A collection of common questions (and answers) posed by prospective Public Libraries about what FOLIO can do, what limitations exists, and what the state of “must have” features are.
This FAQ is open to any community members to contribute to.
Leave a question if you have one or address a question in need of an answer!
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Table of Contents
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Cataloging and Acquistions
Q. How do you print spine labels in FOLIO?
A.
Q. What is the acquisition workflow look like in FOLIO?
A.
Catalogs (discovery layer)
Q. What catalog options exist for FOLIO?
A. VuFind, Project Blacklight and Ebsco Discovery ServicesService.
More?
Circulation
Q. Can you print a receipt for a patron when they’re done checking out and can it be customized?
A.
Q. Does FOLIO have floating collection functionality?
A.
Collections Management
Q. How does Shelf Reading work in FOLIO?
A.
Q. How would one do a branch “inventory audit” of their materials in FOLIO?
A.
Financials
Q. Does FOLIO have a method for accepting payments for lost and overdue items?
A. Yes, staff can accept cash or checks payments in FOLIO and card-present solutions can be enabled leveraging SIP.
Hosting Options
Q. Can FOLIO be self-hosted?
A. Yes, but with the complexity of the product - at this point - it’s recommended to have hosting assistance from one of the FOLIO partners.
Notices
Q. Does FOLIO have a built-in notice generation system?
A. Yes, you can create templated notices for email or printing based on numerous criteria:
Awaiting pickup
Cancel request
Check in
Check out
Hold request
Hold shelf expiration
Item aged to lost
Item recalled
Item renewed
Loan due date change
Loan due date/time
Lost item fee(s), charged
Lost item returned - fee(s) adjusted
Overdue fine, renewed
Overdue fine, returned
Request expiration
Request creation
(and more)
More information about notice templates and triggers can be found here.
3rd Party Services
Q. Does FOLIO support phone notices?
A. Folio enables the flexibility to use other services. Some institutions have implemented methods to send notices using Illion’s TeleCirc.
Q. Does FOLIO support SMS or other email sending notifications?
A. Some institutions have implemented SMS and email notices through a 3rd-party service provider such as Patron Point.
Privacy
Q.
Reporting
Q. Does FOLIO ship with out-of-the-box reporting tools?
A. Yes! The Reporting App can generate CSVs for export and additional tabulation.
Folio can also be equipped with an analytical database called MetaDB which offers tabular nearly real-time data, which enables enabling other third-party reporting tools to connect to it. It also enables sharing useful queries between other libraries written in common SQL language.
Q. What third-party tools exist for reporting?
A. Redash and Metabase are two popular (and open-source) solutions, but PowerBI and Tableau can also be used to create tabular and graphical reports.
Requests
Q. Does FOLIO support Title (bib) Level Holds?
...
Q. Can a patron pause their holds for a period, say, when they’re on vacation of or when they’re close to position 1 at the top of the queue but not ready for the their book yet?
A. No - but this feature request has been drafted and could be developed soon.
[UXPROD-3567] Suspend/Freeze/Pause a Patron Request - FOLIO Jira
...
A. FOLIO does have a SIP2 module , and the following codes/fields can be found <here>. and is constantly being developed and extended.
Information about what features are supported can be found here:
https://github.com/folio-org/edge-sip2?tab=readme-ov-file#implemented-messages
Automated Material Handling
...
A. MeeScan, M3, Envisionware, and MK Solutions are all supported using SIP2.
User Management
Q. Does FOLIO allow parents to monitor what their kids do? (Family groups?)