit cards (like our young patrons here after school). Our self-check machine takes cash, which would allow patrons to print and pay fees/fines with cash, even if the staff doesn't have a cash register.

    6 votes

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