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NC Cardinal has a core group of official policies, drafted with the help of various committees and working groups, and approved by the NC Cardinal Governance Committee. These policies are applicable to all libraries in the consortium, and establish the foundation of a successful and efficient shared Evergreen Catalog. Local policy established at individual members libraries must comply with these approved policies.
You may access each policy in the Knowledge Books, print PDFs, or access a single printable document that outlines each policy, which you can keep as a handbook.
Protecting user privacy and confidentiality is one of the core values of librarianship. The confidentiality of library records is a core part of library ethics and the NC Cardinal consortium follows the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association and NC General Statutes.
Access this policy in the Knowledge Books
NC Cardinal does not set thresholds for fines and fees. All member libraries may set their fines and fees at the local level. However, NC Cardinal does require that all libraries lending materials through resource sharing honor the fine and fee structure of the circulating library, even when it differs from the owning library's policy. Additional policies are outlined in the official NC Cardinal Fines/Fees policy documents.
Access this policy in the Knowledge Books
Resource Sharing is one of the biggest benefits offered to patrons of NC Cardinal libraries. In order for it to run smoothly and efficiently, all member libraries must abide by specific policies related to the packing and shipping of materials, holds management, and inter-library communication regarding fines, loss, and damages.
Access this policy in the Knowledge Books
All library staff tasked with performing work in Evergreen must have access to a staff login account. These accounts are different from the accounts used to checkout materials and place holds. Each account is assigned to a profile, which grants that user specific permissions within Evergreen. One person at each library is designated as the System Login Access Manager. It is their responsibility to ensure staff login accounts are up to date and that staff abide by NC Cardinal policies regarding their use.
Access this policy in the Knowledge Books
In an effort to maintain security, staff passwords must meet minimum security requirements, and be updated every 90 days. Accounts with outdated passwords will be locked, requiring that staff update the password after 90 days before accessing the ILS. Strength requirements vary based on permission level:
Circulators/Circulation Leads/Catalogers: Upper case letter, lower case letter, numeric character, and at least 8 characters.
Branch/System Administrators: Upper case letter, lower case letter, numeric character, special character and at least 8 characters
Access this policy in the Knowledge Books
Print a PDF (duplicate of Staff Login Account and Permission Policies Document)
All member libraries must honor the library cards of all other member libraries, allowing patrons access to physical materials at all NC Cardinal Libraries.
Access this policy in the Knowledge Books
This policy is being re-visited and will be published in PDF format after any updates have been approved.
To ensure the consistent quality and integrity of these shared resources, all member libraries within NC Cardinal must conform to cataloging standards and best practices, overseen by the NC Cardinal Cataloging Committee. Staff who engage in cataloging must pass an assessment to gain the necessary permissions.
Access this policy in the Knowledge Books
When working with vendors outside the purview of the NC Cardinal relationship with a member library system that connect with Evergreen, libraries must work with NC Cardinal to ensure the products in question are compatible. NC Cardinal staff will maintain responsibility for Evergreen server-side administration of compatible products, while the purchasing library and software vendor will be responsible for supporting the product once installed.
Access this policy in the Knowledge Books
Annual Costs By Library Calculations
Juli Moore - Iredell (County) (July 2022 – July 2024, July 2024 – July 2026)
Franklin Shook - Nantahala (Regional) (July 2024 – July 2026)
Christina Martin - Mauney (Municipal) (July 2023 – July 2025)
Johnnie Pippin - Johnston (County) (July 2021 – July 2023, July 2023 – July 2025)
Trina Rushing - Henderson (County) (July 2023 – July 2025)
Sarah Gransee - State Library Library Development Director
Benjamin Murphy (facilitator) - State Library
Protecting user privacy and confidentiality is one of the core values of librarianship. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect from you and why. You agree to this policy by using any member library websites, downloading our mobile applications, or visiting any NC Cardinal Library location. While North Carolina State law requires that we treat materials you check out and information you access as confidential information, we also do so because it is in keeping with our commitment to you to protect your privacy. The confidentiality of library records is a core part of library ethics and the NC Cardinal consortium follows the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association and NC General Statutes.
§ 125-18. Definitions.
As used in this Article, unless the context requires otherwise:
(1) "Library" means a library established by the State; a county, city, township, village, school district, or other local unit of government or authority or combination of local units of governments and authorities; community college or university; or any private library open to the public.
(2) "Library record" means a document, record, or other method of storing information retained by a library that identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific information or materials from a library. "Library record" does not include non-identifying material that may be retained for the purpose of studying or evaluating the circulation of library materials in general. (1985, c. 486, s. 2.)
§ 125-19. Confidentiality of library user records.
In keeping with the American Library Association's Policy on Confidentiality of Library Records and Policy Concerning Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information About Library Users, NC Cardinal libraries agree on the following:
(a) Disclosure. – A library shall not disclose any library record that identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific materials, information, or services, or as otherwise having used the library, except as provided for in subsection (b).
(b) Exceptions. – Library records may be disclosed in the following instances:
(1) When necessary for the reasonable operation of the library;
(2) Upon written consent of the user; or
(3) Pursuant to subpoena, court order, or where otherwise required by law. (1985, c. 486, s. 2.)
1. User-Provided Information.
When registering for a new account for our library services or updating an existing library account, we may ask you to share certain information with us.
Personal Information : any information that can personally identify you, such as your name, physical address, email address, phone number, library barcode, date of birth, and other similar information.
Residency Verification : information such as driver’s license, other government-issued identification, and utility bills containing a postal address.
Library Record : contains your personal information related to your personal use of circulating and non-circulating library materials, including but not limited to computer database searches, interlibrary-loan transactions, reference queries, e-mails, faxes, requests for photocopies of library materials, title reserve requests, and the use of audio-visual materials such as films and music.
We are committed to keeping such information, outlined in all the examples above, only as long as needed in order to provide library services.
2. Information NC Cardinal libraries may automatically collect.
When you use our library services, such as our website and mobile applications, our computer servers may automatically capture and save information electronically about your usage of our library services. Examples of information that we may
collect include:
If you are using a library device, we may also record your library barcode, time and length of your session, and the websites that you visited.
3. Cookies.
A cookie is a small data file sent from your web browser to a web server and stored on your electronic device’s hard drive. They are generated by websites to provide users with a personalized and often simplified online experience. Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default, though they can be disabled. Keep in mind that removing or rejecting cookies could affect the availability and functionality of our library services.
You should be aware that the information collected about you through any of the above means may be de-identified and aggregated with information collected about other users or visitors. This information helps us to administer services and analyze usage of our library services.
4. Staff Provided data.
Staff may create statistical categories for library users that contain arbitrary data that does not fit into the system’s default records. These statistical categories can be applicable to specific library systems or branches within the consortium. Some examples of statistical categories we currently use are ethnicity, gender, language, school.
These are the ways NC Cardinal shares your information with third-parties:
1. Third-Party Library Services Providers.
We use third-party library service providers and technologies to help deliver some of our services to you. If and when you choose to use such services, we may share your information with these third parties, but only as necessary for them to provide services to NC Cardinal. We may also display links to third-party services or content. By following links, you may be providing information (including, but not limited to Personal Information) directly to a third party, to us, or to both. You acknowledge and agree that NC Cardinal is not responsible for how those third parties collect or use your information. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of every third-party website or service that you visit or use, including those third parties with whom you interact with through our library services.
2. Legal Requests.
Sometimes the law requires us to share your information, such as if we receive a valid subpoena, warrant, or court order. We may share your information if our careful review leads us to believe that the law, including state privacy law applicable to library records, requires us to do so.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) regulates online collection of information from children under the age of 13. If you are under the age of 13, you may not be allowed to use our online services without your parent’s or guardian’s permission, especially when your personal information may be collected. Parents and guardians of children under the age of 13 may view their children’s library records. Parents and guardians of children between the ages of 13 and 17 (inclusive) may also view their children’s library records, but require their children’s consent. We may partner with third-party services to provide educational content for children. Parents and guardians should review those services’ privacy policies before permitting their children to use them. Parents and guardians may also need to sign additional consent forms for the collection of information about their children before they gain access to optional programs and services, such as our enrolled programs.
Member Libraries should follow Local Fines and Fee policies when checking out items except for the following exceptions:
I. Collection fees are not to be paid, waived, or voided except by the assessing library system.
Patrons whose accounts have been referred to a collection agency must settle the account with the assessing library. If a physical trip back to the assessing library is not feasible, local staff will
assist the customer in finding the appropriate contact information needed to settle their account. Fees in this category may be identified by several different bill types:
1. Long Overdue Collection (Fee)
2. Legacy Referral
3. Grocery
4. Migrated OT
Justification: Patron accounts referred to a collection agency are charged a fee that covers the library’s collection agency costs. This fee is important to libraries contracting with such agencies.
II. Lost or Damaged Fees assessed at a library not your own may not be voided or waived.
Patrons who dispute Lost or Damaged items should be referred to the assessing library for resolution of their account. Patrons may pay for a lost or damaged item at any consortium library; however, a courtesy email to the owning library (if different than where fee is paid) is appreciated to allow for replacement of items. This notification should be sent to the Resource Sharing Contact as found in the Knowledge Books.
III. Fines and Fees on DVD’s shared through resource sharing.
It is recommended that staff void or forgive fees assessed to their patrons that do not match the fines/fees policies of their local library system, including Rental Fees.
Justification: Different AV fee & checkout policies throughout the consortium make it difficult to match fees appropriately. As transit times are not counted as part of the checkout period for AV materials, fees assessed while the item is in a patron’s possession are still valid.
Passed by the Governance Committee June 2016
(Passed by Governance Committee 5/3/22)
*The State Library of North Carolina’s Government and Heritage Library (GHL) is a special government library. GHL makes a portion of its collection available to other NC Cardinal libraries through resource sharing. GHL patrons are not able to request materials through resource sharing and GHL is not a designated pick-up library for resource sharing materials from other NC Cardinal libraries. The other special government libraries do not participate in resource sharing.
Cataloging and administrative staff login accounts shall be assigned to individual users, who are responsible for activities using that login to ensure compliance with all consortium policies. NC Cardinal libraries can retain generic circulation staff login accounts. Generic accounts currently in use for reporting will be transferred to a “reports only” permission group.
Each library system shall have a local administrator who is responsible for maintaining staff user login accounts in consultation with their library director and State Library NC Cardinal staff, creating accounts for new library staff and updating, merging, and deleting staff login accounts as necessary to keep employee access current and in compliance with all NC Cardinal policies.
Staff user login accounts are to be used only for access to Evergreen and work related activities, not to circulate materials or any other personal use.
Passed by the Governance Committee April 2017
Cardinal staff login account users will be required to change their password every 90 days. Staff will be emailed a reminder to change their password two weeks before their account expires. Staff accounts will need to have an email address listed on their login account for this notification purpose. If passwords are not changed by the end of the 90 days, the staff member will be prompted to provide a new password before logging in. Staff will not be able to log in to the staff client until they’ve updated their password.
Passed by Governance Committee 10/2/24
Statewide North Carolina Information Security Policies
It was decided by the NC Cardinal consortium members in 2015 that all member libraries honor the library cards of all other member libraries, allowing patrons the fullest access to NC Cardinal consortium materials. Because the consortium does not currently share electronic resources consortium-wide, patrons may maintain library accounts in more than one member system in the consortium based upon the established patron registration policy for each library system. While a library system may want to ensure they issue only one card per person within their own library system (except in the case of Student Access accounts), patrons may not be limited to a single NC Cardinal consortium account and are absolutely permitted to have multiple library cards/accounts for multiple different library systems within the NC Cardinal consortium. This allows patrons the broadest possible access to any electronic resources they are eligible to use.
The NC Cardinal multi-card policy allows patrons to maintain library accounts with any and all library systems in NC Cardinal which they are qualified to join, based on the library systems' registration eligibility requirements. Some NC Cardinal library systems allow any North Carolina resident to register for a card, other systems only grant no-cost library cards to people who reside, own property, attend school, or work in the county, while other systems grant no-cost membership to anyone who resides/own property/work in the the county and any adjoining county. Some library systems may charge an annual fee to out-of-county users. It is up to each individual library system to set their own policy for who is eligible to join. That could mean that a library system that allows patrons who reside in contiguous counties to join may find that these patrons maintain cards in both counties/systems, when both library systems belong to NC Cardinal. Library systems may not ask patrons to give up one library card in favor of another.
Additionally, patrons are always permitted to use their existing library card from any NC Cardinal library system to check out at any other NC Cardinal library, so long as their account is eligible (e.g. not assigned to Internet or School permission group) and does not exceed the circulating library's fine thresholds. Patrons cannot be required to register for an additional account for the library system where they want to check out.
For example: Say a patron has an existing NC Cardinal card at Library System A, but indicates they have moved and wish to apply for a library card at their new location (Library System B). Staff at Library System B should not alter the existing library account created by Library System A. Instead, staff should search NC Cardinal to see if there are any other accounts attributable to the patron with unresolved bills.
If there are existing bills, staff should consult the NC Cardinal Fines and Fees policy and let the patron know they will need to be resolved before a new card can be issued. If no outstanding bills exist, staff should let the patron keep the card for Library System A and issue a new card for their own Library System B (if the patron meets local eligibility criteria). Staff can create a note in the old library account (for System A) to indicate that the patron has moved and a new card was issue by System B. Staff can also group the two library accounts following the patron grouping instructions in the Circulation knowledge book.
Note: It is important that staff do not change the home library in an existing account from one library system to another unless they are also issuing a new barcode. The home library should always match the system that “owns” the barcode range for the barcode listed on the library card/account or e-resources will not authenticate. |
Policy:
It is the policy of the NC Cardinal consortium that all member libraries honor the library cards of all other member libraries, allowing patrons the fullest access to NC Cardinal consortium materials. Because the consortium does not currently share electronic resources consortium-wide, patrons may maintain library accounts in more than one member system in the consortium based upon the established patron registration policy for each library system. If a patron requests a new library card or wishes to use their existing library card in another NC Cardinal library, please follow these recommended procedures.
Procedures:
When a patron requests a library card, staff should: SEARCH the NC Cardinal consortium database for patrons with the matching name and other identifiers. The scope of the patron search MUST be set to NC CARDINAL.
1. Does the patron have an existing account in NC Cardinal database?
2. Does the patron owe money to ANY NC Cardinal library?
3. Is the patron account above the fine limit (purple box around name) or sent to collections?
4. Is patron paying off ALL fines?
5. Does the patron wish to check out with the existing NC Cardinal card?
6. Does the patron want to get a NEW local card and keep their existing card, thereby maintaining 2 accounts, or do they want to migrate their existing account to the new library?
The NC Cardinal consortium is committed to providing the highest standard of library service for consortium patrons. Member libraries share the responsibility of maintaining high-quality bibliographic records, as they form the foundation of the consortium’s shared catalog. To ensure the consistent quality and integrity of these shared resources, all member libraries within NC Cardinal shall ensure that any staff who perform cataloging functions in the ILS conform to the NC Cardinal Cataloging Best Practices established by the consortium and shall pass the appropriate cataloging assessments based on the criteria below:
The NC Cardinal Cataloging Committee has identified two levels of cataloging privilege. Item Catalogers primarily impact records within their local system. Bibliographic Catalogers additionally administer consortium-wide bibliographic resources. Some actions within the catalog do not require cataloging permissions, such as editing item and volume records (replacing a barcode, changing a call number, copy status, shelving location, etc.)
Any staff who wish to have Item Cataloging permissions must pass the Item Cataloging assessment. Examples of item cataloging include adding or deleting item and/or volume records.
Any staff who wish to have Bibliographic Cataloging permissions must pass both the Item Cataloging assessment and the Bibliographic Cataloging assessment. Examples of bibliographic cataloging include creating, editing, merging, or deleting bibliographic records as well as importing records from any outside source (vendor, z39.50, etc.). All NC Cardinal libraries should endeavor to have at least one certified Bibliographic Cataloger on staff at all times.
The NC Cardinal Cataloging Committee establishes, reviews, and updates the Cataloging Best Practices for the NC Cardinal Consortium. The Committee reviews and updates the assessments to ensure they fairly evaluate comprehension of consortium cataloging standards. Periodic recertification may be required for catalogers in NC Cardinal.
Any NC Cardinal library may suggest changes to the Cataloging Best Practices and to this Cataloging Policy by contacting a Cataloging Committee, Governance Committee, or NC Cardinal staff member.
Staff who have not yet passed the necessary assessment(s) to perform cataloging duties may be assigned temporary/limited Item Cataloging permissions. If there is no other Bibliographic Cataloger in a library system and a cataloger wishes to receive temporary/limited Bibliographic Cataloging permissions, they must first pass the Item Cataloging assessment. Temporary/limited cataloging permissions may be granted for no more than 3 months. Any cataloging work performed by catalogers with temporary cataloging permission must be reviewed by a certified Bibliographic Cataloging mentor (either within their library system or from another library system in NC Cardinal). This assigned Bibliographic Cataloging mentor will have the responsibility to regularly review and correct their mentee’s cataloging work until such time as the mentee passes the necessary assessment(s).
NC Cardinal staff will regularly monitor the Item and Bibliographic Cataloging assessment results, notify successful candidates after they achieve the passing score established by the Cataloging Committee, and assign the new cataloging permissions. Assigned cataloging logins may only be used by the person to whom they were assigned and a library system must promptly notify NC Cardinal staff when a certified cataloger no longer works at the library.
Catalogers will be notified by an NC Cardinal staff member when their practices do not conform to Cataloging Best Practice Standards. Staff that fail to address these concerns will be offered the opportunity to work with a mentor Bibliographic Cataloger. If non-compliance continues, the library director will be notified of continuing concerns regarding the cataloger’s performance.
Any member library that repeatedly fails to comply with the NC Cardinal Cataloging Best Practices as agreed to in the NC Cardinal Memorandum of Agreement sections I. B. 2 & 3, may result in suspension or revocation of cataloging privileges for the non-conforming staff member, subject to review by and decision of the Governance Committee.
Passed by NC Cardinal Governance Committee on February 13, 2019
This is a suggested Code of Ethics for Cardinal example for Cardinal member libraries. As policies like this are a Human Resources matter for member libraries, the User Experience committee put this together to provide a suggestion for member libraries revising their employee handbooks. This was approved by the Governance Committee on 5/11/2020.
(Your Library) Code of Ethics For Staff
I acknowledge that I have an obligation to the (Local Library System) and agree to comply with this Code of Ethics:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Staff Member’s Signature and Date
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Staff Member’s Printed Name
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Library Branch Name/System Name
HelpSpot is our help ticketing system, the tool we use for managing the wide variety of requests that we receive from staff at Cardinal libraries.
What Should Be a Ticket
In general, if you’re reaching out to us to request that we take action of some sort, it is helpful for that to be a ticket. You can create a ticket by filling out our Request for Assistance form or sending an email to help@nccardinalsupport.org. This allows us to keep track of the status of a specific issue, see the history of a request, work on questions as a team and know what issues still require effort on our part. It also allows us to interact with external vendors like Mobius.
Help Us Help You
When sending in tickets, please provide as much specific information as you can: barcode numbers of the patron and/or item, links to the catalog, screenshots of error messages. If your question is related to placing holds, please include the usernames of the person placing the hold and the workstation name and branch. The more specific information you provide, the easier it is for us to track down the issue.
Ticket Response Time
Our goal is to respond to your ticket by the end of the next business day. If we can resolve your request in that time we will, but if we are unable to complete the task or have more questions, our goal is to respond to you in that timeline. Sometimes tickets require us to troubleshoot and test, interact with external vendors, or implement fixes which may impact resolution times.
Closing Tickets
We are always trying to work towards resolving tickets in our system. Generally, if there is no further action necessary for a ticket, we will close the ticket. If it is unclear if the issue is resolved for you, we’ll ask if it is OK to close the ticket before doing so. You can always reopen tickets when you need to later on by replying to the email messages you received related to the ticket.
We also make significant use of Basecamp for projects and discussions with the Cardinal community. You can interact with the Basecamp groups through the website or by responding to the messages via your email. We try to keep an eye on all traffic there and answer questions that require our responses. Basecamp also has the benefit of being a space where staff members from Cardinal libraries can ask questions of their peers and find the answers to questions without requiring the Cardinal team.
Please visit the "Join Our Mailing List" section, under the Submit a Request link to request access to our Basecamp Teams.
Basecamp Best Practices
Here are a few practices and techniques that have been established to assist library staff with using Basecamp to produce effective and meaningful communication.
2. Strive to be positive and kind. It's good to raise issues, suggestions and challenges, but nihilistic rants don’t help the conversation.
3. Before creating a new thread, please check if there is an active thread that covers the same topic (particularly when encountering an issue with Evergreen performance, as it is likely that you’re not the only one experiencing the problem.)
4. Once an issue has been raised on the Incidents list and a Cardinal team member has responded to let you know we’re troubleshooting, there’s no need to continue to respond to the thread with “me too”. If we announce that we believe the issue has been resolved and you’re still experiencing issues, then please weigh in and let us know if you’re still experiencing the problem.
5. Don’t get personal.
6. Should this be a ticket?
We’ve also built a significant amount of documentation in our Knowledge Books. Generally, if there’s a question that may come up on a regular basis, we’ll try to find the right place to document it there.
Launchpad
The Evergreen software community also has a website for reporting and tracking bugs with the Evergreen software. Generally, if an issue you find is a flaw or functional request, the Cardinal team will post a bug report or wishlist item there. You may find it useful to search Launchpad to see if the issue you’re reporting is a known bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen
Evergreen Mailing List
There are a number of public mailing lists for people interested in Evergreen open source library software – general, governance, documentation, taskforces, development & commits. For details https://evergreen-ils.org/communicate/mailing-lists/
Many NC Cardinal libraries contract with what are termed “third-party” software vendors (because they are outside of the purview of the NC Cardinal relationship with the member library system) for products that need to connect with the NC Cardinal software to work. This is governed by NC Cardinal policy (see section below) which requires that libraries expecting full compatibility with NC Cardinal software must consult NC Cardinal staff in all negotiations with vendors to ensure that their products are compatible. Assurances from other users of the product or from the third-party vendor that the product will work as expected should not be taken at face value.
In certain cases, software development is required to make the third-party's product connect correctly with NC Cardinal. In these cases, the cost of developing, supporting, and maintaining the custom interface will fall to the library purchasing the product. When contracting out for SIP-specific technology, it is the responsibility of the third-party vendor to build the crosswalks necessary for compatibility with Evergreen, as it is the responsibility of the vendor when providing compatible technology for any ILS. In order to collaborate with the NC Cardinal libraries in contracting for third-party technology, NC Cardinal will provide a test environment within which the library and/or the vendor may develop and test the crosswalks necessary in order to ensure compatibility with Evergreen.
Once the third-party product has been proven to work with Evergreen and for those products that are currently in use, NC Cardinal staff is responsible for Evergreen server-side administration. Support for the third-party product continues to be the purchasing library’s responsibility.
These same guidelines apply to any product or service that would require any sort of data export, either one-time or ongoing, from NC Cardinal staff. Many catalog added content services and statistical analysis services require this. Please consult with NC Cardinal staff about these requirements before entering into an agreement.
The NC Cardinal staff has been asked to make the NC Cardinal database available to outside vendors via library management products. The NC Cardinal staff should be consulted during all negotiations with vendors to ensure that their product(s) are compatible with the NC Cardinal database.
Some examples of third-party software and/or services that require access to NC Cardinal resources:
In order to collaborate with the NC Cardinal libraries in contracting for third-party technology, NC Cardinal will provide a test environment within which the library and/or the vendor may develop and test the crosswalks necessary in order to ensure compatibility with Evergreen. Contact the Help Desk for access.
Submit the following information to the Help Desk prior to making a purchase decision for evaluation of functionality, security, and support by NC Cardinal and so that the NC Cardinal team can work out a project timeline for implementation.
Some things to keep in mind when selecting a product:
Policy Passed by Governance Committee 3/20/23
This policy only relates to Third-Party Hardware and Software deployed after the policy is in place.
Software that implements the standard SIP protocol should not require further scrutiny.
The NC Cardinal team has already integrated with the following vendors/tools, and further scrutiny shouldn't be necessary before deployment but may require planning for implementation.
This is a list of the ranges of barcodes in use by Cardinal libraries. Over time we've worked to get everyone into their own 14 digit barcode range reserved just for their system. We reserve the shorter numeric barcodes for Student Access accounts because these accounts use their Student IDs for barcodes, and Student IDs are all over the place.
If you have cards you're actively issuing in other ranges not mentioned here, please reach out to the Cardinal team. If you need to buy new patron cards or need to reserve a new barcode range, we need to coordinate that so that we can reserve a range that isn't already in use. (We also try to keep track of non-Cardinal libraries so that if any of them join, they don't have to rebarcode all their patrons.)
Some libraries have institutional or staff accounts that have short text barcodes to easily pull up the accounts, like 'STORYTIME', 'ILL', or that sort of thing. If you want to make use of these non-numeric barcodes as shortcuts, please add your system's Non-Patron Prefix to the beginning of the barcode.
Last updated 11/21/2023
System | Length | Patron Prefixes | Non-Patron Prefixes |
ALEXANDER | 14 | 24269 | ALX_ |
AMY | 14 | 11111, 12222, 13333, 14444, 15555, 16666 | AMY_ |
APPALACHIAN | 14 | 44501, 44502, 44503 | APP_ |
BHM | 14 | 28344 | BHM_ |
BLADEN | 14 | 20441 | BLD_ |
BRASWELL | 14 | 57505 | BRS_ |
BROWN | 14 | 20308 | BRN_ |
BUNCOMBE | 13 | 10205 | BUN_ |
BURKE | 14 | 23557 | BRK_ |
CALDWELL | 14 | 40669 | CLD_ |
CARTERET | 14 | 24208 | CRT_ |
CASWELL | 14 | 24622 | CAS_ |
CLAYTON | 14 | 29523 | CLA_ |
CLEVELAND | 14 | 62999 | CLV_ |
COOLEY | 14 | 31244 | CLY_ |
CUMBERLAND | 14 | 21781 | CMB_ |
DAVIDSON | 14 | 35908 | DVD_ |
DAVIE | 14 | 29872 | DVE_ |
DUPLIN | 14 | 20372 | DUP_ |
FARMVILLE | 14 | 33900 | FRM_ |
FONTANA | 14 | 19493, 29493 | FRL_ |
FORSYTH | 14 | 11125 | FOR_ |
FRANKLIN | 14 | 70000 | FRK_ |
GIBSONVILLE | 14 | 20449 | GIB_ |
GRANVILLE | 14 | 32756 | GRN_ |
HALIFAX | 14 | 11011 | HLF_ |
HARNETT | 14 | 23630 | HRN_ |
HAYWOOD | 14 | 23115 | HAY_ |
HENDERSON | 14 | 23258 | HND_ |
IREDELL | 14 | 23114 | IRD_ |
JOHNSTON | 14 | 28950 | JHN_ |
LEE | 14 | 23262 | LEE_ |
MADISON | 14 | 21229 | MAD_ |
MAUNEY | 14 | 52999 | MNY_ |
MCDOWELL | 14 | 27910 | MCD_ |
NANTAHALA | 14 | 70605 | NAN_ |
NC_GOV | 14 | 23091, 32850 | GOV_ |
NEUSE | 14 | 29149 | NEU_ |
NORTHWESTERN | 14 | 40000, 50000 | NWR_ |
ONSLOW | 14 | 46015 | ONS_ |
PERRY | 14 | 23727 | PRY_ |
PERSON | 14 | 24621 | PRS_ |
POLK | 14 | 21250 | PLK_ |
ROCKINGHAM | 14 | 21554 | RCK_ |
RUTHERFORD | 14 | 20113, 20134, 20254, 28801 | RTH_ |
SAMPSON | 12 | 81010, 81050 | SMP_ |
SANDHILL | 14 | 17033, 27033, 37033, 47033, 57033, 67033 | SND_ |
SCOTLAND | 14 | 20388 | SCT_ |
STANLY | 14 | 21010 | STN_ |
TRANSYLVANIA | 14 | 28079 | TRN_ |
WARREN | 14 | 20304, 28017 | WRN_ |
WAYNE | 14 | 22947 | WYN_ |
If you have item barcodes you're actively issuing in other ranges not mentioned here, please reach out to the Cardinal team. If you need a new barcode range for purchasing barcodes, we need to coordinate that so that we can reserve a range that isn't already in use. (We also try to keep track of non-Cardinal libraries so that if any of them join, they don't have to rebarcode all their items.)
Acquisitions Prefixes are the prefixes systems use for dummy item barcodes before the item is shelf ready.
System | Barcode Length | Item Barcode Prefix | Acquisitions Prefix |
ALEXANDER | 14 | 34269 | |
AMY | 14 | 31111, 32222, 33333, 34444, 35555, 36666 | |
APPALACHIAN | 14 | 50501, 50502, 50503 | |
BHM | 14 | 38344 | |
BLADEN | 14 | 30441 | |
BRASWELL | 14 | 37807 | BRAS |
BRASWELL | 15 | 54019 | BRAS |
BROWN | 14 | 30308 | |
BUNCOMBE | 13 | 00205, 00206, 00204 | |
BURKE | 14 | 33557 | |
CALDWELL | 14 | 50669 | |
CARTERET | 14 | 34208 | |
CASWELL | 14 | 34621 | |
CLAYTON | 14 | 39523 | |
CLEVELAND | 14 | 22281 | |
COOLEY | 14 | 20100 | |
CUMBERLAND | 14 | 31781 | CMB |
DAVIDSON | 14 | 25908 | |
DAVIE | 14 | 39872 | |
DUPLIN | 14 | 30372 | |
FARMVILLE | 14 | 23900 | |
FONTANA | 14 | 39493 | FON |
FORSYTH | 13 | 01125, 01124, 21125 | FOR |
FRANKLIN | 14 | 72350 | |
GIBSONVILLE | 14 | 30449 | |
GRANVILLE | 14 | 42756 | GRAN |
HALIFAX | 14 | 01011 | |
HARNETT | 14 | 33436, 33633, 33632, 33631, 33630 | |
HAYWOOD | 14 | 33115 | |
HENDERSON | 14 | 33258 | HCPL |
IREDELL | 14 | 33114 | |
JOHNSTON | 14 | 38950, 38955 | JOHN |
LEE | 14 | 33262 | |
MADISON | 14 | 30229 | |
MAUNEY | 14 | 26280 | |
MCDOWELL | 14 | 37810 | |
NANTAHALA | 14 | 80605 | |
NC_GOV | 14 | 33091, 31957, 47000, 31879, 32850, 34100 | |
NEUSE | 14 | 39149 | |
NORTHWESTERN | 14 | 40599, 30499, 30671, 30664, 30670, 30094, 30665, 30005, 30666, 30672, 30667, 30668, 30669, 80001 | NWACQ |
ONSLOW | 14 | 36015 | |
PERRY | 14 | 33727 | |
PERSON | 14 | 34622 | |
POLK | 14 | 31250 | POLK |
ROCKINGHAM | 14 | 31554 | |
RUTHERFORD | 14 | 38801, 30254, 30113, 30134 | |
SAMPSON | 15 | 81019 | |
SANDHILL | 14 | 48198, 38198, 28198, 58198, 18198 | |
SCOTLAND | 14 | 30388 | |
STANLY | 14 | 31010, 31011, 31012, 31013, 31014, 31015 | STAN |
TRANSYLVANIA | 14 | 38079 | TRAN |
WARREN | 14 | 28017, 38017 | |
WAYNE | 15 | 90000, 64019, 99000, 99900 | WAYNE |
List of Member Libraries and their Branches
Shipping Addresses of Member Libraries
Links to Member Library's OPACs
NC Cardinal uses an online tool called Basecamp to facilitate communication between Cardinal member libraries, staff, and Mobius.
Access can be requested for any of the following teams on Basecamp.
Color coordinates for NC Cardinal red: Hex: C41E3A RGB: 196,30,58 CMYK: 0,85,70,23
Color coordinates for Green in the OPAC banner: Hex: 00593d RBG: 0,89,61 CMYK: 100,0,31,65
Administrative Functions in Evergreen
This 1 hour webinar will cover various functions available to users with Branch Admin and System Admin permissions, as well as different ways you can use features in Evergreen to help with library management. We will cover topics including the Closed Dates Editor, Deleting Patrons, Surveys, Workstation Management, View Circulation and Hold Policies, and more.
Audience: Directors, Assistant Directors, Branch Managers, anyone with Branch ADmin or System Admin permission levels
Note: This session will NOT cover SLAM duties. There will be a seperate webinar for SLAMs later in the year.
Reports 101: Introduction to the Reporter
This 2 hour webinar will provide a basic introduction to Evergreen's traditional reporter. We will learn how Evergreen stores data and how the reporter accesses that date. We will also look up the processes for setting up new folders, searching for existing templates, cloning templates, running reports, setting recurrence, and viewing output.
Audience: Anyone who works with reports or would like to work with reports
Offline Training
This 1 hour webinar will train Circulators and Administrators in the use of the Offline Circulation Interface in preparation for Evergreen going down during the upgrade scheduled for early November. Training will include conducting offline checkouts, saving transactions, and uploading transactions into the database after the upgrade concludes.
Audience: Circulators, Circulation Leads, Branch Managers, Assistant Directors, Directors
Upgrade Preview
This 2-hour webinar will go through the changes expected in the upcoming 3.15 upgrade. The Upgrade is scheduled the begin after closing on the evening of Friday, October 31st. It should be completed over the weekend. This webinar will walk through the changes and new features to expect, with a live demonstration and time for questions. Participants will be encouraged to log into the Next server to follow along.
Participants are encouraged to log into Next to begin exploring the updates, and to review the release notes prior to the session:
Audience: Everyone!
Each month, NC Cardinal will host a virtual drop-in on an Evergreen-related function or topic. Anyone interested in coming and learning more about the topic, asking questions, or sharing their knowledge and experience is welcome.
All drop-ins will start at 2 PM EST and run for 1 hour.
Month | Topic | Date |
September | Circulation | Sep 18 |
October | Patron Accounts | Oct 23 |
November | Upgrades Questions | Nov 20 |
December | Holds Management | Dec 18 |
January | Inventory and Shelf Reading | Jan 22 |
February | MARC Records | Feb 19 |
March | Item Cataloging | March 19 |
April | communication and documentation | April 23 |
May | item cataloging | May 21 |
June | Resource Sharing | June 18 |
If you have alerts that you’d like to make visible at the top of your OPAC, we’re happy to add those for you.
If you’re closing your library to the public, you (or we) can run the emergency closing process in the Closed Dates Editor for your expected closed dates. This will move the due dates for all loans and hold shelf expirations forward to the next day that the library is expected to be open. If you end up needing to be closed for a longer period, this process can be repeated, as needed. Staff can also backdate checkins when you reopen. We recommend that this process be run for each branch, rather than for the system as a whole. If the process has run correctly, you should see the number of transactions updated, like this:
Circulations: 55 / 55 | Holds: 116 / 116 | Reservations:0 / 0
If your library is still open, we can bump the due dates on all your current loans forward to some date in the future, or by an amount of time like an additional two weeks, so that all of the items aren't coming due at the same time. We can do this by circ mod if that’s helpful, so that for instance we update books and audiobooks but not technology items.
If your library is closed, you may wish to freeze/suspend the holds that have been requested to be picked up at that library. This will prevent the holds for that closed library from showing up on the picklists of other libraries, being pulled from their shelves and then sitting around when they can not be sent. We can set it so that holds your patrons place are frozen every minute, so that they'll still be able to place holds during the disruption, but those holds aren't filled until you're ready to handle the traffic. Once you ask Cardinal to unfreeze the holds, they'll start showing up on picklists again. If you’re offering curbside service where users are requesting materials via the catalog, we do not recommend this option.
If a branch is going to be closed indefinitely, we can change the pickup library on unfilled holds away from that closed branch to another branch that's open. Alternatively, we can cancel all of the holds that were destined for pickup at the closed branch.
If your library is closed and not able to pull things on your pick list, we can set your branches as “Skip For Holds.” If a library chooses this option, their collection will not be targeted for holds for local patrons or for resource sharing. If you are still providing curbside checkouts that patrons are requesting by placing a hold or wish to continue resource sharing and filling patron holds, we do not recommend this option.
Some libraries want to block patrons from placing additional holds during the library's closure to prevent a large backlog of hold requests and long pull lists once libraries reopen. We can do so with a library setting "not a pickup location" that makes your branch(es) ineligible to be the hold pickup location. If the patron already has one of your branches selected as their preferred hold pickup location, they will not be able to complete the hold placement, but there is no clear message, so we recommend adding a banner stating that holds cannot be placed while the library is closed. We can create the OPAC banner for you.
If you are open or providing curbside service, we can set your current circulation policies to “no fine” so that you are not charging overdue fines during this time period. Even if you are not open, we can also retroactively waive recent or accruing unpaid fines for items that aren’t marked “lost” or “claimed returned.” If you request this option, it would be wise to evaluate the effects of backdating on billing when checking in your material.
If you are not currently participating in resource sharing, but do not want to suspend/freeze patron holds because you’re providing limited service like curbside hold fulfillment, we can set a “hard boundary” for your system. This will prevent your patrons from placing holds on materials that are not owned by your library system. If your library is fulfilling holds with materials transiting from other branches within your system, we can set a hard boundary of 1 (system). If you are not transiting materials between branches, we can set a hard boundary of 2 which will limit the patrons’ pickup library to the branch that owns the item. The hard boundary does not prevent patrons with a home library outside your library system from placing holds on your materials, so your staff should only pull materials when the pickup library on the pull list matches your branch or system (as appropriate). Pickup library can be added as a column in the pull list using the column picker: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=477
If you set an Emergency Closing or ask us to update due dates for your library’s circulations, then your patrons should generally not be seeing notices. If however you’d like us to disable email notices for your system, we can also do that. If you'd like us to edit your email notices, please contact us at: help@nccardinalsupport.org
If you’d like us to update the expiration dates of patrons accounts expiring soon, we’re happy to do that for you.
If you’d like us to activate auto-renewals for your system, we’re happy to do so.
A number of systems have seen a bump in their students’ usage of electronic resources during this time. If you’d like us to process a fresh feed from your school system for Student Access accounts, please let us know.
Resolving transits for libraries that are not currently resource sharing:
When running the pull list and pulling items from the shelves, staff should be sure to display the pickup location as a column on the pull list and reference this page for the most up-to-date information about which libraries are resource sharing and which are not when determining whether or not to capture items on the pull list.
If you find that items are targeting patron holds for libraries that are not yet resource sharing during check in, staff should choose Cancel Transit from the Actions menu on the Item Status screen, as libraries should not collect or store in transit items for libraries not currently accepting shipments.
Note: Once an item has been shipped to the hub, only Branch Admins can cancel transits when the transit source is a different branch (i.e., when the item is owned by a branch other than the hub library).
If there are other holds on the item, you can check in the item using these checkin modifiers: Retarget Local Holds and Retarget All Statuses.
If the item has no other holds, you can check in the item using the checkin modifier: Suppress Holds and Transits.
Please be aware that check in modifiers are "sticky", which means they will stay on until you uncheck them again, even after you log out of Evergreen completely and log back in later. So, it is always a good idea to uncheck them before you close out the tab or move on to something else.
Retarget Local Holds and Retarget All Statuses:
Suppress Holds and Transits:
Instructions for setting up self-check workstations to help limit close contact of staff with patrons: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=105
If you want to set the due dates forward for the items you are checking out to patrons in your curbside service, you can manually change the due dates for those items when checking out in the patron account by clicking on Date Options and selecting Use Specified Date until Logout:
Public Library Survey information on the State Library website
PLS Overview webinar (6/5 at 1pm)
PLS Data entry webinar (7/22 at 11am)
This is the process NC Cardinal uses to generate Public Library Statistics each year for member libraries.
I.1. Adults
I.2. Juveniles
We run a query looking for accounts with the permission groups of (Adult, Adult Limited, Teen, Teen Limited, Juvenile, Juvenile Limited, School, State Employee, Institution, Outreach, Internet) We include any patrons that are active, not deleted and have expiration dates within the last three years. So, in July of 2024, our criteria was accounts with expiration dates greater than June 30, 2021.
We then translate those to the PLS categories using these mappings:
I.1. Adults (AD_BORR) = Adult, Adult Limited, Institution, Outreach, Internet, State Employee
I.2. Juveniles (JUV_BORR) = Teen, Teen Limited, Juvenile, Juvenile Limited
Student = School
G.1. Cataloged Adult Fiction Books
G.4. Cataloged Adult Non-fiction Books
G.3. Cataloged Juvenile Fiction Books
G.6. Cataloged Juvenile Non-fiction Books
G.2. Cataloged Young Adult Fiction Books
G.5. Cataloged Young Adult Non-fiction Books
G.11. Other Print Materials
G.12. Current Print Serial Subscriptions
G.13. Audio - Physical Units
G.14. Video - Physical Units
G.15. Other non-print analog materials
We start with a count of non-deleted items grouped by their call number’s owning branch circulating library, their shelving location and their circulation modifier (circmod). We then translate them to PLS categories by first checking if their circmod has a mapping, if not, then we see what their shelving location mapping is and use that PLS category. So, for instance, BOOK circmods don’t have a PLS mapping so we map based on shelving location, but all EQUIPMENT circmods are translated to ONP_MATS and all AUDIOBOOK circmods are mapped to the AUDIO_PH no matter what their shelving location is.
H.1. Adult Fiction Book Circulation
H.4. Adult Non-fiction Book Circulation
H.2. Young Adult Fiction Book Circulation
H.5. Young Adult Non-fiction Book Circulation
H.3. Juvenile Fiction Book Circulation
H.6. Juvenile Non-fiction Book Circulation
H.11. Print periodicals circulation
H.13. Analog audio circulation
H.14. Analog video circulation
H.15. Other print materials circulation
H.16. Other non-print materials circulation
Similar to Collection Counts, we start by gathering a count of items checked out at a branch and include their shelving location and their circmod. We then translate them first by circmod if there’s a mapping, or if there's no mapping by circmod, we map by shelving location. As with our collection mapping example, BOOK circmids don’t have a PLS mapping, but all EQUIPMENT circmods are translated to CIRC_OTH_NPRNT and all AUDIOBOOK circmods are mapped to the CIRC_AUD_AN no matter what their shelving location is.
K.5. Interlibrary Loans Provided To (LOANTO)
K.6. Interlibrary Loans Received From (LOANFM)
PLS ILL stats that we run are simply counts of materials lent between member libraries through resource sharing. Each resource sharing transaction is counted for where it comes from and where it is headed to.
For summer Reading stats, we rerun the circulation statistics for only the June 1st through August 31st time period, then run the mapping and only include the counts for things that map to the PLS categories of: CIRC_JUV_FIC, CIRC_JUV_NFIC, CIRC_YA_FIC, CIRC_YA_NFIC
We’ve created reports that allow you to generate counts that pull the same raw data I’m using for generating PLS stats. These reports can be found in the Reporter by going to: Shared Folders > Templates > admin > PLS Reports (CARDINAL)
These reports will generate counts using the same criteria the Cardinal team uses to run statistics each July.
This only generates the raw data, so in order to get the output in the PLS categories, you'd need to go through the same mapping process described above.
We use Basecamp for projects and discussions with the Cardinal community. You can interact with the Basecamp groups through the website or by responding to the messages via your email. We try to keep an eye on all traffic there and answer questions that require our responses. Basecamp also has the benefit of being a space where staff members from Cardinal libraries can ask questions of their peers and find the answers to questions without requiring the Cardinal team. The following Basecamp teams are currently offered:
Please visit the "Join Our Mailing List" section, under the Submit a Request link to request access to our Basecamp Teams.
Here are a few practices and techniques that have been established to assist library staff with using Basecamp to produce effective and meaningful communication.
2. Strive to be positive and kind. It's good to raise issues, suggestions and challenges, but nihilistic rants don’t help the conversation.
3. Before creating a new thread, please check if there is an active thread that covers the same topic (particularly when encountering an issue with Evergreen performance, as it is likely that you’re not the only one experiencing the problem.)
4. Once an issue has been raised on the Incidents list and a Cardinal team member has responded to let you know we’re troubleshooting, adding a boost of “me too” is better than adding a fresh response to the thread, since posting a response will trigger a new notification email to everyone on the group. If we announce that we believe the issue has been resolved and you’re still experiencing issues, then please weigh in and let us know if you’re still experiencing the problem.
5. Don’t get personal.
6. Should this be a ticket?
Mastering Basecamp is a collection of short videos provided and supported by Basecamp. Videos cover everything from working with to-do's to when to chat in Campfire, send a ping, or post a message. Below, you will find links to the training videos related to features utilized by the NC Cardinal Community.
Basecamp Basics
Beyond the Basics
Message Board vs. Chat vs. Pings
You can indicate your appreciation or agree with what someone said, without posting a full comment. A boost is a short, flexible, and personal way to respond to something directly.
On messages, documents, comments, and a few other spots, you'll see a 🚀 rocket icon.
When you click that, a small field will expand in place:
You can type anything you want in there, up to a maximum of 16 characters. Click the smiley face to choose an emoji (you can also choose from all the emoji*). Hit return or the green check mark to save the boost, or hit the red X to close the field. Further details regarding Basecamp's "Boosts" feature may be found here: https://3.basecamp-help.com/article/391-boosts .
To update the email associated with your Basecamp account, you must click your avatar in the upper right corner of Basecamp
Select 'Profile, password, 2FA' from the menu that populates to edit your information. *You'll also see the 'Profile, password, 2FA' option when you click your avatar anywhere it appears in Basecamp.
When selecting the 'Profile, password, 2FA' option, you will be provided the option to edit the following information associated with your account: Name, Title, Location, Short Bio or current status, Email address and Login Info. Remember to select the “Save my changes” option to save changes made to your account.
If you get too many email notifications about Basecamp posts, consider setting up an email filter that filters messages from a sender that has (NCC) in the name to put all the Cardinal team’s posts into a different folder.
Click your avatar in the upper-right and click the "Change your notification settings" link:
This will take you to the settings screen:
Email notifications
This feature takes notifications that happen within about 5 minutes of one another, to keep your inbox calm.
Browser notifications
Browser notifications pop up when Basecamp is open in a tab on your computer's browser. If the box is checked but you still aren't getting notifications, check your browser preferences to make sure they are allowed for Basecamp.
Unread counts
You can tailor the notification badges to suit your needs. If you like seeing exactly how many unread items are inside each menu, simply check this box. Prefer seeing a small dot? Leave it unchecked. Whatever you choose, Basecamp will remember that preference on your mobile devices, too.
Everything or just pings and @mentions
Everything includes new messages, comments, Pings, to-do assignments, new events on the schedule, and automated check-ins. Choose Only Pings and @mentions if you prefer to check Basecamp manually for new things, but still want to be notified if somebody specifically reaches out to you.
Work Can Wait
Work Can Wait prevents notifications from bothering you after hours. Set your hours and choose the days that Basecamp is allowed to notify you.
If you'd like, Basecamp will send you a catch-up email or push notification of anything you missed while you were away from work. Just click the checkbox when you set your Work Can Wait hours.
- Yes, new Basecamp Users are able to view message board post that were posted before they were added to Basecamp.
- "Following" a project means you can access all project information but receive minimal notifications, essentially just being kept in the loop without being actively involved, while "on team" indicates you are a full participant in the project, receiving all updates and notifications and actively contributing to the work happening within it. To limit notifications, it may be a good idea to encourage staff to only join Basecamp Teams related to current job duties.
2024-2025 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2023-2024 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2022-2023 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2021-2022 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2020-2021 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2019-2020 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2018-2019 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2017-2018 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2016-2017 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2015-2016 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2014-2015 NC Cardinal Annual Report
2013-2014 NC Cardinal Annual Report
We appreciate the time that you take to respond to the Cardinal Annual Staff Survey. Each year we work through the comments to help us figure out things we need to focus on in the year ahead. This year, in an effort to improve our communication and transparency, we wanted to publicly share our responses to your comments and suggestions.
We’ve compiled your responses to the following questions in the Annual Survey:
We’ve tried to address every comment, but some suggestions will take time to investigate. We’ve tried to refer you to solutions where we can, and hope that these are helpful rather than something that you already knew but didn't meet your needs. We've also referred to Evergreen Launchpad bugs in some of our responses, which is the place that the larger Evergreen community lists known bugs and wishlist items for improvements to the Evergreen software.
Like one respondent said “there are a number of training avenues that I had no idea existed.” We hope that by sharing our replies, you may be able to learn from the responses to questions your peers have asked. The comments are grouped by subject, with individual comments bulleted followed by Cardinal’s responses.
We're always open to suggestions on how to improve the OPAC. The recent public catalog updates focused on improving the look and feel of the catalog, as well as making it more functional for a variety of devices like phones and tablets. On of the projects we can undertake with the User Experience Committee is to gather more specific feedback and suggestions.
The search and indexes of Evergreen are some of the core functionalities of the software. We’ve learned more about search configuration recently in response to some tickets we’ve received, but this is an area we can continue to work on. Some aspects of how search behaves are based on the quality and consistency of our cataloging records. Regarding “fuzzy” search suggestions, there is a relatively new Evergreen feature called “Did You Mean” that became available in 3.7. At this point we haven’t implemented it out of concern for it slowing down the time it takes to return search results, but we could investigate further. https://docs.evergreen-ils.org/eg/docs/latest/admin_initial_setup/dym_admin.html
Do you mean having check boxes in the facet search limiters on the left with the count of items that match that facet category?
This is a current Launchpad wishlist request. https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1833565
If we’re understanding you correctly, this is the traditional staff search view. We don’t expect any further improvements to the traditional staff search.
We’d be interested to hear more about your ideas! Do you mean searching by format icons?
Patrons can turn on their reading history within the My Account section of the public OPAC. The Evergreen community as a whole chose to not make this visible to library staff for patron privacy reasons.
Are there certain aspects on the search screen that you’d like to be able to collapse or hide that might make it easier to use?
If we find that there is a consensus about this we’re happy to make the change. In the meantime, you may find increasing the size of the text in your browser window by hitting the Ctrl key and the + key may make the text easier to read.
RBDigital used to have a plugin that would make this possible in Evergreen before they were bought out by Overdrive. We can look into whether there is still something like this available.
Cardinal has looked into pricing of commercial apps, but we found that it was cost prohibitive to implement consortia-wide. Member libraries have a choice to implement their own app and we’ve supported numerous libraries who have implemented an app called MyLibro.
We’re always striving to optimize performance. We’ve had a lot of progress as Cardinal has grown over the years, but we still have room to improve. Mobius has been a very good partner in optimizing our system to meet the changing demand over time and to systematically react when problems occur. This is an area we’re always trying to monitor and improve.
This is something we've been talking about as a team. The best solution is likely to put together an accessibility audit of Evergreen and then see what we have the ability to change locally and what we need to submit Launchpad bugs for. As of now, there is an accessibility tag for these kinds of issues in Launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bugs?field.tag=accessibility
Unfortunately, the way that Evergreen targets holds makes this a difficult question to answer. Hold are generally placed on a title level and a process is always running trying to find available copies to match up with open hold requests. Today there may be fewer copies available due to age hold protection, whereas tomorrow more copies may be available. Different patrons have access to different copies based on who owns the book, so its hard to determine how many people have a book reserved before a patron in question.
This is one of the customizations we’re actively working on to add to Evergreen. Our goal is for the holds targeter process to be aware of the physical distance of available copies when targeting a copy from another library system so that the closest one is targeted before the more distant ones. Additionally, we’re looking at ways to update the initial targeting process so that when a copy is targeted in your local system, you have more time to fill that hold before it is retargeted to another copy at a different library.
We agree that the default error responses to hold failure messages are not user friendly. We’re looking into how we can customize them.
We'll try to improve our documentation for the Bills screen.
Are you thinking something like a connection to a Point of Sale system? I’m seeing that there’s a Evergreen Launchpad wishlist for to the Stripe POS system https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1851586
Looks like there’s a LaunchPad bug for your suggestion: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1758381
It looks like there was a recent LaunchPad bug added with suggestions on sharing buckets that might incorporate the kinds of changes you’re suggesting. https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1971770
There are a variety of settings associated with fines, lost items, late fees, refunds, etc. and it sounds like we don’t have things set up the way you’d like. If you can submit a ticket with details about the issue with example accounts, we’d be happy to work on this for you.
Fortunately, there will be a lot of updates to acquisitions in the 3.9 upgrade coming this fall. We’ll circle back to your comment once we have a chance to try it out.
I think this LaunchPad bug addresses that goal? https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1841123
We rely on Open Library for our images and they don’t include images for DVDs. Evergreen 3.9 will have a cover image uploader that will allow you to override external sources. This may not be automatic like Open Library, but it may provide another option. We're also going to investigate a tool called Chilipac.
Not one that we’re aware of. This process changed with our most recent upgrade. You may find this page helpful. https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=83 The trick is that you have to mark the bib record as the target if you’re moving a call number and item(s) and if you're only moving items, you have to mark the call number record as the target from the holdings view.
At this point, the quickest way to do this is to search by barcode in the Item Status screen. When you do so, the item will show up already selected and you can go to the dropdown Actions menu and choose “Request Items” This will give you the option to add the user barcode and then do a title or copy hold. Are you familiar with this option?
The new staff search interface was first introduced when we recently upgraded to 3.7.2. We understand that it has some problems and we’re hoping that the problems you’ve identified with Search Templates in the new staff search interface are fixed in our upcoming upgrade. Unfortunately, we don’t expect the traditional catalog search to stay around indefinitely. We’ll be announcing this summer when you can test out the new version 3.9 that we’ll be upgrading to this November and we hope you can spend some time testing it out and seeing if the updates better suit your needs. There are a lot of ways you can be involved in the usability testing of Evergreen as it develops. Many of the design decisions are made at the larger software community level and your involvement as end users is important in helping the designers to make good decisions about functionality that impacts you. We’ll provide some examples at the end of this document. We'll look into whether we can add back the summary and subject headings to the staff search results view.
Yes, it looks like item barcode is not part of the Keyword search index. Barcode searches are available in the Numeric search. This is something we can talk about in the Cataloging Committee and try to offer a better recommendation.
This is likely due to the Default Search Library and Preferred Library you have set in your workstation settings (Administration menu > Workstation) versus the default scope that the catalog has when your users go to your library’s public catalog. You as a staff member also see materials that are not OPAC visible, so the results will not always be the same.
If we’re understanding you correctly, this may be fixed in the staff search by going to the Catalog Preferences link under the search button. At the bottom of the Catalog Preferences screen there’s a checkbox that says “Add the 'Exclude Electronic Resources' checkbox to the main search form.” If you check that box, an “Exclude Electronic Resources” option will show up on your search screen, allowing you to exclude electronic resources from your search. This option is sticky meaning it will stay on for your searches until you unselect it.
It is possible now to add things from your search results to your basket, and then in the Basket Action drop down menu, one of the options is to Print Title Details. As others have suggested the list still needs a bit of work because it is not easily configurable so the order is not clear and it doesn’t include shelving location.
This sounds like a bug! We’ll investigate.
Shelf Browse is one of the tabs available in the Staff Catalog Search screen.
The two routes I use for this are from the green bar at the top of the staff interface, under Search there’s an option for “Search for Items by Barcode”, or if you choose “Search the Catalog”, one of the tabs is “Numeric” and for the Query Type dropdown you can choose “Barcode”
The upcoming version of Evergreen has completely redone the alerts/messages in patron accounts, so we hope that this will address the issue. If not, please let us know when we roll it out for testing this summer.
Do you have suggestions on how it can be improved? What would make it more functional when adding or editing an account?
This is a bug that we’ve figured out the cause of and believe we have a solution to. We hope to have this resolved very soon.
We weren’t aware of this bug. We’ll investigate.
We've added a LaunchPad bug for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1981506
This kind of fuzzy searching was also suggested for catalog searches. We’ll investigate if it is available for the staff patron search as well.
We welcome ideas for ways to make it more user friendly.
There will be some changes coming to the column changer in version 3.9 coming this fall. I hope this meets your needs.
We're investigating whether this is something we can fix or whether we need to submit a Launchpad bug.
We know that change can be hard, and that living with known issues, bugs or interfaces that don’t meet your needs can be frustrating too. One of the benefits of using open source software is that the Evergreen community is always working to improve it, which means it is constantly changing and evolving. We hope we’re always moving forward, but sometimes the changes may not meet your expectations. We'd encourage you to engage with some of the groups that test and design some of these changes so that your experience and feedback can be part of the process. We'll include more details at the end on how you can get involved.
We’re happy to investigate this. We rolled out Summon for the majority of Cardinal libraries several years ago at the request of member libraries. I see that Bibliocommons works with Evergreen, so I’ve reached out to them to learn more.
I think the community as a whole is moving away from dedicated software installations with the move from the XUL client to the web browser based software.
We weren’t able to find the link you’re mentioning (sounds like the link you’re referring to was using http rather than https) but if you can submit a ticket with more details we can help address this.
We agree! The default Evergreen reports module is not intuitive and is difficult to learn. We’re excited to see that our upcoming upgrade this fall will include a new simplified reports tool that is in addition to the existing Reporter. We’ve seen it demonstrated at the Evergreen Reports Interest Group and the Annual Conference. We hope that this will make reports more approachable for most users.
If there’s a specific bug that you’re dealing with, we’d like to learn more so that we can investigate.
We’re open to suggestions on how we can improve these report templates. If you have something specific that you need, please submit a ticket so that we can help.
If you can submit a ticket with information on the report you're running and the items that linger, we're happy to work with you to figure this out.
If you can let us know which shared report templates these are when you encounter them, we’re happy to try to fix them or remove them. We’ve been working lately to clean up and organize our existing shared reports and welcome this kind of feedback.
Deduplicating records in the catalog is a continuing goal for us. We're always trying to walk the line between merging everything that should be merged and not merging things that shouldn't be on the same record. Each year we try to dial it in a bit more and also encourage catalogers to improve the quality of the less complete records so that the process can see what bibs match.
This was what led us to put together the Cataloging Best Practices. Its challenging having so many people working in the shared catalog and trying to make sure that everyone is up to date on the best way to work collaboratively with their peers in the catalog. One of the other tools that we've rolled out recently was the Cardinal Cataloging Reports available at the bottom of the Cataloging drop down menu in the green bar at the top of Evergreen. These are some standardized reports of common issues for catalogers to address. We're happy to add other reports if you have suggestions on common errors we can highlight.
We can talk in the Cataloging Committee about how to address this.
After our shelving location consolidation a few summers ago, we're always trying to prevent the creep of adding more and more shelving locations, while still meeting the needs of everyone that uses the system. Perhaps the Cataloging Committee can revisit our guidelines on when we make new shelving locations and what kind of information they need to have.
One of the things the Cardinal team has been working on lately is Acquisitions. We can add Serials to the list next.
This is an area we’ve put a lot of effort into in the past few years and a key aspect to the support we offer. We’re always working to add more content and make sure that the content is logically structured and up to date. We’ll look into what options we have for improving the Knowledge Book search, or options such as adding more tags to the contents.
That’s great! Part of our intention with adding the links in the survey was to bring people’s attention to things we may think of but that everyone may not be aware of.
We agree! We’ve been working the last few years to improve our online documentation in the Knowledge Books and had plans for cataloger and circulation round tables before the pandemic hit. With Samantha joining our team, we’re strategizing on what we can do to meet your needs. We recently offered Admin training for the first time and would love to offer more sessions on topics like authorities and subject headings. If you're interested in helping to train your peers on something like this, please reach out to us!
Right now we try to get all of the circulation training into one day since it usually means the library has to close down so everyone can be there. In a lot of ways, the live sessions are an introduction to the training content we have offline that we want you to be familiar with when you have questions down the road. We’re open to suggestions on how we can do better.
We've offered an updated reports training recently and will definitely be including this in our future offerings.
We’re trying to provide better training like our Niche Academy offerings ( https://my.nicheacademy.com/nccardinal ) that allows you to work through the training at your own pace.
This is probably more than the Cardinal team has the staffing to offer, but there may be someone in your library that can help. We also hope that we can offer more regionalized gatherings in the future that will help meet your needs.
We’re not quite sure what you mean here, but happy to hear your ideas.
We'll offer this feedback to the Basecamp team and see if there are any practices we can suggest to reduce the extra email traffic. There are some settings in Basecamp that help you dial in what kind of notifications you receive.
We hear you. With April's departure, we didn't do as good of a job alerting everyone to the authorities cataloging freeze timeline, but this spring we've made a concerted effort to let catalogers know each step of the process.
We'd welcome ideas on how to facilitate this. Our Resource Sharing Basecamp group is our intended venue for these kinds of conversations, but there may be better ways that a message board blast to everyone in the group. Before the pandemic we were planning on having some regional round table gatherings and we’ve been working our way back towards how we can help facilitate better connection and communication.
Many of the changes are made on a broader Evergreen community level and that's a great venue to get involved with and make your voice heard. There's more information about this at the end. We as the Cardinal team will also heed this advice as well when we're considering changes.
We do connect with individuals on the list, but this kind of thing is done directly in private with the individual. If you have concerns about a post, let us know.
Thanks!
We appreciate all of the feedback. We don't consider the move to FedEx to be final until North Carolina signs on to a new UPS contract and we learn more about the terms. As you experience issues that you'd like us to pass on to our FedEx rep, we encourage you to fill out the Resource Sharing Incident Report so that we can pass on the information and seek a resolution.
At this point we’re about six months in to using FedEx and we’re not seeing big differences in delivery time when we ran our annual statistics.
This is something we’re actively working on, altering the holds targeting process so that it targets the closest physical copy rather than going to just any library across the state if your library system doesn’t have a copy.
Unfortunately, the contract we were participating in was negotiated by a large group of states, rather than us as an individual institution. We’re continuing to look at options, but thus fr it doesn’t appear North Carolina has signed on to a new UPS contract.
As it is, our ability to resource share relies on us having a shared catalog that facilitates all of the technical processes associated with placing holds and processing incoming materials. We’ve investigated other software such as an open source tool called Fulfillment that works with Evergreen, but thus far it doesn’t connect with many other ILS systems. In addition to the technical hurdles, there’s also a financial aspect.
We’re happy to customize your library system’s notices to meet your needs. If you need a tweak like this, please submit a ticket and we’re happy to help.
Looks like this is possible! We’re looking at how to implement this.
Unfortunately, the way SMS messages are sent, they’re actually an email with the users phone number before the @ sign. The “carrier” information tells Evergreen what to put after the @ sign in the email address.
When preferred names were implemented (I believe we first got them with our Fall 2021 upgrade to 3.7.2) we didn’t make a big push to update the patron notices, but we can fix this.
We try to walk a fine line between library autonomy and consistency. Generally, we try not to impose rules on member libraries and dictate what their policies are, unless it has an impact on other libraries through resource sharing. Our goal is to make your experience of Evergreen customizable and flexible, while keeping the administration and maintenance of the software from getting too complex.
Library staff can place title holds on items before the six month age hold protection is up, so that as soon as a copy is available your users can get their hands on it. That six month age hold protection embargo is an important part of library systems being willing to share their collections. We don’t want a situation where you buy a bunch of new books for your collection and immediately they all disappear to other libraries in the state while your patrons are waiting to read them.
We hear you. We don’t want to let perfect be the enemy of good. When library staff share accounts and passwords which provide access to patron data, that’s a risk if libraries aren’t proactively changing passwords when team members leave. We’re trying to do more than we have in this area and we’re one of the first consortia to make these kinds of steps to do so. The larger Evergreen community has been discussing the best way to provide security for staff accounts and really patron data and whether things like multi-factor authentication is feasible in a public library environment.
We can see about doing this. We need to find a way to make it clear to staff when the libraries are active in Evergreen and for resource sharing. This past year we added all of the joining libraries to Evergreen early on and caused some confusion because there’s no way to hide them from the staff view. We then had one of the systems have to delay their migration indefinitely, and it is difficult to delete an organizational unit in Evergreen once it is created. We also had people trying to send packages to one of the systems months before they began migrating. We’ll try to find a way to put out the information while making it clear of their current status.
One of our current projects has been consulting with library systems to help them understand their library settings and what options they have set and available. This has led us to want to do just what you’re suggesting: having a process where we can work with libraries to help them understand what current circulation and hold policies they have, see if they match their needs and help them update them as needed. We expect we might kick this off this coming winter.
The Cardinal team doesn't make decisions on what member libraries have in their collections, so its probably best to talk to your library leadership about this.
Support tickets are the core of what we do every day and our first line of interaction with all of you. We’re always working to improve our knowledge and effectiveness so that we can quickly address the issues you’re facing and resolve them. Most straightforward requests can be resolved quickly. Sometimes it takes us longer on really challenging tickets to try different solutions, work with our vendor, talk to the Evergreen community and figure out how to help.
We appreciate the opportunity to serve the public libraries of North Carolina. We know that you spend a lot of time working in Evergreen every day and it has a huge impact on how you accomplish your work and how you serve your patrons. We’re always striving to improve the performance of Evergreen, the administration of the software, the integrity of the catalog’s data, the training opportunities, and the service you receive when you need help. Thank you for your feedback and thank you for thinking critically about how we can improve Cardinal and Evergreen. We hope this is the beginning of a discussion and we welcome further feedback and clarification on your comments.
Evergreen software is open source, meaning it is developed by a community of users across the world. This community has a variety of mailing lists and interest groups where you can learn about what's happening with the software, ask questions and be involved with the future development of the software. Your voice is important here and this is a great opportunity to be involved in the development of Evergreen over time as it changes.
Every fall, Cardinal upgrades our Evergreen software to be more in line with the current developments of the software. Before we roll out the changes, we install the new software on a testing server we call "next", which allows you to log in using your regular login credentials and play with a snapshot of your user and catalog data in the new software before we actually install the updates for everyone to use. We'll announce when this new version is ready for review on our General Discussion Basecamp group and then have a Basecamp group specifically for people testing the new version to share their feedback. Playing around with the new version before we roll it out gives us the opportunity to identify problems and fix them before we roll it out for everyone, so this testing process on next is really valuable.
If you have an issue that you need help with you can create a ticket by filling out our Request for Assistance form or sending an email to help@nccardinalsupport.org
You can interact with the Basecamp groups through the website or by responding to the messages via your email. Basecamp has the benefit of being a space where staff members from Cardinal libraries can ask questions of their peers and find the answers without the Cardinal team.
Thank you for taking time to respond to our Annual Staff Survey. We’ve compiled your responses to the following questions in the Annual Survey:
We appreciate the thoughtful and detailed comments you’ve offered. We want to be accountable to your input and transparent in our responses, so we've have tried to respond to everything as best we can.
Some comments we can provide answers to now, some are things the Cardinal team can work on in the months ahead and others relate to the design and functionality of the Evergreen software as a whole. The community of people building and maintaining Evergreen use a tool called Launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen) to report problems, make suggestions for improvements to the software and monitor the progress of fixes. If your suggestion was a problem or improvement to the Evergreen software that we couldn’t find on Launchpad, we’ve added it and shared a link to the request. If we found an existing request that aligned with what you said, we’ve shared the link to it so that you can follow the progress of addressing the issue.
In some instances, we may have questions about the issue you mention. In general, if you want to submit further details or follow up on a suggestion the best way is to email us at help@nccardinalsupport.org Sometimes screenshots or more detail can help us understand what you mean.
Thank you for your feedback and helping us to improve Evergreen and the support that we offer to you and your patrons.
Benjamin Murphy, NC Cardinal Program Manager
The following comments asked for more direct involvement in Evergreen development:
Our response:
This feedback from the annual survey is really helpful. The majority of the suggestions relate to the way Evergreen is designed. We can contribute suggestions and have a Developer on the Cardinal team, but there’s a large community of Developers working on Evergreen and the decision-making process for features and changes involves a lot of other people and opinions.
Fix integration with the NCLive resource "NoveList Plus" - it should be linked to our catalog records, but is not, which means we're reliant on the Evergreen search interface which is not great.
We’ve recently fixed an issue with NoveList integration this spring. If your library is still having issues, please submit a ticket so that we can investigate.
Connecting NC Cardinal to a point of sale system so we can track other expenses besides late or lost fees for materials.
Stripe was added recently and SmartPAY is being added in 3.11. The larger Evergreen community also seems to be interested in making Evergreen work with more payment providers.
When something is in transit from one of our branches to another, even if it is not on hold, it has to go there and then come back before I can do anything with it (or am I missing something?).
If you’re a cataloger, and the item is not headed to the hold shelf at that branch, you can change your workstation so that Evergreen thinks you’re operating at the branch it is trying to go to. When you’re done making changes though, you’ll need to change it back to the location you're actually working at.
UPDATES/UPGRADES
The following comments asked for more communication about the upgrade process:
Our response:
Our typical process is to ask for involvement from member libraries in summer and fall to scrutinize the changes of upcoming versions ahead of time and then we summarize what we believe to be the biggest impacts of upcoming upgrades. We have webinars and documentation going over the new features and make those available for staff if they’re not able to attend. Most of this communication happens in Basecamp and in the Knowledge Books (https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.book&id=10). We welcome any other suggestions on how we can help spread the message ahead of time.
Others had comments about the process of developing the upgrades:
Our response:
Most of the changes made to the Evergreen software are made by the larger Evergreen development community, rather than the Cardinal team. The best way to make your voice heard on what’s useful or unnecessary is to be a part of those discussions and groups as the decisions are being made. A great place to start is to join the Evergreen mailing lists, like the General Discussion that are available here: https://evergreen-ils.org/communicate/mailing-lists/
The following comments requested specific timing for upgrades:
Our response:
We do our annual upgrades over the weekend as much as possible in an attempt to avoid disrupting staff functionality. The process can take time, so we try to find an opportunity that has the least impact on the Cardinal community.
The following comment spoke to upgrades for the catalog interface:
Our response:
For the holds, have you tried the View Holds tab in the staff title record? Does that suit your purposes? You should be able to see the ISBN in the search results of the staff search, if the information is present in the bib record, but you’re correct that genre only shows up once you click into the title record from the search results. I’m not sure I understand what you’re experiencing with the Patron View. The records should show both barcode and status. We may not be understanding what you’re seeing, so feel free to reach out to us at help@nccardinalsupport.org if we’re misunderstanding.
The following bullet points all reflect the same concept: Improve performance.
Our Response:
This is a topic we’re always working to improve. We’ve worked with Mobius over the years to monitor the performance and automatically restart servers that are getting bogged down, and to dynamically add additional servers when we’re seeing heavy traffic. It is always a moving target. We’ve recently reconfigured some of our “utility” servers that run processes in the background due to issues we were having with patron notices and reports. We appreciate the tickets and posts on the Basecamp Incidents list to let us know when you're seeing issues so we can address them promptly.
Several comments requested the ability for staff to see patron circulation history, or to have circulation history automatically turned on in patron accounts. Individual comments are listed below:
Our Response:
We can understand how this would be useful. Evergreen developers made an intentional design decision to let patrons choose to opt-in to history tracking via the My Account section of the OPAC, so that patrons know about and manage the information available about their activity.
Several respondents asked for specific customizations to the search interface:
Our Response:
With the variety of suggestions about how staff members would like their search functionality to work, in general, more ability to configure and customize your preferences for search results and display is needed. So, for instance, choosing how to sort or group the results, what they exclude by default, etc. We’ve added a LaunchPad wishlist request for the ability to customize search results.
Additional comments focused specifically on how electronic materials are included in search results:
We’ve added a LaunchPad wishlist request for sorting results by format type.
There were a variety of suggestions involving how item information is displayed in search results:
We’ve made this change and will be rolling it out soon.
We’ve added series information to the quick summary display and are rolling it out soon. By reader advisory information, you mean Novelist content that’s currently in the “Awards, Reviews, & Suggested Reads” section? That content varies according to what various Cardinal libraries subscribe to. What if we have a link up high on the record that expands that section and jumps the view down to that area?
It is impossible to view the entire line in the catalog filters (look at the filter "Adult Foreign Language"--you cannot see which languages and therefore cannot select a filter)
We’re looking into how to fix this issue. It looks like after about 25 characters the shelving location names are hidden.
In the patron search screen (F4), we often have to switch back and forth from searching our local library to searching Cardinal. The highlighting to type over text function works half of the time when switching from Cardinal to Transylvania. It would be nice if it worked more smoothly, assuming that is something you can control. Thanks!
We will investigate whether we can highlight the entire text in the field when you click on it, rather than having to use your mouse to select the text.
In addition to the specific issues listed above, several comments requested improved accuracy and a more user-friendly experience in the catalog interface:
Our Response:
We agree! Search and the discoverability of content in the catalog is the heart of what we need Evergreen to do well. The community continues to try to improve the tools we have now as well as looking at entirely new tools like Elasticsearch (https://www.elastic.co/what-is/elasticsearch) We will continue to advocate for improvements.
Our response:
Given the nature of ever-changing development and change of software, the traditional catalog isn’t likely to be with us for a whole lot longer. We’d welcome your suggestions on how we can continue to improve the catalog and fix things that aren’t working to your satisfaction.
Comment:
Our response:
Are there specific things we can put in wishlist requests for?
A number of survey respondents expressed interest in developing a "smart search" feature that can autocomplete or understand mis-spellings and typos. These comments are listed below:
Our response:
A more efficient Smart search functionality that offers suggested search terms is expected in our upcoming upgrade and we hope to test this out. Previous versions slowed down the system, so we decided to not turn them on because they negatively impacted the search times.
Several comments were specific to the catalog and search interface in the staff client:
Our Response:
Do you mean for instance when you’re looking at the Item Table tab, being able to filter out items of specific statuses so you can see only things that are available?
Comment
Our response:
We need to investigate this more. We found a variety of bug reports related to "Group Formats / Editions" but not sure that any related to this specifically. We would appreciate it if you could send us screenshots to help@nccardinalsupport.org of any instances like this you find so that we can investigate exactly what is going on behind the scenes.
Comment:
Our response:
Do you mean in the initial list of search results? Is this something you’d like in the staff search or the public search?
Comment:
Our response:
Are you referring to the content in the “Awards, Reviews, & Suggested Reads” section of the public record? There’s some information in the “Record details” section of the public display. Are there other fields from the MARC content we should add?
Comment:
Our response:
We’ve talked recently with Mobius about removing the Age Hold Protection label after the six months has passed so that it doesn’t confuse users and draws more attention to the status when it is relevant.
Comment:
Our response:
We found a current Launchpad wishlist item for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1424690.
Many respondents commented on an issue with how the search interface excludes electronic resources:
Our response:
We’ve discovered that there are some things we can do to improve the "exclude electronic resources" and are working with the Cataloging Committee to update the criteria of what is excluded.
The following comments are about the way the search interface scopes by library:
Our response:
To help us troubleshoot this, it would be helpful to know what you have listed in your “Default Search Library” and “Preferred Library” fields when you go to the Administration and then Workstation menu in Evergreen. We suggest setting your library system as your “Preferred Library” If you’re a cataloger, we usually suggest Cardinal as your “Default Search Library” but you also can use your library system.
Comment:
Response:
It could be that there are other matches in the authority records of those results for the search term you entered. We’d welcome screenshots of such instances so we can investigate what’s going on.
Comment:
Response:
Do you mean for instance having a search facet on the left hand side of the search results that lists audience or literary form (the 008 LitF field) options so that you could limit your results by those values, rather than having to select it in the Advanced Search fields? The content in 650 subfield v might be a place we could build these kinds of selections from in addition to the 008 LitF.
Comment:
Response:
If you click on one shelving location or audience in the list, and then hold down the Ctrl key and click on another shelving location or audience in the list, you’re able to select more than one at a time.
Comment:
Response:
Title is a more efficient search for the database and more precise, but when we suggested changing that over to the default the majority of the feedback we heard is that it may cause confusion for users who benefit from the fuzziness of the keyword search.
Several survey respondents expressed streamlining the interface:
Our response:
This is something we’re always advocating for in the development of the Evergreen software. As daily users, we welcome suggestions you have as you use the software on how it can be improved.
List all column managements preferences in Alpha order.
We’ve added a Launchpad wishlist request for alphabetizing the column management preferences.
There were several requests for changes to the way baskets are displayed:
Our response:
These suggestions seem to be echoed by the larger Evergreen community. There are a few open requests relevant to baskets, such as https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1833565 https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1749475 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1899408
The following requests are related to placing holds from baskets or buckets:
Our Response:
We’re not sure if you mean 1.) Having a bucket of items and placing a hold for multiple patrons for those items or 2) Having a bucket of items and placing a hold for all of those items for a single patron in one process. #1 is possible using a feature called Hold Groups which may be useful for book clubs or popular authors: https://docs.evergreen-ils.org/eg/docs/latest/circulation/basic_holds.html#hold_groups #2 is possible by selecting the checkboxes next to the items in the search results, which adds them to the basket, and then going to the Basket Actions dropdown and choosing Place Hold
The following comments requested improvements to the Booking Module:
Our Response:
The bookings Module has seen a variety of improvements in the last few years, but is still actively in development. Click here for a list of the current open bugs and wishlist items.
Comment:
Our response:
I’m not sure if this is the limitation you’re hitting, but Evergreen has some protected statuses where items are in an open transaction status (like checked out or in transit) that are prevented from being deleted before that transaction is resolved. Details on this can be found here: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=80
Some comments focused on the number of clicks needed to perform cataloging tasks:
Our response:
We typically recommend hitting the F5 button to get the Item Status screen and then scanning the barcode. From there the Action Menu allows you to choose Edit Items if that’s your goal. You may also find that displaying additional columns on your Item Status screen helps to show you the information you need? It may be helpful to see a screenshot or description of your process to understand what you mean.
Comment:
Our response:
Has the recent ability to upload covers helped, rather than relying on Open Library? Are there parts of it that are challenging or need redesign?
Comment:
Our response:
Its challenging because the Evergreen software is always changing and sometimes the changes don’t work great at first or take time to adjust to.
Comment:
Our response:
We’d be interested to hear more about the aspects of printing spine labels that are challenging.
Comment:
Our response:
We’d agree that it hasn’t seen the same level of development as for instance the Acquisitions Module is currently getting but we've heard from the Evergreen community that once the Acquisitions Module gets some attention upgrading the Serials Module is on the horizon.
Several comments requested keyboard shortcuts for circ functions:
Our response:
We’ve added a Launchpad wishlist request for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2027721.
Comment:
Response:
Do you mean the barcode formatting (Codabar vs. Code39) or RFIDs?
Comment:
Response:
In the Detail View of Item Status this is visible in the field Total Circs. We added a LaunchPad wishlist request to make this an option to display in the List View: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2027805 It looks like this will be available in our next upgrade.
Comment:
Response:
We’ve added a Launchpad wishlist request for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2027806.
Comment:
Response:
We’d welcome more details on suggestions you have for making it easier to work with.
Comment:
Response:
We found a LaunchPad request for this same functionality: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1862982.
Comment:
Response:
Do you mean receiving some kind of notification at the circ desk when an item at your location is placed on hold instead of having to check the Holds Pull List?
The following comments addressed age-hold protection:
Our Response:
I asked the Evergreen community about this and was told that even when you see the ITEM_AGE_PROTECTED message, the hold will be recorded but just won’t be able to be filled until one of the potential items rolls off of age hold protection. If you see ITEM_AGE_PROTECTED as a staff member, you should be able to override that error message.
Several comments asked for changes to the way hold queues are managed:
Our Response:
The way Evergreen handles holds, there is not a strict queue. The order that users place their holds is generally the order the holds targeter tries to fill them but there is a process called opportunistic holds whereby if a user returns an item to a branch, Evergreen checks to see if there are any holds for that title at that branch before sending the copy down to road to fill another hold. Also, if a copy is targeted at a branch and that library doesn’t pull their holds in timely manner, Evergreen will look for another copy to target, shuffling that user’s place in line.
The following comments address the process of cancelling holds:
Our response:
We’re open to suggestions on how to make it more efficient. Do you find the process from the bib record or the patron account more cumbersome?
Comment:
Response:
In the staff search? Have you tried rerunning your search with the “Results from All Libraries” checkbox checked? We’d be interested to learn more about what you mean. A screenshot might be helpful.
Comment:
Response:
Have you tried the Request Items from the Action Menu in the Item Status screen? Any suggestions on how it can be improved?
Several respondents had comments about eh hold pull list:
Our response:
We now have the ability to create a custom Print Template for your Holds List. https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=823 If you reach out at help@nccardinalsupport.org, we can set one up for your branch or your system.
Comment:
Response:
Libraries can have varying policies for their users to be able to request more items from their collections, but thus far we’ve settled on a limit of 25 concurrent holds for resource sharing items in an effort to balance demand on outside libraries.
Comment:
Response:
We expect the Traditional Catalog to eventually go away, so we’d welcome suggestions on specific aspects of the traditional hold process that you like, or ways the current hold placing interface could be improved.
Comment:
Response:
When you check the Limit To Available at the top of the staff search interface, what kinds of materials is it showing that you’d like to exclude? We’re happy to submit a Launchpad wishlist request if we can pin down the specifics of what we need to ask.
Comment:
Response:
We’re open to suggestions on ways that we can improve the process.
Comment:
Response:
So, something like “group print” versus “group electronic” or “group audio”? The Group Item Formats seems to be a developing idea for placing holds on a broad range of potential candidates and as I understand it the ability to distinguish which formats are acceptable on the hold screen is where the developers give you the option to exclude formats from your hold.
Several respondents commented on difficulties saving patron information when creating new accounts:
Our response:
We’d like to learn more about this. We’d appreciate any screenshots you can send us to help@nccardinalsupport.org so we can investigate.
The following comments address difficulties using the patron registration form:
Our response:
It looks like this is what the “Required Fields” link was intended to be, but when you click on that it doesn’t remove all the fields that aren’t required. We’re looking into whether this is something we can fix locally, or if this is a bug in Evergreen we can request a fix for.
Comment:
Our response:
We’re happy to assist you with accomplishing this if you reach out at help@nccardinalsupport.org. On a smaller scale it is possible through patron buckets, but if you’re wanting to do it at a larger scale we can assist.
Comment:
Our response:
Is there a place on the patron record that would be better to have it displayed? Somewhere over on the left side?
Comment:
Our response:
We’ve added a LaunchPad wishslist request for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2027821.
Comment:
Our response:
Our current policy was based on not wanting patron information to linger around too long. This is configurable per library system, so send us a message at help@nccardinalsupport.org and we can update it for your system.
Comment:
Our response:
We were unable to find such a request in LaunchPad. We’ve asked the Evergreen community whether this was an intentional design decision for patron privacy concerns, or just never considered yet.
Comment:
Our response:
We’ve found that there is a current wishlist request for this https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1979086.
Comment:
Our response:
We’d be interested to hear more details on ideas to make it better.
The following comments requested more training for everyone:
Our Response:
We will continue to expand our training in the coming year, including live trainings as well as increasing the amount of material in the Niche Academy and video content on our YouTube channel.
Comment:
Response:
We will continue to expand our online training sessions in the coming year and will work on including a session specific to reports.
The following comments requested more frequent training:
Our Response:
We will be providing regional in-person training in the upcoming year. Keep an eye out for scheduling information for your region. You will also have the opportunity to share requests for training content.
Several respondents requested training in offline mode:
Our response:
We will continue to expand our online training sessions in the coming year, and will work on including sessions on offline mode.
Several respondents requested training in reports:
Our response:
We will continue to expand our online training sessions in the coming year, and will work on including report-specific sessions. For Simple Reports, a good place to start is with the Simple Reporter training exercises: https://my.nicheacademy.com/nccardinal/course/57109
The following comments are requests for training in search the catalog:
Our response:
We will work on developing new training materials on effective catalog searching.
The following comments requested more training on the process of cataloging:
Our response:
We will work on providing some catalog training sessions in the coming year and will begin the process of developing a cataloging boot camp with expert catalogers.
Comment:
Response:
We can work on developing training materials for resource sharing in the upcoming year.
Several respondents wanted more online training, both live and pre-corded or self-paced:
Our response:
We will continue to expand our online, live training sessions in the coming year, as well as add new materials to our Niche Academy and new videos to our YouTube channel. If you have a specific training need, please contact Samantha O'Connor at samantha.oconnor@dncr.nc.gov
Comment:
Response:
Documentation is available in our Knowledge Books, at https://nccardinalsupport.org/ If there is a specific topic or process not covered in the Knowledge Books, please contact Samantha O'Connor at samantha.oconnor@dncr.nc.gov about having it added.
The following comments requested in-person training:
Our response:
We will be providing regional in-person trainings in the upcoming year. Keep an eye out for scheduling information for your region. You will also have the opportunity to share requests for training content.
The following comments are related to committees:
Our response:
Discussions are underway within the committees and on the Cardinal team to determine how to better broadcast committee updates with the wider Cardinal audience
The following comments all relate to communication from the Cardinal team to library staff, or communication between staff at different member libraries:
Our response:
We rely heavily on Basecamp to get the word out, so if you’re not on the General Discussion list there, that’s the first place to start. Other than that, communication is something we need to keep working on. I like the idea of having regularly scheduled meetings for specific interest groups like cataloging, circulation or resource sharing.
The following respondents commented on the volume of communication on Basecamp:
Our Response:
This past year, everyone on the Cardinal team added (NCC) to our names, so that if you’d like to be able to filter the messages from other users from the messages posted by the Cardinal team, you have a way to tell the difference. You’d need to set up filters in your mail client though to treat these messages differently or put them in a different mailbox.
Another comment about content on Basecamp:
Our response:
Yes, we try to keep it positive, informative and supportive. Often times we’ll reach out on the side and encourage direct communication or act as a diplomat when issues arise. But it's true, we are a community of users and there are frustrations at times if people are working cross-purpose or make mistakes. We try to encourage folks to communicate directly and in good faith when issues come up.
The following comments all refer to the Knowledge Books:
Our response:
We have begun a project to re-format the knowledge books to ensure consistent navigation and formatting, as well as a re-assessment of the current content to identify areas for improved organization and the need for new content.
Comment:
Response:
Generally the Resource Sharing lists in the Knowledge Books are the best place to go for this. We also have a list on the NC Cardinal website.
Comment:
Response:
The electronic resource management process we implemented in 2020 allows us to remove electronic resources in batch by providing a file of the resources we’ve lost access to. If you come across something that you don’t have access to, let us know via ticket so that we can make sure we’re up to date on the deletions or work with you to get a list from your vendor of the materials you no longer have access to.
The following comments all requested work to clean-up and maintain the catalog:
Our response:
I like the idea, though its difficult to increase the size of the Cardinal team. Our model has been a shared catalog with shared responsibilities. One of the things we’re focusing on as a team is how can we find ways to efficiently highlight issues and inconsistencies in the catalog and make it easy for catalogers to review and fix them. We’ve sent out some reports to member libraries like Orphaned Bibs. There’s also the Cataloging Reports that we need to continue promoting and developing: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=870
The following are all related to the deduplication process:
Our response:
We did another round of our annual deduplication process this spring and are now trying to find ways to improve the process. Part of this may be identifying records that need attention so that we can ask catalogers to improve them in ways that will make them easier to dedup (like if they’re missing an ISBN or don’t have a format icon.)
Many respondents requested updates to cataloging standards, as well as improved oversight of those standards:
Our response:
Best Practices and consistency are also really important to us. The experience of using the catalog and the effectiveness of search results are all based on the quality and consistency of the data we have in the catalog. We are approaching this a few different ways, through an emphasis on training and documentation as well as trying to identify issues that we can highlight for catalogers to fix. Much of our training in the past has been targeted to new systems, but we’re planning on offering more regular courses in the upcoming year on cataloging and circulation tasks for new and existing users.
Request:
Our response:
We subscribed tor access to the RDA toolkit for a few years but stopped the subscription due to low usage.
We had many comments about the reports interface in general:
Our response:
This is probably our most frequently suggested training topic. We agree that the traditional reporter is not intuitive and has a steep learning curve. We’ve been pleased to see the development and release of Simple Reports and will continue to provide training on that as well as the traditional Reporter.
Some responses singled out the availability of templates:
Our response:
We generally create templates based on tickets we receive and then share them if we think they’ll be of interest to a broader audience. We’re open to suggestions! A list of currently available templates can be found in the Knowledge Books.
And one request for a specific template:
Our response:
That sounds like a report we can make! Once we have finalized the template, we will reach out directly with information about setting up your recurrence schedule.
All comments about notices are below:
Our response:
We’ve been keeping a close eye on the utility server and making changes to the ways our notices are run to try to address the delays we’ve seen. We realize that notices are time sensitive and an important channel of communication with your patrons.
HOLD TARGETING
All comments regarding the hold targeter functionality are below:
Our response:
We are on the cusp of rolling out changes that will begin altering Evergreen’s default mechanism for choosing which copy at another library is chosen to fill a hold. This should speed things up a bit, hopefully reduce costs and make the logic a bit more reasonable to a human.
Some comments expressed concerns about damaged items:
To provide a response, we need a little more context:
Do you mean the libraries themselves being held accountable when their patrons lose items rather than just the patrons themselves?
Some comments requested shipping policies:
Our response:
We currently recommend that libraries ship out at least once a week if they don’t have much going to a specific library. Perhaps it is time to review and update our recommendations in the Knowledge Books and publicize them a bit more.
Comment:
Response:
Do you mean from within your county or regional system, or to be able to pick from a list of potential libraries?
Requests for more frequent status checks:
Response:
We’re happy to emphasize this more.
Suggestions for best practices:
Response:
I think in general we need to do some work this year to emphasize our resource sharing best practices and make sure everyone is operating from the same expectations.
Comment:
Response:
Generally the way holds work is the system is constantly fishing around for available copies and adapting if an item isn’t pulled. So, it can be hard to know how far away something will be coming from at the time of placing the hold.
Comment:
Response:
That’s completely logical. We’ve made a small tweak that should make this happen. We’d be interested to know if you see any change.
Several respondents wanted to return to UPS:
Our response:
We’re investigating the possibility of returning to UPS. We’ll let you know more when we know more!
A couple of comments were related to delivery windows:
Our response:
We have some ability to adjust delivery and pickup windows, but it is a range of time rather than a scheduled time. If you reach out to help@nccardinasupport.org we can tell you what your current window is and adjust it if needed.
Several respondents requested more detailed transit information:
Our response:
I like this idea! Some systems keep more detailed tracking by scanning the items in their packages and associating them with a FedEx tracking number. Implementing this broadly might be daunting because of the amount of additional item level scanning needed. There are templates for using Excel or Google Sheets to track more robustly, which you can find on this page: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=357
Comment:
Our response:
This is a favorite topic of Benjamin’s. Its a great way to know what’s happening and to be a part of the design decisions while they’re happening, rather than just when we upgrade. A great place to start is the Evergreen community mailing lists: https://evergreen-ils.org/communicate/mailing-lists/
Comment:
Response:
Do you mean a new shelving location or format icon?
Some comments about growing the consortium:
Our response:
We’re happy to welcome anyone that is interested.
Comment:
Our response:
We’re happy to do this for any library that requests it. Contact us at help@nccardinalsupport.org
Comment:
Our response:
If it were to functionally behave differently than a typical Juvenile or Young Adult account, and was broadly supported across the consortium we’d consider it.
Comment:
Accountability
Our response:
Its a privilege to support your library. We want to be responsive to your needs and accountable for the things we’re responsible for. One of the reasons we started publicly responding to the staff survey is that we wanted to be accountable for the responses that you share with us.
There were a few comments specifically about the multi-card policy:
Our response:
This is a topic we’re discussing in the User Experience Committee now. We’d like to make sure we have a clear, consistent and functional policy across Cardinal.
Comments related to permissions are below:
Our response:
We’ve begun offering training to administrators and have been bringing SLAMs more into local administration. In general, if library administrators are more empowered, it can ease the workload of the Cardinal team. It does however require training, documentation and shared up to date knowledge so that we’re all working well together. Some things like circ and hold policies function as an integrated system and so we need to administer those centrally with an eye towards making them consistent and cooperative.
Comment:
Response:
We’re open to ideas on how we can help. We’re planning on having regional in-person training and networking sessions this year, and hope that it will be an opportunity to learn more about ways we can support your needs.
Thank you everyone for your kind words, helpful suggestions and thoughtful critique. We strive to provide excellent customer service and a professional service to meet the needs of your library and your patrons.
Each year in our Annual Staff Survey, we have a few open-ended questions we ask to solicit your thoughts.
This has been a great opportunity to get your feedback and figure out what we need to focus on. Some comments we can reply to with solutions or links to documentation that may help. Some suggestions may take some planning, so we’ve added them to our "To Do" list. Other times, we may ask for more information or clarification on what your thoughts are. We may think you're saying one thing when you're really saying something else, so forgive us if our reply misses the point. We appreciate the feedback, so if you're able to offer more detail or point us in the right direction, feel free to email us at help@nccardinalsupport.org
For changes to the Evergreen software that are out of our direct control, we’ve created a wishlist or bug report in the Evergreen community’s LaunchPad tool. (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen) This is the tool that the Evergreen development community uses to discuss and track software updates. If we found an existing Launchpad request that matched your suggestion, we've shared a link to it, otherwise we added your suggestion to Launchpad and shared a link to it. We encourage you to review those links, comment, “add heat”, or follow the progress of addressing the issue. (You will need to create a free account on Launchpad in order to comment or add heat to something.)
In general, if you want to submit further details or follow up on a suggestion the best way is to email us at help@nccardinalsupport.org Generally, screenshots of error messages, barcodes for patrons or items, TCNs and other such details may help us understand what you’re encountering.
We really appreciate the thoughtful feedback everyone has offered. We want to be accountable to your input and transparent in our responses, so we've tried to respond to everything as best we can.
Benjamin Murphy, NC Cardinal Program Manager
Search functionality
The search functionality is really at the core of Evergreen and one of the most important parts of the effectiveness of the software. We have made some tweaks in the last year, like adding MARC fields to search indexes to try to improve our results. Due to how integrated it is into the software, Cardinal generally has to rely on the larger Evergreen development community for improvements to search.
We'd also like to see some more modern search behavior in Evergreen, which helps users get closer to what they're looking for if they aren't precise in what they search for. Many of these sorts of core elements of the software take time for such big changes. As mentioned last year, we've been talking about how we might be able to support the implementation of Elasticsearch (https://www.elastic.co/elasticsearch) We'll keep on pushing for improvements.
This should be the case when you have Sort by Relevance chosen in the search options. That being said, the process of assigning relevance is part of the inner workings of the search process may have unexpected conclusions about what is relevant. If you see any unexpected results, we're happy to investigate.
We'd be interested to learn more details that we can investigate or suggestions you may have for improvements.
On the staff side, subject headings are clickable in the Staff View tab of the bib record. Would it be helpful for them to be links as well in the MARC View tab?
Due to the way an author search performs currently, if you include additional information that is not included in the author field of the MARC record (=100 field), then you will not receive results for that author. Using John E. Ross as an example, the =100 field includes the information "Ross, John, 1946-" with no E. So if you search for "Through the Mountains" with "Ross, John" or "John Ross," you will get a result (though you may need to click through a page or two of results to see it). However, if you search for "John E. Ross" or "John E Ross" or "Ross, John E," you will get no results, because the "E" is throwing the search off. There is an active bug report for just this type of situation (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2059911) that will hopefully allow for searching of alternate versions of authors' names in the future.
Thanks for your suggestion. We're working on making this possible. Please add heat to this launchpad wishlist bug to get the community's attention onto the issue. https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2073988
We've added this suggestion to Launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1028663
Search facets and filters are configurable, but also rely on existing data in the cataloging records to work. We've added this topic as one to discuss with our catalogers to figure out what's feasible based on the data we have. We can look into reader age filters specifically.
This can be done now by performing a Subject search for the genre. You can find more information regarding this in the Knowledge Book. https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=48
We had that same issue in the public facing OPAC and made modifications to how the filters are displayed to address it. We'll investigate how we can fix it in the staff client.
Sounds like you're referring to the staff search? Its hard to say why someone designed it one way or another. Recently, there was a new tab added labeled Staff View which shows more details about the item without requiring you to click through to the Patron View. We're happy to hear suggestions on ways to make it more efficient or simple.
Lost & Missing don't show up in the public OPAC, so we presume you mean the staff search. There is a Limit to Available checkbox on the search form, but that doesn't obscure lost and missing once you go to the item table for a record. I submitted a wishlist bug for this suggestion: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2073989
Makes sense. There's an active Launchpad bug for this request: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1028663
We're interested to hear more about what you mean by this.
If the series number is in the 245$n, it should be showing up in the public OPAC and the staff view. This might be a cataloging issue. We'd be interested in seeing examples of what you mean.
This should be possible by expanding the three dot menu in the staff search (to the right of the Search Terms field). It is also available in the advanced search page in the OPAC.
This is a result of cataloging items with a 655 tag of large print, clickable genre headings are populated through 655.
If I'm understanding you correctly, there should be options on those results pages (usually in the top right of the search results) to click through to the other pages. Another short term workaround we use is to replace "&limit=10" in the web address to something like "&limit=250" to see more results on one page.
Not sure if you're referring to the public or staff search, but the typical path we use is to click on the "Library:" field of the search form. It drops down some options and you can start typing the branch name to see it on the list. In the staff search, the box at the top right also allows you to target a branch by starting to type the name. If you click on the Search Preferences link under the library name on the staff search, you can set your default search library, which may help to keep your searches scoped to what you're interested in seeing. E-resources in search
We've recently updated the "Exclude electronic resources" criteria so that it should exclude everything that has an item Form of Electronic or Online, or a format icon of e-book, e-audio, e-video or e-serials. We've found that some of the cataloging records we get from vendors aren't properly cataloged to be caught by these filters. If you come across examples of electronic records that are bypassing the e-resource filter, please let us know the TCN so that we can figure out what the problem is, find the other records that have the same problem and fix it in bulk.
If you'd like to make this "Exclude electronic resources" checkbox checked by default on your patron facing OPAC search, we can do that. If you'd like, your library system also has the option of making electronic resources in the catalog not findable at all in your OPAC search results. Please submit a ticket if your library would like to completely remove these hits from your search results.
This option is still available, but moved to the "Search Preferences" link shown on the right hand side when you're doing a catalog search in the Staff catalog. Server
This is something we're always working to monitor and address. If you're experiencing slowness, its helpful for you to post on the Incidents Basecamp list so that we can investigate the health of the servers at the moment and address anything that's happening. OPAC interface
In the last few years, we've made a variety of updates to the mobile view of our catalog. We'd love to hear suggestions on other things we can work on. (We have some thoughts on images and deduplication shared elsewhere in our responses.)
Cardinal has looked into pricing of commercial apps, but we found that it was cost prohibitive to implement consortia-wide. Some member libraries have a choice to implemented an app called MyLibro and we're happy to help if you'd like to do this.
When you perform a title search, you are also going to get results where the title appears in a MARC record in a =246 field, =505$t field, =730 field, etc., even if the title you are searching for does not actually appear in the =245 field. This is why it may seem like you are receiving results that having to do with the title for which you searched.
We'll investigate adding more space below the item table or making the line between titles more prominent.
We're interested to learn more about what your ideas are. Something like a basic form that has a title and author field and the ability to add other filters?
We're open to suggestions on things that could be done to make the interface more user friendly.
We will pass this suggestion on to the Evergreen developer community.
Would this be for an individual patron to be able to opt out of seeing that option, or for a specific location? This is generally set at a library system level. Our best suggestion might be to have you submit a ticket so we can see what we can do to meet your needs.
Evergreen has an option called KPAC which is a kid friendly OPAC, but we haven't invested much time customizing it for any of our libraries. You can see it by replacing the /eg/opac in your library's web address with /eg/kpac. If you're interested in developing it, send us a ticket. Interface--General
This may be something that is configurable in your barcode scanner. Its possible to set it up so that it sends an "enter" character after scanning a barcode
We are not quite sure what you mean here. When you scan an out-of-county item in Item Status, does the item not appear in the list? Or are you asking if there is a way to make the Detail View appear immediately instead of having to click the button? Or do you want Item Status to take you directly to the item record? The functionality is the same for in-county and out-of-county items.
We have created a wishlist bug for this request on Launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2073774). We recommend library staff add heat to it so that it will garner more attention.
That refresh behavior occurs when you log into the staff client using a web address that ends in 'nccardinal.org/eg/staff' Instead, we recommend updating your staff client link to end with 'nccardinal.org/eg2/en-US/staff' Your link should look like: https://yourlibrarysystemname.nccardinal.org/eg2/en-US/staff
This is something we've been working on in the public facing catalog this year. On the patron facing OPAC, in the top left where it says Search the Catalog, we added a little question mark icon that takes you to a video on search basics. Within the staff interface, some of the MARC editor fields have this sort of functionality where you can right click and get a list of options, but we'd love to see more of this as well. We're all for suggestions for places tooltips and hints would be useful.
We found a wishlist bug for this request on Launchpad. You can find it at the following link, and we recommend adding heat to it so that it gains more attention. https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2009725
We found a wishlist bug for this request on Launchpad. You can find it at the following link, and we recommend adding heat to it so that it gains more attention. https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2009726
We're open to any suggestions you have on how to make the staff/user interface more friendly.
This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but we added a Launchpad bug for better organization of the available columns in the grid column selector: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2073995
We're always open to suggestions!
We're always open to suggestions on improving the usability and function of the software. Some of the elements we have control of, others are designed by the larger Evergreen community, but we can make suggestions and advocate for what we want to see. Error messages
There are a few existing bug reports on Launchpad related to this. We recommend adding heat to them so that they will get more attention. https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1576754 https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1974469 https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2017306 Circulation Interface
There are several keyboard shortcuts that could make navigation more efficient. A list is available in the Knowledge Books (https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=452). Additionally, it's possible to configure the Splash Page to include more direct links to commonly used circulation functions. If you are interested in this, have your library's System Administrator submit a help desk ticket.
We're open to suggestions on how to make circulation more user friendly.
A lost-then-returned item will disappear from the Items Out screen only when all bills linked to this particular circulation have been resolved. If there are still bills associated with the circulation, then the item will remain in the Other/Special Circulations tab of the patron account. Once the bills have been resolved, the item will be removed from the Other/Special Circulations tab and no longer appear on the patron's account. If you wish to have the item removed immediately upon check in, you may want to consider adjusting your library's void lost max interval, which is the period of time in which lost fees will be removed from a patron's account upon returning a lost item. If they return the item after the interval has passed, then the fees will still remain on their account. Patron accounts
Launchpad Bug 1791760 describes the need to allow group lead accounts to view all grouped accounts to pay bills. I've added heat to this bug and included your comment in the comments section of the bug. Feel free to add heat at https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1791760 by selecting the "Does the bug affect you?" option.
You should be able to clone a patron's contact information and home library automatically to use in multiple accounts by clicking on the "Save & Clone" button found in the top right corner of the Patron Registration and Patron Edit Screens. The Daytime Phone, Evening Phone, Home Library, and Mailing Address should be replicated into this new record. We'll investigate whether we can configure this process to include more fields.
This is possible by using the "Photo URL" field in the Patron Account edit screen. You will need to have an online repository where the photos are stored in order to link out to them. If this feature is used, the photos will show up at the top of the left hand column of patron information in their account. In general, the Evergreen community chose this solution to avoid having pictures stored in the database.
If we understand you correctly, you should be able to limit your search to a specific library in the patron search field, by choosing the name of the patron's branch or system in the field that generally has a default of CARDINAL. If you're not seeing this field, click on the down arrow next to the Search button on the patron search form to see more options.
We agree! Right now its possible to search by DOB, name, etc. but we don't know of a good way to have a little looser of a search to find potential duplicates or matches that aren't strictly the same. We're open to ideas on what we could suggest to the community.
We've submitted a wishlist request to make this field sticky, so that if you choose System or Branch, it would default to that next time: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2073999
Fields displayed on the Patron Registration form can be altered with library settings. Feel free to email us at help@nccardinalsupport.org and we can assist you in removing the needed fields from being displayed on the Patron Registration Form for your system
There currently is the option of grouping accounts together so that you can see fines and overdues for all group members, if you pull up one of the member accounts. (https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=493) Are there other things you'd like to be able to do?
We have created a wishlist bug report on Launchpad for this request. https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2074010 Circulation history
I'm currently unable to locate any settings that control the amount of reading history a patron can see from the OPAC. We will investigate whether its an issue with the amount of data that is attempting to be retrieve in the patron's reading history verse the length of time.
We can understand how this would be useful, but Evergreen developers made an intentional design decision to let patrons choose to opt-in to history tracking via the My Account section of the OPAC, so that patrons know about and manage the information available about their activity. Billing and Payments
We're planning on offering training this upcoming year on billing and payments. We'll make an announcement about it on Basecamp and would welcome any questions or issues you can suggest for us to cover.
Are you referring to when we waive fines in bulk like when a library has an amnesty period, or something that the software does when it is accounting for things like returns of lost materials? If its something we're doing in our procedures for bulk changes, we can alter how we do bulk waivers. If its part of the way the software functions by default, we'd have to pursue it with the Evergreen developer community.
We'd be interested to hear more about what suggestions you have or what things you'd like to see improvements on.
We're happy to set this up for you. Email us at help@nccardinalsupport.org and we can update your circulation policies to be fine free.
Right now, we have the normal processes of adding fines and notifying the patrons. If the fines aren't paid, some libraries use debt collection or debt setoff options that are available. We'd be interested to hear more about your ideas.
There are a few ways to receive credit card payments, such as AuthorizeNet, PayPal, PayflowPro, or Stripe. (https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=386) Some self check machines also have the ability to receive and process credit card payments. Email us at help@nccardinalsupport.org if you'd like help setting this up. Cataloging Interface
We have several MARC templates in the Knowledge Book that we recommend catalogers use as references when having to create bibliographic records from scratch. They can be found at the following link. We will be adding more templates in the near future based on specific item recommendations from catalogers, like graphic novels. https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=32
Subject and genre headings are pulled from a number of different sources like Library of Congress, Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, Etc., Homosaurus Thesaurus, and so on, so some inconsistencies may arise, but we have a list of approved subject and genre heading codes we recommend catalogers use in the Knowledge Book. They can be found at https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=47. Additionally, the Marcive process reviews and updates subject and genre headings as necessary, though it may occasionally miss some as it only looks at records that have been edited within the past three months each time it is run. We are continually looking at ways to try and standardize different elements and fields on MARC records.
This is something that the community that develops Evergreen may eventually remove, and unfortunately its not something we have much control over.
If you typically use the Flat Text Editor, we would recommend trying out the Enhanced MARC Editor, as it more clearly separates out the individual fields in the MARC Edit screen, and you can make edits to each field in much the same way as you would in the Flat Text Editor. Some of the fields also have labels you can right click on to see options. If, however, you are already using the Enhanced MARC Editor and still find it difficult to use, accessibility-related changes are coming to the Enhanced MARC Editor with future Evergreen upgrades that should hopefully make it a bit easier to read/view. We're open to ideas and suggestions. Cataloging Standards
Over the years we've developed our Cataloging Best Practices with this goal in mind. One part of addressing this is figuring out what the norm should be and documenting it. The other part of the challenge is getting everyone that is working with records to know and follow the guidelines. Lately we've been approaching this by doing batch edits to MARC records to clean up easily correctable issues, but not every problem is fixable by these broad changes.
We've spent some time discussing and updating our guidelines for graphic novels and manga recently. We've also recently done a mini-project to make them more consistently cataloged. Part of the challenge is making sure that everyone is aware of the updated guidance and following the guidelines.
We can work on defining this with our Cataloging Committee and publishing some guidelines. This may also be something we can fix in batch once we know what we're striving for.
We'd be interested to learn more about what you mean. Are you referring to more content on our MARC templates pages? https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=32
This is something that we will begin working on, and we welcome any additional suggestions for specific items or materials that catalogers feel would benefit most from having their own item templates.
This is something catalogers can do by adding 'Bilingual books' in the 655 field.
We subscribed to access to the RDA toolkit for a few years but stopped the subscription due to low usage.
We're open to suggestions or ideas on ways we can improve support for cataloging. Catalog Cleanup
Up until now we have only been able to schedule the automated deduplication process for once a year because it takes a significant amount of time and we have to coordinate the work with our hosting vendor Mobius. However, as we have continued to streamline the process and really hone in on the necessary criteria for a successful deduplication, less and less time will be required for reviewing and studying the results, making tweaks to the process, and performing tests. This may allow us in the future to schedule more automated deduplications throughout the year. For example, because we had such a successful run earlier this year, we felt confident enough to move forward with creating a new deduplication process that would focus on video materials, which have not been previously covered by the deduplication. Additionally, we have developed a new system for catalogers to review the "Needs Humans" lists and perform manual deduplications. We encourage consortium catalogers, as they have time, to continue to review the records we shared with them in buckets and to manually merge as much as possible. This will help further the success of future automated deduplications, as well as help to keep the catalog clean and orderly.
Our current deduplication process includes Audiobooks. We're currently in the midst of a process to deduplicate DVDs and other video content. Cover Images
On a basic level, we rely on the free Open Library service for book covers. If an image is missing there, its possible to add it (https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=353) Evergreen also has an option to upload cover images (https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=818) In general, this is something we rely on catalogers throughout Cardinal to do as they see a title is missing a cover image.
We've talked to several vendors over the years and are keeping our eyes open for other options. Part of the challenge is cost for a consortium of our size. Shelving locations
There currently are Graphic Novel and Easy Reader shelving locations. (https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=99) Perhaps your library isn't using them?
This is a balancing act we're always trying to figure out. Having Cardinal-wide shelving locations makes administration and policy configuration much easier. In a resource sharing environment, having shelving locations others aren't using can result in strange behavior when the book is checked out elsewhere. Its possible to add unique local shelving locations if you send us a ticket. Our general guidelines are here: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=99
We have created a wishlist bug for this request on Launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2073976). We recommend library staff add heat to it so that it will garner more attention.
We can investigate ways for how best to accomplish this. Item editing
There is an existing wishlist Launchpad bug for this. https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1862982 Baskets/Buckets/Lists
We have created a wishlist bug for this request on Launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2073771).
Buckets (and many other grids in the angular interfaces) allow users to add and remove columns. We have created new documentation in the KB illustrating the process of adding columns in buckets specifically. https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=937
Baskets will time out eventually. Buckets are permanent until you remove items from them. You can turn a basket into a bucket, or add items in a basket to an existing bucket. Offline mode
We will offer training in Offline Mode in October. Printing
When paying a bill, you can select the number of copies of the receipt to print by changing the number in the box labeled #Copies underneath the bills grid. Novelist
We've made some changes recently with EBSCO that added specific information for libraries that were seeing generic availability. Have a look and see if this is still an issue. If so, let us know. Notifications-General
This is possible. A handful of libraries use HTML notices. If your library would like to set this up, please submit a ticket. Notifications-SMS
This is something we're actively working on deploying. We have a new contract for a service called MessageBee that we're working to implement.
In addition to the upcoming changes with MessageBee, libraries are welcome to use 3rd party vendors for notices if they wish. At this point we generate daily exports for a few member libraries that use other tolls to notify patrons.
With us moving to an SMS vendor that charges per message sent, I don't expect us to expand the types of notices we send SMSes for this year.
We're happy to make updates. Please submit a ticket if you come across a carrier that is not listed. Resource Sharing
Open to suggestions or ideas on how we can help.
Based on your comment we've run some reports to look at how long things sit between the time they're captured and when they're checked in at the requesting branch. We found some instances where things took much longer than you'd expect, but the average time is a little over a week. If you encounter this situation, we're happy to look into it in the moment. Please contact Will, who takes the lead on Resource Sharing issues william.szwagiel@dncr.nc.gov
We're open to suggestions.
This is something we're trying to address in our Resource Sharing Basecamp group. We've been publishing how to guides and expect to release our Resource Sharing Best Practices soon.
I'm not sure that this would be feasible financially. Every package has a built in cost before you take into consideration what it weighs and where its going. This could be possible for libraries sending multiple packages to one destination.
FedEx has a fairly consistent delivery time, but the delays tend to happen between when something is pulled and the time it takes to make it through delivery to hubs and branches.
We'd be interested to learn more about this. Is the idea to limit the number of items a patron can request? Limit the number of hold requests overall? Reduce the amount of things being shipped?
In the past, Cardinal supplied a basic level of shipping materials but we found we were spending as much money splitting up the materials and shipping out to libraries. After discussions with our Governance Committee, we elected to discontinue distributing shipping materials and rely on libraries to source materials through recycling and local sources.
If you haven't seen it, check out the video Johnston county put together for us recently: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=903
We've considered having assessments like catalogers have, but are primarily focusing on improving our training resources and communication about resource sharing best practices and guidelines. Hold targeting
Are you referring to an alert in the staff view if you retarget a hold? If so, there should be a green pop up in the bottom right of the screen that momentarily shows "Successfully Retargeted Hold" If you're referring to something else, we welcome clarification.
I believe what you're seeing is the holds targeter process running in real time. It has to process the hold rules, look at the available copies, rank them and then try to target a new item. We will however see if there's anything we can do to speed the process up.
We're interested to hear more details of what you're thinking.
We're interested to hear more details of what you're thinking.
We don't expect to return to the random process of grabbing a book from any library. All of those copies are still accessible, but the one that's closest is favored for efficiency and cost sake. Are there difficulties you've encountered with the closest proximity change?
This sounds like this might be a case where there are not other available copies on that bib record? If you have a record for a book and the one it targeted is not available, you may need to redirect the target of the hold if there is another Cardinal record that is a duplicate of your record. The easiest way to do this is to merge your bib with the Cardinal record with more copies. Information on Retargeting Holds can be found here: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=528 If there isn't another bib with copies of the same title, this may be a situation where it is a Hopeless Hold. https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=668 Hold pull list
Another option is to go to the gear icon in the top right of the list and choose "download csv" This allows you to work with the list as a spreadsheet and delete any rows you're not interested in, or target the list to specific shelving locations or areas of your library.
The best suggestion we have at the moment is to show the Queue Position column in the Open Hold Requests grid on the patron account. You can add this column by clicking on the down arrow at the top right of that list. Be sure to then go back to that down arrow and choose Save Columns so that it shows up on your Hold Requests screen in the future. This will at least give you a sense of where their request is.
Opportunistic holds has some benefits to keeping things from bouncing around branches unnecessarily, but it also means that things can get siloed at the branch they get checked in at if they're popular there. As we continue to work with the holds targeter, we'll see if we can improve this behavior. Hold functionality and interface
As we understand the behavior right now, patrons can not place holds on materials under six month age hold protection if their library does not also have a copy in a holdable status (including On Order or In Process.) There's not a setting that defines this behavior, so we will investigate what it would take to change this and the implications it might have for resource sharing holds.
Upon investigation, we're surprised to see this isn't explained anywhere on the patron side. Another comment suggests improvement to the Age-Hold error message, so we'll approach these two together. Fix the error message and find a way to refer patrons to details on what's happening with Age Hold behavior. In researching this, we came across this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1869893
This message can easily be updated once a consensus has been reached across NC Cardinal. We'll work on figuring out a better message.
We can investigate the options for showing more than Available or Checked Out in the public facing catalog. The challenge is that it may be difficult for the system to make sense of all of the reasons an item may be unholdable for the person viewing the record. Without logging in, the Evergreen knows certain shelving locations or branch collections may be unholdable, its hard to know if the item is or isn't holdable by the person seeing the catalog record. Once they log in, their home library, patron type and other information makes it easier to tell the viewer if that item is holdable by them.
From the Holds tab in the patron's account, click on the title in the grid to navigate into the Bibliographic Record for the title on hold. From there, you can click on the "View Holds" tab to see a list of all holds on the item, and check where your patron is in that list. Alternatively, you can add the column "Queue Position" to the Patron Holds grid in their account by clicking on the down arrow to open the grid management menu. This will show you their place in the queue directly in the holds screen.
We're open to suggestions or details of issues you've encountered.
In general, the holds targeter is constantly running and looking for available copies. After a period of time, it resets and looks to see if a better, in this case closer, copy is available. This is configured to happen though only after about 36 hours, to give libraries a chance to pull the things that are on their holds lists. We'd be interested to hear more of what you're thinking.
A wishlist bug for this feature currently exists (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1738021), and the feature is currently in development. We recommend adding heat to the bug report.
The Holds Shelf does not want items to disappear from the list until a library staff member has physically pulled the item from the hold shelf and processed it accordingly. It acts as a kind of safety mechanism to make sure things are not left lingering on the physical hold shelf that are no longer on hold. In the case of cancelled holds, similar to expired holds, the recommended course of action is to check the items in the Checkin Items screen using the Clear Holds Shelf checkin modifier instead of using the button to clear them from the Holds Shelf screen.
You may be clicking on the patron barcode after performing a search for the patron when going to place a hold on an item. If you do this, you will be taken to the patron's account and will indeed have to search for the item again from that screen to place the hold. Instead of clicking on the patron barcode, you need to check the box next to the patron barcode and then click the green "Select" button. This will take you back to the hold screen with the patron's information filled out so you can place the hold.
We are not entirely certain what you mean by this. Are you encountering a situation where, when a hold is placed, the hold is captured by an out-of-county library rather than a local, branch library that also has the item? Also, you should not have to force a hold for a patron unless you are attempting to place a hold on an item that is not actually holdable or may otherwise not be available for holds (such as an out-of-county item with a six month hold protection on it).
This is possible using the Metarecord Hold function. You can find detailed instructions for using this function in the staff client and the OPAC in the Knowledge Books: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=471
This is possible using the Hold Groups function. You can find detailed instructions on setting up hold groups for book clubs and other groups, and instructions for placing holds for these groups in the Knowledge Books: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=819
We have created a wishlist bug for this request on Launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2073773). We recommend library staff add heat to it so that it will garner more attention. Transits
If you're not aware of it, one of the tools you may find helpful is the Transit List, which is available under the menu Administration > Local Administration. It lets you see everything that is in transit to or from your system, sort by the send date, shelving location, destination library, etc. That being said, while things are in transit it can be hard to know where they are at the moment. FedEx has its own tracking, but that's not at the item level. We're considering changing to a courier and the tracking options would be a key consideration for us.
Some libraries use the tracking sheets linked to on this page: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=357 This is an area where I think we could also create some reports to provide details on where the materials in your collection are at the moment.
Essentially, that means that the material was checked in somewhere and belongs or was needed somewhere else. It can be traveling for a patron request, or coming back to its owning library. Booking module
Evergreen does currently offer a booking system that can be used for meeting room reservations. There are detailed instructions on setting up this function in the Knowledge Books: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=130
While the Evergreen Booking Module does allow for meeting rooms reservations, it is currently only functional from the Staff Client. There is a wishlist item to add booking options to the OPAC. If this is something your library could benefit from, please add some heat: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1942097 Updates and upgrades
We can appreciate that perspective. There are a variety of voices involved in the process of designing Evergreen and the changes that are made. Developers may think they're doing something that's help, when in fact it complicates your workflow. Our best suggestion is to give us feedback so that we can relay that back through the Evergreen community Launchpad site.
This may be more feasible now that Evergreen is web based, but there is lot that goes into testing and training each time we do an upgrade. We don't know that upgrading more than once a year is feasible at this stage.
We will continue to hone and work to improve upgrade training webinars. Additionally, this year we will increase our upgrade training to include follow-up training opportunities after the upgrade is live.
We're open to suggestions on how to improve the experience. Reports
We recognize that the reports feature has a steep learning curve. Evergreen 3.13 will include updates to the reporter which may improve it's usability. Once the upgrade to 3.13 is complete, we will continue to offer training on reports, via webinars, at the in-person regional training events, and through asynchronous methods including videos and Niche Academy. Please feel free to reach out to us with requests for content on creating and running specific types of reports, and we will be sure to address those needs in our training materials. When a reports fails, we encourage you to submit a ticket that includes the fail log you received. We understand that these logs are not very clear, but we are always happy to look into them for you.
There have been many requests for updated descriptions of reports. We will begin to revisit the Centralized Reports Template after the upgrade and work to improve descriptions.
Once the 3.13 upgrade is complete this fall, we will begin offering training (live and pre-recorded) and publish new documentation about the updated interface. Regional trainings will continue to offer reports sessions as well.
We have plans for a new batch of reports training videos this fall to reflect the changes coming to the Reporter.
We've added this to our list of projects and goals for the upcoming year.
A wide variety of report templates exist in the Centralized Reports Templates folder. You can find information about content and accessing this folder in the Knowledge Books: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=726
There have been many requests for updates to the Centralized Reports Templates content. We will begin to revisit the Centralized Reports Template after the upgrade.
That's an interesting suggestion. We're glad to see some focus on the reporter lately, and though the Simple Reports doesn't meet some people's needs, it and the changes that are coming in our next upgrade are the result of an awareness that Evergreen's reporter needs improvements. We'll keep pushing for progress. Training
We will continue to announce training opportunities via Basecamp, email, and the State Library's Train Station. We have developed a Knowledge Book Page for upcoming training events: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=930
We will be hosting a SLAM training webinar in December. Keep an eye out for more details.
Our next set of migrations has already begun, and we have taken the downtime since our last migration to re-design and hone the training provided to migrating libraries. If you have specific advice based on your own migration experience, please reach out to samantha.oconnor@dncr.nc.gov with ideas and suggestions.
Planning for training opportunities in the 24-25 fiscal year is underway, with 1-2 virtual training opportunities available each month, with both morning and afternoon sessions, and drop-in open training on rotating topics on the third Thursday of each month. Additionally, all webinars will be recorded and made available for those who were not able to attend live.
We have a fresh round of in-person regional trainings planned for this year. We're also planning on increasing our upgrade training this year to include follow up training opportunities after the upgrade is live.
This year we intend to host at least 3 cataloging webinars, and our in-person regional trainings will include cataloging specific sessions.
All live webinars and workshops are made available as recordings afterwards. Additionally, this year we will continue to develop video series offering training in individual functions related to various topics in Evergreen. Interactive asynchronous training is available in Niche Academy (https://my.nicheacademy.com/nccardinal) and we will continue to add content there as well.
We will continue to add to our resource-sharing training in Niche Academy, as well as through videos, virtual workshops, and in-person at the regional training events. You may find the Video or Step-By-Step guide on this page helpful if you're not familiar with it: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=90
We intend to host at least 3 cataloging webinars with content related to the Evergreen software, and our in-person regional trainings will include cataloging specific sessions. This is in addition to the training content provided widely by the State Library on general cataloging rules and best practices.
As we continue to hone the regional in-person training events, we will try to find new ways to ensure all staff needs are considered. If you have specific suggestions or ideas, please reach out directly to Samantha O'Connor at samantha.oconnor@dncr.nc.gov. Documentation
At your suggestion, we've added a dynamically generated last update tag to each KB page.
We try to balance having thorough documentation with not having so much content that its overwhelming. That being said, we're happy to get into the weeds where its useful. We're open to suggestion on what we should add documentation for.
We have received some recommendations for new templates for specific items like graphic novels, and we will be working to create these templates. We are open to suggestions for other templates, that we should focus on.
We are continually adding to and updating the Knowledge Books. As we find processes that need to be clarified, or functions that are not fully explained, we make an update to edit, expand, or clarify. Please let us know if there specific pages or processes that need to be revised for clarity or added detail.
We'll see what we can do to simplify the landing page. Communication--Cardinal
Basecamp isn't everything we need it to be. We used to use mailing lists and they had different challenges. We're keeping our eyes open for other options, but we also have a lot of history in Basecamp at the moment.
To keep up to date on outages information, please subscribe to our Incidents Basecamp group. Our updates should be in our General Discussion group. We should have more updates on card holder policies in the upcoming year.
We can do that.
We can do that.
We can do that.
We try to keep everyone up to date on when we're preparing for an upgrade and summarize what we expect those changes to be, with a link to the full version notes. For the bigger picture of what's happening with Evergreen, we try to post the interest groups that are happening, but in general we suggest subscribing to Evergreen's General Discussion mailing list to keep up on the software's development https://evergreen-ils.org/communicate/mailing-lists/ |
Basecamp |
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We'd be interested in suggestions of how we should reform it. We're always working to try to find the best way to make it suit the consortium's needs. |
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We used to use mailing lists and they had different challenges. We're keeping our eyes open for other options. |
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This year we've been developing some Basecamp Best Practices for posting, responding, etiquette etc. that will also include some tips for how to reduce and avoid extra email traffic. |
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That's encouraging to hear! |
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We've tried to have a variety of Basecamp groups focused on different topics so that library staff can choose the ones most suited to their job and interests. This year, at a librarians suggestion, we added a Tech Discussion group for folks that are interested in a deeper dive into some of the technical and configuration options available. If you'd like to leave a group, there should be an Unsubscribe link in the bottom of the email notification you receive, or contact the Cardinal team and we can remove you. |
Permissions |
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We're not sure if you're referring to bib records or patron records. For bib records, a bib cataloger should be able to merge the records. For patron records, Branch Admins or System Admins should be able to merge the patron records. If you encounter issues with merging, please submit a ticket so we can figure out specifically what's going on. |
Passwords |
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This functionality will be rolled out in our next phase of staff password project |
Student Access |
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We rely on the school systems to send us updates. We're happy to receive and process the feeds as often as they provide them. |
Migrations |
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We're happy to help however we can as you're getting adjusted and settled. Newly migrated libraries are more than welcome to schedule follow up calls with the Cardinal Team, after the migration has been completed to discuss and resolve specific issues regarding workflows. Migration mentors assigned to migration process are also accessible after Go Live to provide continue support in areas that may be best addressed by library staff member with front line experience. |
Consortium growth |
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We're in active conversations with other libraries that are considering joining in the future and are always open to talking to libraries interested in joining Cardinal. |
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This information is scattered throughout our Knowledge Book pages, so we made a page that links to all of them: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=939 |
Other |
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We have created a wishlist bug report on Launchpad for this request. https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2074009 |
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If you go to the top right of the list of lost items you can choose to add Author to that list (referred to as a grid) Then, you can go back to that down arrow and choose Download Full CSV, which will allow you to look at that same information as a spreadsheet, reorder it and print it. (Don't forget to go to that down arrow and choose Save Columns if you want Author to always show up when you look at that list) |
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We like the sound of this and are interested in learning more about what you mean |
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We're not quite sure what your comment means, but we're interested in learning how we can help with legacy fines. |
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The State Library Department NC Cardinal is a part of, Library Development, is actively engaged in supporting libraries addressing book bans and censorship. If you need support, please reach out to Library Development Director Sarah Gransee at sarah.gransee@dncr.nc.gov We're here to help! |
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We're open to suggestions |
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In recent years, we've rolled out a variety of customization options (https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=887) if you'd like to make any of these changes, please submit a ticket. |
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This is something we've been discussing and are working our way towards an up-to-date policy. Our existing policy was put together about a decade ago, in a time before there were as many Cardinal libraries in adjoining counties. |
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We'd like to learn more about what you mean. |
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This is a decision made by each library individually and not a policy Cardinal sets |
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We'll investigate whether we can do this. Thanks for the idea. |
Praise |
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We appreciate the helpful comments, suggestions and feedback from you all! |
Thank you to everyone that submitted a response to our annual Staff Survey.
Each year, we ask the following questions at the end of the survey.
Please share your top three requests for changes, improvements, or additions you'd like to see the NC Cardinal team focus on next year.
Please share any other feedback you have.
Your thoughtful and detailed comments are invaluable in helping us identify areas for improvement and focus our efforts in the year ahead. We go through each of your responses and address every comment as best as we can. The comments are grouped by subject, with individual comments bulleted followed by Cardinal’s responses. By publicly sharing our responses, we hope you can learn from the suggestions and questions your peers ask, and discover resources you might not have known about.
The Cardinal team endeavors to address every concern. Some things we can answer immediately, some become projects for the year ahead, others may take more research or investigation. Some suggestions related to Evergreen are outside our direct control, so we try to make this clear in our response. The Evergreen software that we support has been created and developed by a large community. Since it is open source software, we have the ability to make some customizations to the software itself. We also have the ability to alter configurations, set policies and improve the cataloging data we have in Evergreen to make it work better for the Cardinal community. Some core parts of the software, like the search process and the reporter, are deeply integrated into the software and not as easy for us to customize. We will often add a bug or wishlist item to LaunchPad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen). Launchpad is the official tool for the larger Evergreen community to report software problems, suggest improvements, and track the progress of improvements. If your suggestion matches an existing Launchpad request, we'll provide a link so you can follow its progress. We encourage you to create a free account on Launchpad to comment, "add heat" (express support), or monitor the status of these issues. For more details on how you can "add heat", see this Knowledge Book page: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=953
We understand that sometimes our replies may not cover everything you're addressing in your feedback. If you wish to provide further details, clarify a suggestion, or follow up on an issue, please email us at help@nccardinalsupport.org. Screenshots of error messages, barcodes for patrons or items, TCNs, and other specific details can significantly help us understand and resolve the issue.
Thank you again for your feedback and for helping us continuously improve Evergreen and the support we offer to you and your patrons.
General Comments:
More leniency with the wording needed to bring back relevant results
Spell Check corrections within Evergreen
Title searches: often times, being off by one character or punctuation mark can skew a search.
Friendlier keyword searches in the search catalog. It’s has to be too specific currently
Probably an Evergreen request, but: Better subject searchability in catalog
A way to see a list of all subjects in your library
Ability to increase the menu size for options in advanced item search
Better Subject Search
Catalog Searches seem to be inconsistent
Improve Catalog search
Make the search function more user friendly
More intuitive search capability within Evergreen
catalog searches often include unrelated subjects and/or titles
Catalog searches
Filtering the material better by very specific category.
More filters or search functions for the catalog
Improve the ease of searching for a book by age. For example having to maneuver to highlight both YA and Juv.
better keyword searches for materials
Cardinal Response:
We appreciate the feedback on Evergreen's search functionality and will continue to advocate with Evergreen's developer community for improvements based on your suggestions. Evergreen's search functionality is one of the most deeply embedded elements of the software and we as the Cardinal team have limited ability to alter its behavior. Some of the efforts we've made recently involve redefining some of the formats to better exclude electronic resources and batch edits to bib records to improve their consistency and findability. For most of the core functionalities of the search experience, we're reliant on improvements by the larger Evergreen development community.
Comment:
In the angular portion of the catalog, the drop down menus close when you center click on a selection. This means that if I want half a dozen instances of the same item opened, I am inconvenienced. I have to use non-angular portions of the catalog for that to work the way I want.
Cardinal Response:
While researching this comment, we've been unable to reproduce what you're describing. We'd appreciate if you could reach out to us at help@nccardinalsupport.org so that we can figure out what you're encountering.
Comment:
In the staff side of the catalog, I don't like that you have to click on "Staff View" for details. That should all be visible like in the patron side.
Cardinal Response:
We recommend setting Staff View as your default view. You can do this by selecting the Staff View tab and the clicking the dark grey Set Default View button on the righthand side of the screen. Once you have done this, whenever you open a bib record it will automatically open on the Staff View.
Comment:
More accurate search results for titles and authors
Cardinal Response:
When you perform a Title and/or Author search, you will also receive results where the title and author appear in other fields within a MARC record besides just the =245 and =100 fields, respectively. So you may receive a result where the title you searched for appears in a =505$t field, or the author you searched for appears in a =700$a field. This is why it may seem like you are receiving results that have nothing to do with the title or author for which you searched.
Comment:
Please fix the glitch where if you try to search "Publication Year" "Is", the search doesn't complete. (It used to work.)
Cardinal Response:
While researching this comment, we've been unable to reproduce what you're describing. We'd appreciate if you could reach out to us at help@nccardinalsupport.org so that we can troubleshoot the issue.
Comment:
When searching for an item where only one result shows up and it brings me to the Record Summary page, there is no way to add that item to a basket. It would be nice for that to be included.
Cardinal Response:
We can change the Library Setting for your library so when you only receive one result from a search it does not automatically take you to the record summary. This will allow you to add it to a basket from the search results.
Additionally, we recommend you add heat to this Launchpad bug to have the option to add a record to a basket from the bib record: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1949222
Comment:
Ways to search entirely by shelving location in the catalog without requiring a search term
Cardinal Response:
We've submitted a wishlist bug for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2116281
Comment:
More organic searching with community tag capability
Cardinal Response:
We'd be interested to learn more about your ideas about community tags. Are you familiar with the Digital Bookplates functionality? Are you referring to something that patrons would add/edit? We'd welcome your feedback at help@nccardinalsupport.org
Comment:
Improve title search technology (I typically search all titles under keyword.)
Cardinal Response:
We recommend performing a Title search for titles rather than a Keyword search, because a Keyword search will look at an entire record for any of the words you enter, while a Title search will specifically search title fields in the record for the specific string of words you enter. This precision may have its downsides if you're unsure of the exact title, but in general it should be quicker.
Comment:
I would love to see a collapsible panel of the filters at the left (Personal author, corporate author, topic subject, etc.). They fill up the top of the screen when the catalog window is reduced and can make searching tricky, especially when making book lists.
Add more sticky features for the catalog search (ex. format & catalog field)
Cardinal Response:
We'll add this to our project list to see if we can create a custom solution.
Comment:
Sorting search results based on whether we have items attached doesn't seem to work
Cardinal Response:
We'd be interested to learn more about what you're experiencing. Are you seeing this in the staff search interface or the public OPAC search?
Comment:
Just like you can search for patrons by different criteria, Evergreen needs the ability to locate materials on an item holding/record level. This is first ILS I have used that only gives you the ability to search at the bib record level. All other ILSs used allow you to search within the ILS by different item record/holding criteria.
Cardinal Response:
We'd be interested to learn more. What kinds of information would it search on, something like item notes or call numbers?
Comments Related to Excluding Electronic Resources:
Making "Exclude Electronic Resources" sticky or permanent (maybe make it "include electronic resources" instead)
"Exclude electronic resources" box should stay checked!!
Exclude Electronic Resources! Would love for that to be constant!
Please fix the exclude electronic resources feature to be sticky and really the default if so chosen
I want to have a sticky setting to exclude electronic resources
Would like the "Exclude Electronic Resources" button to be sticky
Cardinal Response:
Other users in the Evergreen community have also identified this as a concern. We recommend adding heat to this Launchpad bug so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2101894
Comment:
take e books out of the catalog
Cardinal Response:
While we can't completely remove e-book records from the catalog for everyone, we can configure records so that they don't appear in your catalog search results. If this is something you would like us to do, please submit a help ticket. We've recently found a scenario that causes e-resource records to show up in search results of libraries that do not want to see them and are working to fix that issue. If you're not familiar with it, selecting the "Exclude Electronic Resources" checkbox when performing a search in the catalog will help to exclude many of them.
Comment:
The exclude Electronic Resource button should exclude all electronic resources, not just some which it currently does. Also, that button should have the ability to be sticky so when you press it once in the morning, it stays all day.
Excluding electronic resources still doesn't seem like it works
Cardinal Response:
If you could provide some specific examples where electronic resources are still appearing in search results even when the "Exclude Electronic Resources" box is checked, it would help us with narrowing down what might be causing the issue. We've made updates this past year to improve this functionality, and in our tests we have not seen electronic resources appearing when we perform searches on our end. It could be an issue of how the records are cataloged or the feature may be missing a key piece of information that it should be looking for. As to the option of making the checkbox sticky, we recommend you add heat to this Launchpad bug so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2101894
General Comments:
I would love to see a serious overhaul of the patron facing search experience. It's opaque, confusing, and patrons are very reluctant to make use of it.
More user-friendly patron facing catalog
OPAC overhaul or mobile app
Cardinal Response:
We're open to suggestions on things that could be done to make the interface more user friendly.
Comment:
Would also love some improvements to the user side of the site. Its clunky and reminiscent of the internet 20 years ago. I also notice patrons struggling to figure out which call number info goes with which catalog record.
Cardinal Response:
After reviewing the Staff Survey comments this year, the Cardinal team has been talking about undertaking a project to gather feedback on the OPAC and how we could update it. We've got some ideas for improvements. Keep an eye out on Basecamp for more details.
Comment:
I also ask for this every year: I cannot read the shelving location filters in the catalogue because the box is too small and I cannot read the entire line.
Cardinal Response:
This is something that we've investigated in the past that is challenging due to the way the page is designed. We will make a project plan to circle back to it this year.
General Comments:
Improve kids OPAC- not visually appealing and difficult to navigate and understand
It would be great to have KIDS MODE. I found somewhere online in another consortia's knowledge books that they had this option. As far as I know, NC Cardinal does not have this.
The KPAC is almost unusable. There's no way to see where the items are located without clicking on them and no way to filter out e-materials that I can see. The colors and layout make it more kid-friendly but I've seen many children give up using it because it's difficult to find where the item actually is.
Cardinal Response:
Evergreen has an option called KPAC which is a kid friendly OPAC. As an example, we've done some fairly extensive customization of Polk County's KPAC. https://polk.nccardinal.org/eg/kpac/home You can your library's KPAC by replacing the /eg/opac/home in your library's web address with /eg/kpac/home. If you're interested in developing it, send us a ticket. In our recent community testing activities, we've seen what appears to be a complete new rewrite of the KPAC, so there may be some updates coming in the next upgrade.
Comment:
A more engaging interface for the staff and patron catalog
Cardinal Response:
We're open to suggestions on things that could be done to make the interface more engaging. One of the projects we've been discussing for the year ahead is to gather some more detailed feedback from staff and patrons on some design update ideas to make some updates to the catalog.
Comment:
Easier way to change staff password
Cardinal Response:
We'd be interested to know which process you usually use and the challenges you face. Do you change it at the login screen when it expires? Do you use the change password process available in the "hamburger menu" at the top right of the staff interface? Do you go through the My Account process on the public facing OPAC?
Comment:
It would be helpful if the circulation interface didn't require staff to have multiple tabs open at one time.
Cardinal Response:
We're interested to learn more about the tasks require multiple tabs. We may be able to offer ideas for other workflows or submit design wishlist suggestions.
Comment:
It would be helpful if we could go to the item table record for an item directly from the patron's hold lists even when our library does not own the item (in the case where a specific item has not already been targeted).
Cardinal Response:
If you modify the columns showing on the list of patron holds to add "Title" that is a clickable link that takes you to the bib record, where you can see the other items.
General Comments:
Cardinal Response:
We have some ideas for how we can adjust font size in response to smaller screens. We'll add this to our project list.
Comment:
the "Patron Search" form is laid out in an awkward fashion. You really have to concentrate to find the most used fields. It really could be simpler.
Cardinal Response:
We've submitted a wishlist bug for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2116189
General Comments:
When you click a title in "Item Status", you get to the "Staff Catalog" page (all good). Once there, you only see items from your default search library (also fine). Please put back the link to see "Cardinal" from that page (there used to be links for branch, system, and Cardinal), instead of making us type in an entire new search.
A way in a search results item page to expand or narrow the table to see all of cardinal or only my branch, without having to redo the whole search
Cardinal Response:
If we're understanding you correctly, it sounds like there is an active wishlist item for this. We recommend adding heat to it so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1996782
Comment:
I would love a 'dark mode' to help prevent eyestrain after staring at a screen all day.
Cardinal Response:
That is included in Evergreen version 3.14 and will be a part of our next upgrade this fall
Comment:
More contrast on the layout of the pages in the system. I have partial blindness. So, some things have zero contrast and I struggle to see everything
Cardinal Response:
In the version of Evergreen that we'll be upgrading to this fall, there has been some significant work done to improve the accessibility. We hope you'll find these changes to be an improvement.
Comment:
Improve User Interface for Both Staff and Patrons
Cardinal Response:
We're open to suggestions on ways to improve the user interface.
Comment:
I really miss the keyboard shortcuts from the desktop version!
Cardinal Response:
The existing keyboard shortcuts for the web version can be found at https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=987 Are there other quick functions you'd find shortcuts useful for that aren't in the web based version of Evergreen?
Comment:
Consistency of columns/rows across accounts/not by workstation.
Cardinal Response:
We've found an active Launchpad wishlist request for this. We recommend adding heat to it so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1702929
Comment:
I ask for this every year: when trying to manage columns, it would be much easier to search if the columns were in alpha order
Cardinal Response:
We've submitted a wishlist bug for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2073995
Comment:
I would like to be able to have easier print options from the holds list: for example, with our old system (Horizon/Syrsi-Dynix), you could check a few books off the list, and then print just that selection. The current mode of having to either print the whole list, or download an entire Excel file in order to highlight and print a more selected list is just a little ridiculous.
Cardinal Response:
According to this bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1750894 this is now possible using the checkboxes next to the items on the holds list. You check the boxes next to the items you want to print and then go to the action menu in the top right of the grid and choose "Print Selected Rows" Let us know if this is not what you mean.
General Comments:
Please put back the option to see what library a hold is coming from.
Please return the column in the patron holds section that tells the name of the library from which their hold is being sent.
Put the circulating library back on the hold books. It's nice to know where the books are coming from when patrons ask.
In the past there was a column in the hold section of the patron account that showed which branch the title was coming from. This greatly improved my ability to quickly let the patron know an approximate date of arrival. It is frustrating no such column exists with the update.
Please add name of library a hold item is being shipped from on the patron holds tab.
Please restore fulfillment library on patron holds screen.
Cardinal Response:
We've found an active Launchpad wishlist request for this. We recommend adding heat to it so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2087870
Comment:
The ability to create column templates that can be applied whenever we are forced to clear cache and cookies as a troubleshooting step. Having to rebuild the column views across so many tabs manually each time this is needed is a bit ridiculous.
Cardinal Response:
We've found an active Launchpad wishlist request for this. We recommend adding heat to it so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1976525
Comments About Call Numbers in Buckets:
Cardinal Response:
There is a column for call numbers in the item buckets. If you don't see it, you can add it from the Grid Settings menu and save it to make it your default. However, since the Record Buckets only list Bib Records, and call numbers are assigned at the volume level so that they can vary between libraries, it's not possible to show the call number in a record bucket.
Comment:
I'd like to see contextual information added to item bucket drop down menus. It would be helpful to know the number of items in a bucket when i drop the menu so I don't have to click every single one to see what needs to be addressed. Example: Adult Fiction (6)
Cardinal Response:
We've found an active Launchpad wishlist request for this. We recommend adding heat to it so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2115070
Comment:
For the Basket to Bucket items to have the same column functions as item status
Cardinal Response:
We have created a Launchpad bug for this request, and we recommend adding heat to it so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2115073
Comments:
Better mobile edition
Evergreen is not very mobile friendly. It would be great is there was an app.
Mobile Friendly App
Cardinal Response:
Cardinal has looked into pricing of commercial apps, but we found that it was cost prohibitive to implement consortia-wide. Some member libraries have a choice to implemented an app called MyLibro and we're happy to help if you'd like to do this. We're also currently investigating how to make Cardinal accessible in the Hemlock app.
Comment:
Is there any way we could get a more behind the scenes look of how Evergreen performs? Obviously the system runs on a big server stack (not sure how big compared to the average goes in the enterprise world. What's the overall specs for Evergreen? How much load does the system see every day? How hard is it trying to keep up with dozens of counties, and hundreds of libraries of staff accessing and using it daily? Is Evergreen slow like it is just because of the load it experience in a given moment? How stable is the system as whole? I'm just curious because maybe it would help me and others understand the well known latency and loading issues we all deal with daily. Overall it's working fine day to day, but there are days I feel like pulling my hair out. Whoever is maintaining the system at the bare metal level of things probably feels the same I imagine.
Cardinal Response:
We're always happy to share more about how things work behind the scenes for those of you that are interested. We'll look into having this as one of our topics for our drop in training in the year ahead.
General Comments:
Slowness of system-happens too often that we are all struggling to operate
Sluggish, unresponsive interface at times, seemingly unrelated to internet connection.
Sometimes Evergreen is slow to load and I'm not sure if it's the internet or Evergreen.
The loading time for our holdings to appear when there are a lot of items
Ways to improve the issues with Cardinal being so slow at times
Currently the main thing with Evergreen that I've seen is the lag or buffer that deletes work or takes too long and it feels like a crash more than it stalling (especially when placing holds) Improvements with evergreen slowness
Cardinal Response:
We're constantly working with the vendor that hosts our software to monitor and address performance issues. If you're experiencing slowness, its helpful for you to post on the Incidents Basecamp list so that we can investigate the health of the servers at the moment and address anything that's happening.
Comment:
This is supplemental to my first question: Are there any comprehensive plans to keep Evergreen performant as far as hardware capabilities are concerned? I see we keep adding system year over year and it seems Evergreen gets a bit slower over time too. Each time a new library system is added to Evergreen, is the state of Evergreen's performance considered before adding it? I assume its a fairly technical process either way.
Cardinal Response:
Over the years our hosting vendor has made dramatic changes to the server environment we're using to host our instance of the Evergreen software. As it is now, its is dynamically scalable to add more virtual servers based on demand. So, for instance, every afternoon we see increases in traffic and based on this additional servers are spun up to handle the load. Lately, we've been fending off a variety of bot traffic, as have all Evergreen users. It is a constant game of cat and mouse to figure out what's real human traffic and separate it from the bots so that it doesn't slow down performance.
Comments About Cover Images:
Cover photos on records!
Make cataloging the correct book image standard
I really wish that we could see more book covers in Cardinal
Minor tweaks to catalog searching in Evergreen to improve clarity (i.e. add proper thumbnails to more items)
Cardinal Response:
We use Open Library as the basic source for our book cover images and rely on catalogers to add any images that aren't available there. Instructions for adding cover images are located in the Knowledge Book: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=818
Comment:
It wastes time to have to click an "Apply" button for each box when I am going to click an "Apply and save" button when I am finished. Extra steps waste time.
Cardinal Response:
It is not necessary to click apply for each item attribute. You can select them, then hit Apply All & Save when done with your selections and they will apply. We will update documentation to make this clearer.
Comment:
Make sure batch record changes conform to the knowledge book guidelines (juvenile graphic novels/manga missing $vJuvenile fiction in 650s).
Cardinal Response:
We're open to suggestions on how to improve these batch changes. Often, when making bulk changes, we're hunting for records with one specific issue and making changes to address that issue. For instance, adding manga GMDs or fixing specific 336/337/338 issues. Making a fix like you suggest is something we can address.
Comment:
There are several places where you can start an edit on either an import or a merge and then accidentally click import or merge and lose all of your work. Either a block on that key or a prompt would be nice.
Cardinal Response:
We'd like to know more about the issue you're describing. Please reach out to us at help@nccardinalsupport.org so we can learn more.
Comment:
Would like to see some of the bugs in Marc fixed
Cardinal Response:
We recommend adding heat to the various bugs related to the MARC Editor so that they will receive more attention. You can find a list of these bugs in the Knowledge Book here under "Cataloging": https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=941
Comment:
Cataloging>Manage Authorities doesn't seem to be working ?? Can this be addressed?
Cardinal Response:
This has been a longstanding issue with Evergreen going back to at least 3.0.3 (per this Launchpad bug). There are many more "wishlist" bug reports related to managing authorities on Launchpad, as well, though this does not appear to be a high priority. We recommend adding heat to the linked bug so that it receives more attention.
Comment:
Require more knowledge in cataloging before allowing someone to be passed as a item or bibliographical cataloger. I find way too many errors and variations on how fields are done. Somehow require that the first library to add a real holding to have actually edited the record. I find many records where several other libraries have added their copies and no one has edited the record.
Cardinal Response:
We are currently looking at ways to update our item and bibliographic cataloging assessments to include the latest updates and changes to our policies and procedures with the assistance of the Cataloging Interest Group. It is currently policy for the first library that adds a holding to a record to edit/update the record. This is known as the "First Cataloger Rule" (https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=40). We can always make sure to bring more attention to this rule, though.
Comment:
In the Catalog, when you select a record and view it in "Staff View" if there is something under Series Title, the Series and number become a clickable link that will search the catalog for the series with whatever is in subfield v, usually a volume number. It would be cool if the search didn't include the number, just the series title(exclude 490 subfield v).
Cardinal Response:
This is a standing bug that has existed since at least 2.8.4. We recommend you add heat to the Launchpad bug so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1502328
Comment:
Would love to have paperbacks separated from "regular print" as so many patrons cannot read the smaller print in paperbacks. Treat like LP
Cardinal Response:
This has been discussed on a few different occasions with catalogers in the consortium, and every time it was decided that it is better to leave paperbacks on the same records as hardcovers due to the immense workload and time commitment necessary to separate out paperbacks from hardcovers.
Comment:
Updating training slides/videos for the cataloging assessments to encompass all aspects of cataloging.
Cardinal Response:
We have started working with the Cataloging Interest Group on identifying questions that need to be updated on the assessment. Once that update is complete, we will begin re-designing cataloging training to speak directly to the assessments.
Comment:
Ways to make your own tags and To Be Read shelf or tags
Cardinal Response:
We'd like to learn more about your suggestion. Would this be on the patron side of the OPAC, like a function within user baskets or lists? Or on the staff side, similar to digital bookplates?
Comment:
In Acquisitions, we really need a return of the NOTE subfield in Holdings Definitions for Providers in EDI setup.
Cardinal Response:
The Evergreen developer's community is aware of this bug and it has been assigned high importance. You can add "heat" to it here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2026600
Comment:
Acquisitions updates
Cardinal Response:
The next upgrade is not expected to include significant acquisitions updates, but we can work on developing a regular acquisitions-specific training program on new features after relevant upgrades.
Comment:
Improve ILS ability to receive (ASN/EDI) shipments for libraries with separate branch billing.
Cardinal Response:
We are expecting further development of this capability in Evergreen 3.15. As we learn more about this capability for the next upgrade, we will share.
General Comments:
Duplicate record consolidation. Patrons select records from outside of the home library when given too many options which results in an unnecessary RS request.
Improve ways to find matches in duplication process
Making the catalog a little cleaner less duplicate records.
Integrated records for duplicate items
Catalog dedup and clean up of formats other than books
deduplication
Further Dedup
Cardinal Response:
We are continually working to improve our annual automated deduplication process, and this past year we performed our first deduplication of video records. This year we rolled out a process where we requested the assistance of catalogers to review and merge potential matches that the automated process matched but did not merge. Each year we are able to make improvements to the overall process, but sometimes these adjustments have to be incremental so as to avoid as many potential mismerges as possible. We also encourage catalogers to perform manual merges as they come across duplicate records during their normal cataloging duties.
Comment:
This may be strange, but an additional shelving location: cozy mystery. Not sure how much of an issue this is across the state, but with cozies becoming more popular and currently the biggest circulation trend (in competition with romance), this would helpful!
Cardinal Response:
In general, we try to limit the number of shelving locations. If your library wants to add a shelving location, please submit a help ticket. If a local shelving location is requested by a variety of libraries, we'll usually elevate it to a Cardinal-wide shelving location. One other thing to consider is using call numbers (or just prefixes) to genre-fy your collection. We've recently helped a member library change from Dewey to genres for their call numbers and could explore that with you for portions of your collection if that's helpful.
General Comments:
The MP3 and CD records need to be separated, many records have both on them still.
There are a lot of CD-MP3s stuck on regular CD audiobook records right now and patrons are not happy when they get an MP3 audiobook that they don't know how to use.
Cardinal Response:
This is something that will require the assistance of catalogers, because only library staff will be able to determine if their item attached to a bib record is an MP3-CD or regular CD. If we can get catalogers to help with separating out these materials, we can then go in and try to determine what information in both records can be used to help prevent accidental bib merges in the future, whether by the annual automated deduplication process or by manual merges by catalogers. We may need to look into possibly creating a new format icon specifically for MP3-CDs, because currently it appears that they share the same format icon with CD audiobooks.
Comment:
Long lost items should automatically clear from the patron's account.
Cardinal Response:
In general, we don't make these kinds of changes automatically because they have financial implications and sometimes different parts of library leadership have to sign off on forgiving the money that is owed for the lost items. But, we're happy to help you and your library address old lost items on your patron accounts. If you send in a ticket, we can help set up a process for you.
Comment:
When creating a note, the default for Depth should be This Branch (vs. Cardinal)
Cardinal Response:
When creating patron notes, the note's visible depth is set at the branch level by default to ensure that staff do not share sensitive notes with other libraries. When interest, staff are able to extend a notes visibility between Branch, System, or Cardinal.
Comment:
Refine the list of descriptors in the patron record for items checked out or on hold
Cardinal Response:
If you're referring to the information shown in the columns of the Items Out and Holds screen, there are a bunch of other fields of information that are available. Go to the top right of that "grid" and choose the gear button next to where it says Rows and Page. That menu lets you select other information columns you can add. There's some more information on this functionality here: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=687 If that's not what you meant, we're happy to assist further.
Comment:
Have a way to remove the requirement (Yellow field) from Daytime phone same as for Email, so we don't have to put garbage in the field
Cardinal Response:
Required fields (which show up in yellow) are configurable for each library system. We're happy to update your required fields if you submit a ticket.
Comment:
Modify the patron account screen to clearly show when an account is part of a group. It's frustrating that there's no indication from that screen and that you have to search for the "Group member details" button from the menu. Maybe add "group" to the list of tabs (next to 'check out' and 'holds' etc.) on the account page.
Cardinal Response:
We have created a Launchpad bug for this request, and we recommend adding heat to it so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2115428
Comment:
Hide legal names under a click box or tab when the patron has a preferred name. As a trans person, I don't want to know another person's dead name unless its absolutely necessary.
Cardinal Response:
We have created a Launchpad bug for this request, and we recommend adding heat to it so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2115429
Comment:
Accuracy in "same name" & "same address" when registering new patron
Cardinal Response:
We'll have a look at how this is done and how to improve it.
General Comments:
Material checkout issues.
Problems with due dates.
Cardinal Response:
We'd be interested to learn more about the issues you're describing. If you encounter an issue like this, please reach out to us at help@nccardinalsupport.org so we can track down what is causing the issue.
Comments about Linking to Patron from Checkin:
Link to patron from check-in screen
In Check-In, have the ability to go to the patron the item was just checked in for as a column option.
Cardinal Response:
It is possible to add a column to the grid on the checkin screen for Staff Client/OPAC Username. This will match the patron's barcode in most cases, and is hyperlinked to the patron's account so you can click on it to go directly to the account. After adding this column, you can save the grid and the column will be included every time you use the checkin interface.
Comment:
There seem to be glitches still in circulation. For example; we check in books slowly whether coming in from a patron or from resource sharing and the system shows the item checked in on the screen. We still have constant situations where a book(s) say they are still "in transit" or on a patron's account when we and they know the book has been checked in.
Cardinal Response:
We'd be interested to learn more about the issues you're describing. If you encounter an issue like this, please reach out to us at help@nccardinalsupport.org so we can track down what is causing the issue.
Comment:
Better item view menu showing clearly when and who circulated an item.
Cardinal Response:
Currently, when you go to the detailed view of an item in the Item Status Screen, this information is available in the "Circ History List" tab. We're interested in suggestions on how this could be better displayed.
Comments about Reading History:
If it is possible to alter Evergreen so that patrons' reading history is automatically tracked in their accounts that would please many people.
Make a Patron's borrowing history available.
The ability to view a patrons circulation history. We get asked this a lot by older patrons that do not use devices and do not log into their library accounts.
Parton account history
Cardinal Response:
We can understand how this would be useful, but Evergreen developers made an intentional design decision to let patrons choose to opt-in to history tracking via the My Account section of the OPAC, so that patrons know about and manage the information available about their activity.
Comment:
I would like for NC Cardinal to be able to connect to a point-of-sale system to make it easier for bookkeeping.
Cardinal Response:
I think there are several libraries that would appreciate this. I'd suggest adding heat to this Launchpad wishlist item: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1851586
Comment:
See more details on billing interfaces should be easier to see
Cardinal Response:
We'd be interested to learn more about your suggestions on how to improve it. Are you referring to getting to the Statement that you can see by double clicking or right clicking on the fine, or the History that you have to select the fine and hit the History button for?
Comment:
Continue seeking ways to be able to use text messages for all activities.
Cardinal Response:
The functionality we now have with MessageBee is better than we had before, but unfortunately our constraint right now is that each message costs money when before it did not. Due to recent budgetary constraints, we've limited SMS notifications to hold notifications but we'd be open to expanding further if and as the budget allows.
Comment:
Notification bugs - whether or not they're email or text, some notifications are sending and some are not.
Cardinal Response:
When you encounter these kinds of issues, its helpful to have a ticket with the patrons barcode and information on what they didn't receive notification about so that we can track down if it is something within our control. Sometimes there are internal issues that we can fix and sometimes we send the messages out but they're never delivered due to SPAM filtering by the patron's email provider.
Comment:
Better communication regarding upcoming upgrades
Better awareness of upgrades for staff who don't work behind-the-scenes on Evergreen
Communication of changes before they happen
Cardinal Response:
We're open to ideas on how to improve. Our strategy at this stage is to announce the upgrades on Basecamp and have a Knowledge Book page where we detail what we know about the upgrade and the biggest impacts we expect it to have. https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.book&id=10 We also send out requests for interested users to join the Upgrade Testing specific Basecamp group which has proven to be really helpful to learn about what works and needs to be fixed. We follow this up by having a webinar where we go through the big changes to give libraries an opportunity to make sure staff are ready. We then usually follow up post-upgrade with further webinars to cover specific changes and topics. This coming fall, we've decided to not have any migration projects happening while in the midst of the upgrade planning so that we can focus our training and testing efforts on the upgrade. We're open to other suggestions you may have. To keep up with the broader changes happening in the Evergreen software and community as changes are being developed, we suggest subscribing to Evergreen's General Discussion mailing list to keep up on the software's development https://evergreen-ils.org/communicate/mailing-lists/
Comment:
Bugs that have been on the list for a while.
Cardinal Response:
This is something we find challenging as well. As part of an open source community, we have a voice in raising bugs and suggesting wishlist items, but there are a lot of other people that are a part of the development and decision making process for what gets added to the software. We have a Developer on our team that can make some changes, but some improvements are difficult or broad ranging. We encourage library staff to add heat to bugs on Launchpad as a way to attract attention to them. The more head a bug gets, the more likely it is to receive attention from Developers in the Evergreen community. Some bugs unfortunately do not get much attention because they are simply deemed not a priority.
Comments about Upgrade Usefulness:
Ensuring that upgrades are beneficial
More of a general design philosophy request. Having kept up with the tech world in my own personal life quite a bit, I often see companies small or big make changes that don't need to be made under the guise of improving the experience. Evergreen is of course more insulated from that kind of decision making given its purpose, but my suggestion is to always keep away from what I would call the Microsoft design philosophy of "fix it until its broken" and "if it's broken, only fix it if it's broken enough". While kind of hyperbolic, it is a thing that is pervasive in the tech world. When planning upgrades a design changes, I hope serious consideration is taken to preserve the legacy function of how we all have gotten used to doing things. While changes are inevitable as libraries change, we should make sure to steer away from reworking things that don't need that sort of attention. If I had to use an example, I would point to something like the drop down menu for searching the catalog being changed so that you have to click on the three dots to have it show more advance search criteria. Before, it used to be something that showed up automatically. I have yet to see a good reason for this change. While minor, there are a number of other changes that I'm sure have been posted about at great length which highlight changes that were never asked for. Some of these are certainly bugs in the system that were not intended but not all are. Also, I see in previous survey results it is mentioned the NC Cardinal team does not always directly affect changes. What does this mean exactly? Are changes simply being requested and NC Cardinal implements them? If so, how are change request filtered for viability and or efficacy? Some insight in the how this exact process takes place would be useful.
Cardinal Response:
This can be challenging. We're making use of software that's developed and changed by a larger software development community. There are ways that you can be involved in the change process by being part of Evergreen's committees and interest groups (https://evergreen-ils.org/communicate/committees/) that are making these changes through the process of software development. When we go through an upgrade to a new version of Evergreen, we get all the changes that come with that new version of the software. We don't get to pick and choose which new features we implement, though we do have some customizations we have to sync with the new version of the software. All that being said, opinions on what is beneficial and what is not may differ. Someone may have what they think is a great new idea that ends up being a pain for other people. We try to solicit feedback and testing when we go through upgrades to fix as many things as we can, but we have a limit to how much we can make our version of Evergreen different than the versions that are released to the larger Evergreen community.
Comment:
useful features
Cardinal Response:
We're open to suggestions on features that you'd find useful.
Comment:
The Upgrade was truly helpful and very successful.
Cardinal Response:
We're glad you found it useful! Sometimes upgrades can be challenging and not everyone is pleased with the changes.
Comment:
I have no real notes. I am pretty interested in some of the upcoming changes to evergreen with buckets and the holdings editor. I hope they are implemented sooner rather than later.
Cardinal Response:
They should be coming in our next upgrade this fall.
Comment:
The one z39.50 change that I truly dislike is how much I have to scroll to get to my results. Since the results are at the bottom of the screen with every new search box pushing it further and further down, the results are difficult to see in normal cataloging workflow. I almost wish the results box was at the top since there are never so many results, or else that each thing was in containers so the search boxes can scroll but the whole page does not have to.
Cardinal Response:
Thanks for the feedback. Would it be helpful if the "Search Query" and "Services and Credentials" columns took up less vertical space, so that the results at the bottom are less likely to be so far down on the page? I'm not sure what the interface looks like on your screen, but it seems like there's a lot of blank space in the middle of the columns that might be used more efficiently.
Comment:
It has been years since we performed a staff permissions review. Maybe a project where SLAMs get together to look at staff permissions group and associated permissions and consider any changes that may be needed. Ideally, we would get to a place where we could come up with standards and an assessment of understanding (similar to Bib and Item Catalogers) so additional permissions could be granted to SLAMs who are interested in doing more. This is a lot to ask, though, and may not be the highest priority for the consortium.
Cardinal Response:
Thanks for the suggestion. We can add this to our project goals. Its been about six years since we've done our last Staff Permissions Project.
Comment:
Evergreen needs the ability to allow local admins to batch purge/delete expired patron accounts.
Cardinal Response:
Currently, batch user deletion permissions using User Buckets are assigned to Branch Administrators or higher. If you do not have Branch Administrator permissions, we'd suggest building the bucket of users that you wish to delete and referring the bucket to your Branch Admin, or asking your SLAM if you're eligible for Branch Admin privileges. If you have Branch Admin privileges and are having difficulties with bulk patron deletions, you may be encountering other issues. If so, send in a ticket and we can investigate.
Requests for Report Lists:
Provide an easily searchable database of existing report templates
I would like to see a list of reports that can be run
Cardinal Response:
At this point, there is a search tab in the main Reports screen that may help. We also have a list of the shared report templates at: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=726
Comments about Shelving Location Filters:
Reports Interface - when you have to add multiple shelving locations, you have to click on each one and add them individually. It would be nice to have checkboxes like you do for the system names to make these easier to select.
I would like to see improvements on the reporter. I feel like we lost some small things from the old one to the new, that were very handy. Having the ability to choose multiple shelving location in one swipe was very useful. This feature saved so much time.
Cardinal Response:
We expect this bug to be fixed in the next upgrade this fall.
Comment:
Make it easier to compile lists of items with a particular subject heading in reports
Cardinal Response:
We've created a report template named "List: Items by Subject Heading". You may clone it from the Centralized Reports Templates folder in the Admin folder: Admin>Centralized Reports Templates>Item Templates>Lists. We'd welcome your feedback on if and how this meets your needs.
General Comments:
I'd like to see very simple reporting in groups for basic activities instead of having to build reports that are very confusing to do.
Improve the reports
Improvement to reports.
Make Reports easier and simpler
Reports are still hard to navigate and too many steps/too complex. It feels overwhelming to see so many input fields and not being sure what to select.
Bring the reports into the 21st century
Reports, especially simple ones, are a hard one for me.
Simplify reports
Simplify the reports
To have the reporting feature/ function more user friendly.
building a report
Reporting interface that is intuitive and less overwhelming that the current interface.
Not really something Cardinal has much individual control over but I did not care for the changes to the report interface. It did not make the reports process simpler but just rearranged how to do certain things in a way that made things more confusing for staff still learning how to do reports.
Reports is convoluted and hard for most to use. Make that easier without having to go through so many unnecessary steps. TLC has an excellent reports module that doesn't require any cloning, re-saving, etc.
Make pulling reports easier/more intuitive
Reach out to all other consortia to see if we can all pool money for a true reports module improvement
Add to/Expand Simple Reports - it actually works and is easy to use.
Make improvements to the reporting interface in Evergreen
Cardinal Response:
The complexity and difficulty of the Evergreen reporter is something that's been a long standing concern for everyone in the Evergreen community that uses it. The Evergreen developer community has continued to try to improve it, rolling out Simple Reports in our previous upgrade and again making updates to the standard reporter in our most recent upgrade. The reporter is one of the components of Evergreen that we as the Cardinal team don't have much control over, so we try to adjust to the challenges by offering regular trainings online and in-person, as well as offering support for creating new report templates. We will continue to offer your feedback to the Evergreen developer community and advocate for improvements.
Comment:
Getting lots of "error running report" messages only correctable by clearing caches, happening with distressing regularity.
Cardinal Response:
Thank you for making us aware of this. We'd welcome a ticket when you encounter this so we can investigate if it is something specific to the report you're working on. We may be able to offer strategies to simplify the report, if that is contributing to the issue.
Comment:
Better communication between library systems about noted damage on material so that we are not making assumptions that patrons damaged material.
Cardinal Response:
We stress open communication between member libraries and have even updated our resource sharing guidelines and best practices to emphasize this. Ultimately, though, it is down to each library system to make sure their staff are communicating with staff from other libraries when an item is damaged.
Comment:
Can always use more refreshers on Resource Sharing best practices
Cardinal Response:
We welcome any suggestions for how we can better share this information with libraries and staff. We have overhauled the Resource Sharing section of our Knowledge Book in an effort to make it easier to follow and understand. We have also recently held trainings, both in person and virtual, for resource sharing.
Requests for Resource Sharing Assessments:
Resource Sharing assessment in order to perform workflow
Mandatory resource sharing assessments similar to cataloging. At this point, proper handling of resource sharing has become just as important as cataloging. While additional trainings have helped to some extent, many libraries are still missing the mark. With how poorly FedEx handles packages, it's even more important that material is packaged properly. Would be great if the trainings/assessments encompassed all aspects of RS (communication protocol, packing and unpacking, managing transit list, etc.).
Cardinal Response:
We've heard the suggestion more and more in recent years. There are some physical tasks that are harder to assess for, but we'll look at putting together a knowledge check for in the coming year.
General Comment:
Interested in the idea of a courier service. Even if the cost is similar to FedEx, I think the staff time would be considerably less packing into reusable tubs. Out west, FedEx hasn't recovered from Helene and I spend a good amount of time working with them when deliveries aren't picked up.
Improved shipping situation for resource sharing.
Resource sharing sustainability.
Cardinal Response:
We're continuing to pursue ways to improve resource sharing, figure out the best carrier and make sure it is sustainable. We've received a lot of good feedback in the discussion about different options. The recent federal budget uncertainty has distracted from long term planning for courier options.
Comment:
Standards for condition of material that circulates. (We get a lot of material from other library systems that are in horrible condition.)
Cardinal Response:
Different libraries have different ideas of what constitutes "damage," and it is difficult to find a "one size fits all" solution for everyone. We do, however, offer some examples and points of reference in the Knowledge Book here: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=945
Comment:
A major problem we have is when books get lost or not returned or damaged when out in resource sharing. One of our books was severely damaged and the check out library had patron pay for the book. That library kept the money and sent the destroyed book back to us. I realize Cardinal does not want money sent through resource. Whenever a book is destroyed or lost here, the patron will pay or I will use funds here to replace book and send the replacement back to original library through resource sharing. This is courtesy.
Cardinal Response:
We really try to stress communication between library systems whenever an item is damaged or lost. Not all libraries will want their damaged item back, and not all libraries will accept a replacement copy. We recommend libraries both reach out to the owning library when an item is damaged/lost and to also refer to this page in the Knowledge Book: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=909
Comment:
Sometimes emails/messages in resource sharing boxes can be a bit more aggressive than they need to be or should be from library to library. You guys aren't and shouldn't have to be mediators of communication, but I do think a healthy reminder of taking a breath before responding could be warranted.
Cardinal Response:
We can certainly put out a friendly reminder to libraries and library staff to please be respectful and professional in any and all communications with other libraries, though this will ultimately come down to each library.
Comment:
Updated "Library Preferences for Lost or Damaged Materials" page. Maybe require libraries to select from list of preferences - some systems have rather vague instructions like "Call to discuss" while others having nothing listed at all. I think this list could really become more useful with a few tweaks. I'd be happy to offer more suggestions.
Cardinal Response:
We have reached out to libraries on a number occasions in order to make sure this page is as up-to-date as possible. Unfortunately we do not always get a 100% response rate, so some libraries have to be left blank. This is why we stress reaching out to the owning library whenever an item is damaged or lost, even as just a courtesy if they do provide instructions on that Knowledge Book page.
Comment:
We appreciate NC Cardinal Resource Sharing so much and so do our patrons. It is amazing how well everything works - especially considering the volume of items that change hands every day.
Cardinal Response:
Thanks for the feedback. There's things that can be improved, but we appreciate the efforts and collaboration of so many library staff across the state that help to get wanted resources into the hands of library patrons.
Comment:
6 month hold block should automatically disappear six months from the create date. This seems like a logical and time saving idea.
Cardinal Response:
Six Month Age Hold Protection automatically expires six months after the Active Date of the item and is removed on a nightly basis. We use Active Date rather than the Create Date because items are often created in a processing status after creation and are unavailable for weeks before they are activated.
Comment:
ability to make multiple holds at one time for book clubs
Cardinal Response:
There are two functions available in Evergreen that allow multiple holds for book clubs. You can make multiple hold events at once for the same hold group. We have added a wishlist to increase the flexibility of this function. You can add heat to it if you believe this might meet your needs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2115081
For the process of placing multiple holds on the same title for the same account, such as a “Book Club” account that does not require all users to register as part of the hold group to participate, there is an existing function in Evergreen for this process as well, but it must be turned on for your library, and the permission to place multiple holds granted to specific staff login accounts. This is something we are still experimenting with, but if you would like to help us test it, please reach out!
Comment:
I want there to be a longer turn-around periods for more rural libraries for books on hold
Cardinal Response:
We can appreciate your concern. In the past the hold shelf length varied widely and in an effort to improve accessibility when popular titles weren't retrieved by patrons, the Governance Committee passed rule with the limit of 7 days on the hold shelf.
Comment:
The bug that makes a patron's hold screen not sticky when you're putting multiple items on hold and you can't look at their account in a new tab or open anyone else's account in a new tab without their name disappearing from the top of your holds page. This bug has been around since the upgrade last year and never been fixed, and it’s something that I run into several times a week at the circ desk.
Cardinal Response:
We recommend adding heat to this Launchpad bug so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/2043715
Comment:
Holds trap for in house items before trapping for out of county item
Cardinal Response:
This should generally be the case, as holds are targeted according to their proximity to the pickup library and holds from the local branch are given top priority (through opportunistic hold capture.) There are scenarios where a item could be targeted for an external hold before a hold at another branch is considered. If you see oddities we would welcome a ticket so that we can look at specifically what happened and when.
Comment:
The distance proximity for holds at our branch does not seem to work properly and won't pull from the main branch when the item is available
Cardinal Response:
The proximity factor is only in place for holds that are being filled through resource sharing. Within your system, the distance between branches isn't considered, its more of a random targeting within your branches based on what's available.
Comments about Hold Queue:
Would love to be able to see where patrons are in line for a hold again, that column only displays "1" now
Holds queue questions--the number given now is completely unhelpful/doesn't take into account 6 month hold blocks, etc.
Cardinal Response:
We recommend adding heat to this Launchpad bug so that it receives more attention: https://bugs.launchpad.net/evergreen/+bug/1954937
General Comments:
For Resource Sharing holds it would be nice if there was a better way to track the book status instead of just marking the book "In Transit"
Resource sharing materials are taking months, in some cases, over a year to be returned with no real way to track them once they leave and are simply "in transit."
Cardinal Response:
One of the tools you may find helpful is the Transit List, which is available under the menu Administration > Local Administration. It lets you see everything that is in transit to or from your system, sort by the send date, shelving location, destination library, etc. That being said, while things are in transit it can be hard to know where they are at the moment. FedEx has its own tracking, but that's not at the item level. We've also started sending out a monthly list of things that have been in transit for a long time with the goal of having member libraries search for them to resolve the issue.
Comment:
I would still like a way to generate a good in-transit report by shipping hub. It's hard to see if something went wrong with a specific package, if you have to reconcile a dozen different libraries.
Cardinal Response:
We have a proof of concept template for a report of this type. You may clone it from the Centralized Reports Templates folder in the Admin folder: Admin>Centralized Reports Templates>Hold & Transit Templates>Lists>"List:
Comment:
When looking into unfilled holds, I've found several items that seem to have been "in transit" status for more than a year. Meanwhile, there are holds placed on these items and patrons waiting. Is there a way to make it so that the "in transit" status times out after a certain period of time and automatically switches over to lost or missing instead? That would give the lending and borrowing libraries a heads-up that something may be going on with an item... and keeps more patrons from placing holds on an unavailable item. (If an example is helpful, the book " Just an ordinary family" 30372101863253 seems to have been in transit since 2023.
Cardinal Response:
We'll add it to our list of projects for the upcoming year.
Requests for Virtual Training Topics:
Cardinal Response:
We are putting together our training plan for FY 25-26 and will include training on the requested topics. If there are specific details you would like to have included in these trainings, please reach out.
Requests for In-Person Trainings:
more training locally
Regional in-person small group training
More regional training opportunities near Franklin County
Multiple dates for in-person classes
Cardinal Response:
We will continue to offer multiple in-person training events around the state. As we've ramped up the in-person classes, our strategy has been to offer sessions in different geographic areas, put out surveys on the dates that work best for the most people and open those sessions to library staff from all regions. The in-person classes take significantly more planning and cost than an online class, so our capacity is limited. If you would like to ensure that one is held close to you, contact your director and ask them to offer to host!
Comment:
more user friendly
Cardinal Response:
We're open to any suggestion you have on how we can make the training more user friendly. Was there a specific session you attended that wasn't very clear?
Comment:
Would like to see more on-line training videos pertaining to cataloging. Dr. Archer does a great job at these. Also, continued updated knowledge book and some additional guidance on authorities (subject)
Cardinal Response:
We're doing some work to try to improve our practices with authorities in the absence of Marcive. We will offer some Cardinal-specific training on Authorities in August of this year. If you're interested in other online cataloging training sessions, I'd suggest keeping an eye on the SLNC Train Station (https://statelibrary.ncdcr.libguides.com/trainstation) or checking out the continuing education opportunities made available by the State Library (https://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/services-libraries/learning-opportunities/continuing-education)
Requests for One-on-One Training:
Schedule a time for one-on-one trainings. I think this could be beneficial for peeps that need a little extra help (me included).
One on one training
Cardinal Response:
Our first suggestion would be to drop in to our monthly "office hours." These are meant to be a time to field questions and they also offer the opportunity for other people to learn at the same time. We have also scheduled individual training sessions on request for challenging issues.
Comment:
Multiple dates for in-person classes
Cardinal Response:
As we've ramped up the in-person classes, our strategy has been to offer sessions in different geographic areas, put out surveys on the dates that work best for the most people and open those sessions to library staff from all regions. The in-person classes take significantly more planning and cost than an online class, so our capacity is limited.
Comment:
Multiple dates for virtual classes
Cardinal Response:
While it is not always feasible to host the same session multiple times throughout the year, we will plan to continue offering many of the same topics year after year. Additionally, most webinars are recorded and posted on the NC Cardinal YouTube page.
Comment:
Recordings/webinars that can be viewed after the event is over.
Cardinal Response:
We record most of our webinars and online trainings and post them to the NC Cardinal YouTube page, along with a number of shorter video demonstrations of specific functions in Evergreen. If you are looking for specific videos, please reach out and we can direct you to any existing videos or add your topic request to our list of videos to create.
Comment:
"Many of these replies is on the end. I would like to block out some time to dedicate to learning more. As many, we are very short staffed and have staff changes. Still trying to catch up?"
Cardinal Response:
If there is any type of training or learning tool that would be easier for you to access during your limited time, please let us know. We're always happy to find new ways to accommodate learning.
Comment:
Staff turnover is high in public libraries, and new staff often need help navigating NC Cardinal procedures and Evergreen functions. Offer short, role-specific on-demand video tutorials (e.g., “Circulation Basics,” “Intro to Reports,” “Cataloging Standards”), quick guides, and regular live refresher Q&A sessions tailored to different staff roles. Improve consistency in shared policies across libraries and provide clearer, more frequent updates to staff. Reduces confusion, strengthens the “one system” feeling for staff and patrons alike, and supports smoother resource sharing. Evergreen staff client and OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) are functional but can feel outdated or unintuitive compared to modern systems. Continue enhancements to the staff interface for smoother workflows (e.g., fewer clicks, better navigation for holds and patron accounts).
Cardinal Response:
We have some shorter videos on specific functions that we post on our YouTube page. We will continue to add to these as we are able. For now, we have added "Circulation Basics" and "Cataloging Standards" to our list of videos to make. We have several shorter videos on report basics, but will continue working on updating these to match the current upgraded reporter.
Comment:
How about an NC Cardinal conference? It would be nice to meet and interface with the folks we interreact with virtually but never get to meet. I think a call for proposals would generate a lot of good content for conference sessions. I expect there are a lot of good ideas, projects, and processes, workflows that happen at other libraries and I’m not aware of that I might want to apply at my library. Probably not every year. We could do it every other year. The even years, when NCLA does not hold a conference.
Cardinal Response:
We love this idea! We will discuss its feasibility and try to figure out when and where we might be able to host something of this sort. It may not happen this year, but we would love to see it in the future.
Multi-Card Comment:
The multiple card policy seems a little wonky. As does the handling of lost or damaged items.
Updated multi-card policy. I know this had been in the works, but not sure what the current status is. Apologies if this has been communicated and I just missed it!
Cardinal Response:
We're in the midst of reviewing and updating our Multi-card policy. We hope to complete it this summer.
Comment:
acceptance of new idea from your libraries
Cardinal Response:
We love to get ideas from our community. We make an earnest effort to consider ideas and figure out if it is feasible to implement suggestions. Sometimes an idea, no matter how good it is, turns out to simply not be possible based on resources, compatibility with Evergreen or other factors.
Comment:
Champion needed changes to Evergreen (and send instructions to users how to help with that goal)
Cardinal Response:
Individually, this is something the Cardinal team is engaged in and we'd welcome the involvement of the Cardinal community. The best thing you can do is to add "heat" to the Launchpad bugs we link to in these responses. Guidance on how to do that can be found here: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=953
Comment:
If a natural disaster affects member systems, it would be helpful to have targeted messaging on important need-to-see vs can-skip info for when those staff people get overwhelmed with hundreds of emails.
Cardinal Response:
We can appreciate that feedback. The pandemic and Helene were reminders of how quickly unexpected circumstances can impact everyone and how important it is to communicate clearly. Recently, we've established our Primary Points of Contact list for each library so that we can be in direct communication with library leadership who can find the best members on their team to make decisions and respond.
Comment:
quick response when a problem arises
Cardinal Response:
This is very important to us. We keep a close eye on the Incidents Basecamp group watching for reports of performance issues.
Comment:
Spread the word about the advantages of using Basecamp to help resolve issues.
Cardinal Response:
We've been trying to address this year by releasing the Basecamp Best Practices: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=211
Comment:
How can I do a better job with keeping up with what is going on with Cardinal?
Cardinal Response:
Our top suggestion is to join the Basecamp groups that are relevant to your job duties. (See the Mailing List tab at the top of this page: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=request) Also, participation in Evergreen interest groups that match your interests (https://evergreen-ils.org/communicate/committees/)
Comment:
Individual contact person
Cardinal Response:
We try to channel all of our support tasks towards our ticketing system so that we can balance the load and adapt to when team members are out of the office. You can reach out to us directly if you have policy or privacy concerns, but generally, if you reach out to us with a request to do something we'll turn your request into a ticket so that we can track the life of the request and make sure it is resolved and doesn't get lost in our inboxes
.
Comment:
Streamline Policy Consistency and Communication Across the Consortium
Cardinal Response:
We've been working on this idea over the past year and trying to put together "One Sheets" of things that are useful to know. Generally, our policies can be found here: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=167
Comment:
Better awareness of trainings
Cardinal Response:
We are always trying to improve our communications about training. Based on other feedback from this survey, we will do more direct emails about upcoming training opportunities, and adding them to the training section on the Splash Page, while continuing to post on Basecamp.
Comment:
Regarding this survey, the final questions, 1-3 should be set to paragraph and not short answer.
Cardinal Response:
Thanks! Noted.
Comment:
I think basecamp could be formatted differently as it sometimes is difficult to follow. It seems jumbled. It does not flow well.
Cardinal Response:
We unfortunately don't have much control over how Basecamp is formatted. We're working to improve what we can, for example by releasing some Basecamp best practices this year: https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=211
Comment:
I noticed a noticeable change in letting us know the libraries that are adding on and when in advance. It is so appreciated. It helps us plan for when they come on board for resource sharing. Thank you!
Cardinal Response:
That's great! We can plan to announce our scheduled migrations at the beginning of migration season and provide updates to the consortium as we complete each process.
Comment:
Communicate through email lists rather than through the Basecamp
Cardinal Response:
We had mailing lists in the past, but lost access to them. Perhaps filtering your Basecamp notifications differently might help? https://nccardinalsupport.org/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=211
Comment:
I would love for there to be a quick link to a list of NC Cardinal libraries that we could access, and that could easily be attached to individual library websites.
Cardinal Response:
The State Library website includes both an interactive map of NC Cardinal and a list of participating libraries https://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/services-libraries/nc-cardinal
Comment:
Make the Knowledge Book easier to use and understand.
Comment:
In this past year, we undertook a project assessing the usability of the Knowledge Books. Based on the feedback from this project, we are currently working on an improved layout and expansion of the Knowledge Books in the hopes of making them easier to use.
Comment:
I would like customized links to things that a Librarian might need to know as it relates to NC Cardinal
Cardinal Response:
As part of our updates to the Knowledge Books, we are hoping to make the content more workflow-based. If you have specific suggestions for workflows you would like to see covered, please let us know!
Comment:
A search option for the knowledge books that actually works well.
Cardinal Response:
This is something we've spent time trying to solve, and have yet to figure it out. We've worked with the company that provides the software, looked at Google options and tried other alternatives. We'd like to see it improved as well and are continuing to try to improve it.
Comment:
Link to Knowledge Books in green bar
Cardinal Response:
This is something we could help you add to your Evergreen staff login splash page. If you submit a ticket, we can walk you through the process.
Comment:
We are concerned about the spread of legal initiatives like HB 636, the challenges to Student Access cards, and/or the breaking-up of regional systems like A-M-Y. These challenges concern us. We (staff) know that our consortium vastly improves our library services, and we (staff) find it irreplaceable. Most of our patrons thank us every day for services that NCC helps us to provide. You should know that thousands of patrons and staff actively appreciate NC Cardinal!
Cardinal Response:
Thank you. We are also concerned with these trends and how to help libraries navigate through them.
Comment:
Less "projects" or cleanup that involve library staff hours during summer months when library patronage grows due to summer reading and programming.
Cardinal Response:
We can appreciate that the summer months are busy for most libraries. We tend to do most of our project work in the winter, but will keep your request in mind.
General Comments:
Find ways to advocate for funding and find alternative funding sources
Figuring out a way to continue to exist in the face of upcoming federal budget issues.
Cardinal Response:
This is definitely on our mind.
Comment:
Would love to get updates regarding the future of Cardinal in light of IMLS funding elimination. I rely on my director to share info, and he doesn't seem to share much.
Cardinal Response:
IMLS was named in an Executive Order issued on March 14, titled "Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy". Since March 14, IMLS has terminated many awards and employees. However, the Grants to States LSTA program has not been cancelled, and we have received our allotment for federal fiscal year 2025. The future of IMLS is uncertain, and we are continuing to monitor this evolving situation. NC Cardinal will continue to discuss budget scenarios with Cardinal directors, but any decisions or adjustments to the NC Cardinal program will be communicated widely once confirmed. More information about LSTA funding in North Carolina may be found here: https://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/lsta-federal-funding-north-carolina
Comment:
NC Cardinal provides excellent service to libraries and the community's we serve. As long as NC Cardinal continues to grow mindfully and with input from member libraries we will make it through growing pains and funding cuts. The recent NC Cardinal updates and funding scenarios presented to member libraries were timely and invaluable for planning as we are all faced with many uncertainties.
Cardinal Response:
We're glad you found those helpful and appreciate the thoughtful counsel our member libraries have offered as we navigate these challenges.
General Comments:
I don't have anything, the experience has been great for me as a longtime employee of a Polaris system and on every level I've really appreciated all of this experience. Evergreen has its issues, but I love that everything generally has an answer and that there's a culture of working together to concoct solutions.
I'm sure you guys see a lot of repeat complaints, but overall Evergreen functions well for what it is and the scope/diversity of it's users and their expectations.
Thank you for all you do to keep the libraries running seamlessly on a day to day basis! Thank you!
You all are working hard to make the system better for everyone. It is very obvious that you care about feedback and listening to the concerns of library staff. I appreciate you and everything you do!
You're doing an amazing job...I mean, look at this survey! Where is you manager? You need a raise!
Continue all of the various training programs and top notch communication/troubleshooting NC Cardinal is great! You all have made such great changes over the years in response to feedback. We appreciate your constant effort to make it functional and usable for us users! Whether it's answering hard questions, helping with a funky working report, or making seemingly massive changes. Thank you all!
The NC Cardinal team is amazing, keep up the excellent work!
I've stated a lot of negatives with our system, but please don't think that I don't appreciate all of the hard work you all put into it. Everything needs improvements and that's not a reflection of those who are trying to keep it running. Thank you for your work!
Thank you for all of the work you do for each library system and for Cardinal as a whole.
Kudos to the NC Cardinal team for always being open to feedback and suggestions. I appreciate what you all do!
Thanks to Llewellyn for all the development work: improvements, applying bug fixes, and many other things we probably don’t even hear about.
Thanks to Samantha for the improvements to training opportunities. These have become more diverse in content, frequency, and the formats they are offered in.
Cardinal Response:
Thank you for the kind words. We love serving libraries and are always striving to improve the services we provide. We appreciate all the helpful feedback and comments.
Comment:
Give hoopla the option to transfer books to Kindle and allow patrons to check out more than one show in a series at a time with a check out time longer than 3 days.
Cardinal Response:
Unfortunately, this is something outside of our control. We'd suggest reaching out to Hoopla with this suggestion.