Salutations!

Today's Topic:  Let's play "Find that Patron!!" 

With the rising costs of Hoopla and long hold lists on Libby, it is more imporant than ever to always, always, check carefully for duplicate patrons whenever issuing a new card. 

Complicating matters, it was determined at an ALL-WALS meeting that all WALS libraries would enter patron names "as written" (except in ALL-CAPS) on their ID or application form.  This means that VanderZanden gets entered as "VANDERZANDEN" and "Van der Zanden" gets entered  as "VAN DER ZANDEN."  This means last names won't sort together anymore. You need to search by Phone, Street, and Birthdate.  Read More...

I have 3 patrons: Rashid Al Shamari, Adam Alshamari, and Mohammed Al-Shamari. If I search by Phone, I will find them all:

If I search by last name "AL SHAMARI" I will find Rashid. Depending on how many other similar names there are and how big my display window is, I may, or may not, find Mohammed:

Notice the slider bar on the right side of the results list. A little scrolling can sometimes work wonders! 

If I search for "AL-SHAMARI" with the hyphen, I will only find Mohammed: 

If I search for "ALSHAMARI," I will only find Adam:

All that to say, remember to be rigorous and creative in looking up patrons--esp when registering someone for a new library card! Search by phone number, search by address, search by last name with and without spaces, hyphens, or other punctuation. 

And make sure to always, ALWAYS, USE ALL CAPS, and always, always, check & enter patrons' UserCats (1 & 2, but esp 1) every time you register a new patron. And, unlike me when entering my test patrons, remember to include the Birthdate. 

Tech Tip: So, you've got this long Excel file and you want to hightlight the first column to cut-n-paste. You could use your mouse and scroll forever, or you could just use Shift+CTRL+DownArrow.  The other arrows also work: Shift+CTRL+ RightArrow highlights to the end of a row. Shift+CTRL+UpArrow to highlight up to the top of cell, etc. 

That's it for this week... Make today a nice day!! 

Share & Enjoy!
Karla