The Evergreen for Academics group has been discussing several issues of
importance to academic libraries including support for batch loading of
patron records, batch patron update, and batch patron delete.
Academic libraries regularly load student records at the beginning of a
semester to both add new students to Evergreen and update the contact
information and expiration dates of students already in the database.
Loads can be once a semester but can also be more frequent than that.
Even though academic libraries who regularly load student records likely
have a set of scripts in place to automate this task, it would be great
if there were an interface within the client, similar to Vandelay, for
batch loading of patron records. Batch updates can also be important to
change expiration dates for a group of students or faculty. As students
leave their academic institution, it is important to delete those
expired records.
I put together a list on the Evergreen for Academic wiki of the
functions that a batch patron interface should have. This list is based
my experience loading patron files for our 10 academic consortium
members. Please let me know what issues you encounter and what
functionality should be included on the wiki.
http://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=evergreen_for_academics:batch_patron_functions
--
Martha Driscoll
Systems Manager
North of Boston Library Exchange
Danvers, Massachusetts
www.noblenet.org
