Great advice! Lori
On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 2:50 PM, George Tuttle <gtut...@prlib.org> wrote: > When Evergreen was developed in 2006, time was of the essence and staff > in the various Georgia PINES libraries were not always clear on how > features should work. I know because I was part of the original testing of > Evergreen. Testing was done on a piecemeal basis and many features didn’t > get fully tested. Time was the problem. Because of the lack of time and the > lack of testing, there were definitely some surprises when Evergreen went > live. I remember when we first realized that canceled hold shelf items were > going to “Available” without being transited back to their owning library. > Another example, how it is possible for an item to go from “In Transit” to > “Available” without it reaching its destination.**** > > ** ** > > This second problem occurred because we asked for it. We knew we needed > the ability to abort an item in transit. What we failed to mention to > developers was the circumstances when an item could or could not be > aborted. We wanted the feature to work the same way it worked in Sirsi > Unicorn, Dynix, and the popular ILSs of that time, but saying that isn’t > the same as providing a detailed flowchart on how a feature should > function. **** > > ** ** > > In Dynix, you can’t convert an item from “In Transit” to “Available” > without checking it in at its destination. Also in Dynix, the main > instance where an “In Transit” item is aborted is in Check Out and that is > the only instance available to frontline staff. Dynix also allows for an > operations manager to conversion old “In Transit” items to “Missing” or > some sort of pre-delete status.**** > > ** ** > > Now, I not writing this e-mail to sing the praises of Dynix. With any ILS, > there are certain features you like and certain features you don’t like. > In Georgia, there is a saying: “Evergreen isn’t the software we wanted. > It’s the software we asked for.” I am not saying this to be critical of > Evergreen, I am just saying when you ask for something that it is smart to > include a flowchart. Don’t assume the developers can read your mind.**** > > ** ** > > Life lesson: When asking for something, it is smart to include a > flowchart. Just saying.**** > > ** ** > > George Tuttle**** > > Computer Services Librarian**** > > Piedmont Regional Library System**** > > 770-867-2762 x113**** > > 770-891-0654 (cell)**** > > 770-867-7483 (fax)**** > > gtut...@prlib.org**** > > ** ** > > *[image: littleone]***** > > ** ** >
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