King County has also just won a sizable IMLS grant to the tune of $998,556 so that they can further develop the peer-to-peer support model that works so well among public libraries.
Matt Carlson showed off some of the new circulation screens and emphasized that the driving developmental force behind these new screens was a focused eye on usability. They have streamlined the circulation interface in ways that make perfect sense. Some examples (some of which have been rolled into the Evergreen 1.6 client):
- Checkout, checkin buttons on a toolbar
- Patron registration can now be completed all on one screen
- Built-in, configurable links to help screens, circulation manual
- Patron search now displays horizontally, giving more real estate to the results screen
- Patron screen gives a quick summary of number of items, bills, etc.
- Can now easily add a patron note, alert, or block to patron record
- Can now place hold from within the patron record without the need to enter in the patron information again
- Ability to display item detail information on one screen from item status
- Plans to add item history (last 10 items) from the Check-in Screen
We'd like to publicly thank Jed and Matt for taking the time to show us some of the fruits of their labor. They have made some fantastic enhancements to the Evergreen staff client and I am so grateful that the rest of us who are Evergreen-bound will be able to reap the benefit of it. We here at Bibliomation are very much looking forward to the possibility of collaborating with KCLS on Evergreen improvements in the future.
--Amy Terlaga / Assistant Director, User Services / terlagaATbiblioDOTorg
2 comments:
This is a wonderful resource which my team and I appreciate. I will admit to not having read every word (yet), but based on what I've seen, I don't have any sense of where and when in the development process libraries like Ridgefield will have any input. I'd appreciate any clarification! Thanks, Trevor Gladwin
Hi Trevor--
We're still working out the details of the plan and will have a better sense as soon as we have the full open source team on board. (Kate Sheehan starts on November 9th.)
We're resurrecting the ILS steering committee, too, so that we can get library input that way.
Stay tuned for more information about this - we might want to do some online webinar meetings to help encourage input from a broad range of Bibliomation libraries.
--Amy
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