TRAC Operational Guidelines

The TRAC Directors approved the updates to the TRAC Operational Guidelines today. (These updates were first approved by the TRAC Advisory Council on May 6, 2011.)

Please review the document and familiarize yourself and your staff with it. It governs all TRAC libraries regarding:

• Resource Sharing
• Damaged and Lost Materials Payment
• Missing and In-Transit Items
• Contacting of Patrons
• It also contains a Damage Noted to Item form (Appendix A) to use when recording damage to another library’s item

1. The updated Guidelines instruct the library that receives payment for a lost item to go into the Patron’s Record and mark the charge paid. Once Penny has been able to set up the permissions’ structures for each library, you will be able to mark the charge paid for any patron that happens to pay at your library, whether they are your patron or not. This will assist you in dealing with Wandering Patrons to your library.

2. At the Public Library Meeting at PLS on May 9, you may recall that we discussed the new functionality available in Polaris 4.0 that would permit library staff to put messages into Patrons’ My Accounts in TRACpac. The TRAC Directors have decided to turn that functionality on, so it will become available later this year, once Central Site has implemented it, and Penny has had a chance to complete the permissions’ structures that will be needed for each of your libraries to be able to do this.

The TRAC Operational Guidelines update reflects this new functionality, with the following guideline having been added:

Due to Polaris functionality, all libraries in TRAC have the ability to place messages into the My Account of any patron on TRACpac. Therefore, libraries must not place messages into the My Accounts of patrons not their own. When placing a message in the My Account of your own library patron (or your Wandering Patron), appropriate etiquette and professionalism is to be observed. Libraries are responsible to train their staff and volunteers to use the functionality responsibly.

3. At the Public Library Meeting at PLS on May 9, we also discussed the possibility of automating the conversion of Item Record statuses, including:

• Claim Returned to Lost after 6 months
• In-Transit and Transferred items to Missing after 6 months
• Missing items to Deleted after 1 year

All of the TRAC systems asked their libraries, and each were in favour, so the TRAC Operational Guidelines have also been updated to reflect this new automation, which will be implemented on September 15, 2011. An explanatory email will be sent to all libraries over TRACSharing by next week.

Please do not hesitate to contact Katherine Wiebe if you have any questions about the updated TRAC Operational Guidelines. Also, if you have recommendations or changes you’d like to see in the Guidelines, please advise Katherine, and she will put them on the Review List. Each year at the spring TRAC Advisory Council meeting the Guidelines are reviewed and updates considered.
 

 

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