Home → About NC Cardinal → Annual Reports and Surveys → 2021-2022 Annual Survey Responses
Last Updated 05/16/2023
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.