2023-08-18 Acquisitions Meeting notes

Housekeeping -

• Reminder - no meeting next week (WOLFCon 2023, 8/22- 8/24, see August 8 meeting agenda for Acquisitions related WOLFCon sessions)
• Mark your calendar - Discuss Package POLs with Sara Colglazier tentatively planned for Friday, Sept. 1
• Being planned - Demo of how supplementary properties and term filter builder are used in ERM by Own Stephens & real life application/implementation by some institutions in an upcoming Friday meeting (date to be determined) after WOLFCon

PC Updates (Kristin Martin )

• • Planning for WOLFcon over past two weeks; no further updates

Implementers Topics #107

• Add "Reporting Code" field to Invoice and Purchase Orders

• Lehigh would be interested in a functionality that adds a Reporting Code (similar to Method of Acquisition) that helps track non-Acq. related data points

  (eg. "DEIA Shelf Project")

  This should be report-able via LDP. And uses vocabulary that we can edit.

  Questions:

• Would these need to be applied to Orders AND Invoices? Any other acq records?    Daniel Huang: (Lehigh University) For it to be on the order line itself. Want to know how many things in this project area have you purchased......  
  • Owen Stephens 8:14 AM
    Why is that on the order line rather than the item?
  • Daniel: Because the order line is where the fund code lives. 
  • Kristin: This sounds like what we do for our endowed funds although we also put it in the item record as well. 
  • Daniel: This goes into other things like reporting on how many items did we buy from a DEI vendor 
  • Scott Perry (UChicago) 8:18 AM
    There is a link between items/holdings and the pol and/or invoice line in the ldp.
  • Dennis: The order doesn't have cost information, You would want to be pulling from the actual invoice or multiple invoices. 
  • Scott Perry (UChicago) 8:20 AM
    I can see a use for a reporting code (multi-select) in the POL.
  • Owen Stephens 8:21 AM
    Are tags already supported on any of these objects?
    • Scott Perry (UChicago) 8:21 AM
      Tags do not have controlled vocabulary.
  • Joe Reimers (EBSCO) 8:21 AM
    It's not unusual, I've seen this sort of thing in other systems
  • Owen Stephens 8:22 AM
    Yes - I’m wondering if an investment in improving tags app might be an alternative and more flexible approach
  • Scott Perry (UChicago) 8:23 AM
    Controlled vocabulary on donor would be great as well
  • Dennis: Would you like this feild to be required?
    • It should be required at point of order. 
  • Owen Stephens 8:24 AM
    Just thinking about ideas. Tags feels like it could be made much better but at the moment it often/always falls short
  • Joe Reimers (EBSCO) 8:24 AM
    My main hesitation with tags is that a reporting field should probably use a controlled vocabulary
  • Owen Stephens 8:24 AM
    Custom fields is the other thing that springs to mind. Yeah - exactly this issue was what made me ask my Q about the item level
  • Joe Reimers (EBSCO) 8:25 AM
    From a "pie in the sky" view (as opposed to an "OK now I have to build this" view), I'm a big fan of UDFs (User Defined Field)
  • Owen Stephens 8:26 AM
    That’s what I meant by Custome Fields
  • Joe Reimers (EBSCO) 8:26 AM
    Basically, "here's a field we've put in there for you to do whatever you want with"
  • Owen Stephens 8:26 AM
    They are in Users
  • Dennis: We have talked previousely about a seperate material type for order records. The feature for this still exists and this may be a good place to put this request in. 
  • Daniel Huang, Lehigh University 8:27 AM
    This definitely existed in the OLE system. Literally called "Project Code"

  • Scott Perry (UChicago) 8:26 AM
    I really liked the open access multi-select tag-like custom fields in agreements and licenses.

    Owen Stephens 8:27 AM
    Yeah that’s why I was asked to present them in a future meeting

  • Owen Stephens 8:29 AM
    Completely agree with Dennis here. There is a balance to be struck between specific fields and user defined fields
• Would this need to be a multi-select. Ie. have the ability to apply more than one Reporting code to a given record.
  • Joe Reimers (EBSCO) 8:29 AM
    Realistically, how many codes for this application are we talking about? Like are we looking at a handful or a couple dozen?

    • Owen Stephens 8:30 AM
      Every library is different

      Owen Stephens 8:31 AM
      So each one might have 12 but they all have a different 12!

  • Dennis: Are you using expense classes?
    • Daniel: A little bit, but that doesn't fit all use cases. 
• Would codes potentially need to be depricated over time? Should each code have a status and only allow users to apply active codes to records? Daniel: I am not sure that they would need to be. 
  • Owen Stephens 8:30 AM
    But in Agreements we found eventually we couldn’t accommodate all libraries needs without a user defined field (called supplementary properties)
    In Agreements you can deprecate a property
  • Kimberly Pamplin 8:31 AM
    A user defined field would be really helpful. Even within one library it may change over time what is desired/needed.
  • Owen Stephens 8:32 AM
    But you can’t deprecate a value in a list
  • Joe Reimers (EBSCO) 8:32 AM
    X-Error-FY2022
  • Owen Stephens 8:33 AM
    If X appears at the end of the list I’ve been filing wrong. That approach has been taken with the agreement values as well.
  • Joe Reimers (EBSCO) 8:34 AM
    I have some thoughts but I don't know if they're feasible
    Lemme think about this before I propose
    I've seen a few patterns but I need to verify that FOLIO can handle it architecturally
  • Owen Stephens 8:35 AM
    There’s already a UDF pattern
  • Daniel Huang, Lehigh University 8:35 AM
    honestly it is kind of like custom fields in GOBI
    so let us say hypothetically we have a custom field in GOBI we want to put into the FOLIO order
    where GOBI custom field go???
  • Kristin Martin (University of Chicago; she/her) 8:36 AM
    I would support a User Defined Field for POLs.
  • Owen Stephens 8:36 AM
    I think a challenge is the right place for the code - order vs item vs invoice vs transaction
  • Dennis: Question is if Investing more in tags or investing more in custom feilds.....
  • Daniel Huang, Lehigh University 8:36 AM
    I am thinking it is a field that "lives" with the transaction from Order to Item and to Invoice and wherever else
  • Owen Stephens 8:37 AM
    And it seems like both the local workflow and reporting needs could be key to where it makes sense for a particular library
  • Daniel Huang, Lehigh University 8:37 AM
    the information is only in hand really at the point of order. well unless we retrained our Catalogers to do patron rush print book purchases...…...
  • Kristin: Being able to make the connection after ordering with the invoice would be the way to go. 
  • Joe Reimers (EBSCO) 8:38 AM
    Is there ever any instance where that info would be needed for materials not associated with a POL?
    • donor items
    • Daniel Huang, Lehigh University 8:38 AM
      I would argue for a separate gifts code function
      you would hear 50-50 on libraries who do and don't enter POs for donor items
    • Owen Stephens 8:39 AM
      We also have some stuff we are looking at for agreements where we have a checklist for an agreement. We already have something like this in OA.  That might allow for reminding people to do stuff
    • Daniel Huang, Lehigh University 8:40 AM
      also another wrench to throw into this: donor books associated with donor books and other books purchased by donor money associated with donated books. (across two donors)(but it is one discrete project). Lehigh: "Tags are a nightmare. THank god for Method of Acq". *it really is about controlled and required vocab. **and how it goes from the PO to the invoice and Item record
    • Dennis: I'd like to explore a few approaches to this and outline pros and cons, then have a group discussion. 
    • Daniel: We want this feature to be funtional for everyone, doesn't have to be specifically what I put in my request. 
    • Dennis: We will explore a few approaches and post it in slack, plus have another converation in this group. 
    • Owen Stephens 8:44 AM
      With a user defined field then you could have it either way - eg one multi-select, three single select fields etc
    • Daniel Huang, Lehigh University 8:45 AM
      I also see it this way
      1. Tags are good for "on the fly shooting from the hip" situations
      2. custom fields are good for pre thought out structures that are approved by leadership

• Dennis: We collected a lot of use cases for claiming. General question: What is the more common workflow in claiming? How much time and effort do you actually spend on claiming. There seems to be levels of details. 
• Lisa Smith - Mich State 8:50 AM
  Both - we need to claim one-time orders and we need to claim issues from on-going orders. 
  • Claiming an issue or a volume or a  CD..... vs claiming a title in general. 
  • Lisa Smith - Mich State 8:51 AM
    I'd say on-going orders have more claims.
  • Owen Stephens 8:51 AM
    And ongoing has both subs & standing orders
  • Owen Stephens 8:49 AM
    Claiming is on my list for Serials work as well
  • Daniel Huang, Lehigh University 8:51 AM
    standing orders
  • Martina Schildt 8:51 AM
    I think it differs from institutions to institution
  • Daniel Huang, Lehigh University 8:51 AM
    funny enough: we don't enter in standing orders sometimes at Lehigh since we don't have the Tags/custom fields to enter the expenditure.....
  • Dennis: Does anyone have a system that generates a pdf with all the information you need to claim?
  • Martina: The system usually has a way to notify you something needs to be claim. 
  • Owen Stephens 8:52 AM
    Some serials consolidation services also have api for claims. I think maybe EBSCO has some automated claiming where they manage subs and then send that info back to library
  • Dennis: It could be a number of different formats you get the information, then you send it on to the vendor. 
  • Susanne Gill (BVB) 8:54 AM
    in SISIS the claiming is done in a cron-job...and the libraries decide if they want the info directly send to the Vendor or to them for checking. OCLC
  • Dennis: In your workflows are you thinking about a specic vendor and how much you have to claim from them? Or thinking of the individual order and claiming it? I can see see setting it up as specific for the organization... 
  • Jackie Magagnosc 8:56 AM
    In my previous life, the III system we worked with could give me a list of serials that were late. Once we verified the pieces were actually not received, we were able to transmit the claims to the vendor (Harrassowitz) electronically.
  • Lisa Smith - Mich State 8:56 AM
    We do check the catalog, or check the shelf before sending the claims out.
  • Owen Stephens 8:57 AM
    My initial plan in Serials is to have a dashboard widget to just expose the information to the user easily. This is a step below actually generating the claim
• Dennis: We can continue this discussion later. I'd like to review the material we already have.