2024-02-13 FOLIO Implementers Meeting Notes

Date

Feb 13, 2024

Recording

https://recordings.openlibraryfoundation.org/folio/implementation-group/2024-02-13T10:55/

Attendees

  • @Thomas Trutt, Owen Stephens…everyone else please add yourself, as there’s no participants record.

Agenda

  • Housekeeping (5-min.)

  • Overview of the Serials app.

Notes

Time

Topic

Notes

Time

Topic

Notes

05:45

Small Talk

  • Per an earlier discussion, apparently there is indeed a German bee cake. Lynne provides a link! (Should we do a Great Implementers Bake Off as a future agenda!?!)

08:56

Housekeeping

  • None

09:30

Serials

  • Owen is in Germany this week! He is actually irl in the room with GBV, who sponsored this work. 👏🏼

10:19

Presentation

  • There is not currently a dedicated serials management aspect in FOLIO. However, there are many aspects of FOLIO that touch on Serials management. This includes ordering/invoicing of serials, predicted pieces, receipt, claims, tracking/reminders for standing order and monographic serials publication schedules, and transfer/binding/disposal of received pieces.

    • Owen notes that we're dealing primarily with print serials, not e-resources, in this conversations.

  • Owen mapped out what currently existed in FOLIO and what was missing from this initial analysis.

    • The original work was sponsored by Duke and GBV. These sponsors determined the initial priority for developing new functionality. The initial focus was to implement serial prediction patterns and generate expected pieces that can then be received. Claiming was also identified as a priority.

    • Owen's work focuses on bringing new functionality to FOLIO that will allow users to bring in a set of expected pieces for a particular serial publication and then receive those pieces. Separately, claiming is being handled by Joe Reimers and Dennis Bridges in the Acquisitions areas of FOLIO.

16:28

Current work

  • The current work will bring the new Serials application into FOLIO. The app will support the ability to create serials records. A serials record will represent a serial publication which can have a prediction pattern attached to it. That prediction pattern will generate a list of expected pieces for a year (or other interval). The Serials App is for subscription-based Serials--it will not cover unpredictable publication schedules like Standing Orders. There will not currently be any relationship between the Invoices process and Serials, but this need has been noted.

  • The workflow will be:

    • Create a serials record

    • Add a prediction pattern

    • Use the prediction pattern to generate a list of predicted pieces

    • Use the predicted pieces to create receiving pieces

    • Receive the pieces in the Receiving app.

  • The first release of the Serials app will be available in the Quesnelia release.

  • Thomas asks (18:54) if there is any difference between current inventory items and Serials inventory items.

    • Owen clarifies that no inventory is created by the Serials app. Inventory is created through Orders. This behavior will not change with the addition of the Serials app.

    • The "Serial Record" Owen refers to is not an inventory record, it is specific to the Serials app.

  • Further notes on functionality (23:52)

    • Searching will be possible based on the order line, vendor, and serial title.

    • A serial record can have one or more prediction patterns, but only one active pattern at a time.

    • Multiple Serial records can link to the same order line to support complexities like annual indexes.

    • A prediction pattern represents frequency and recurrence rules, combination and omission rules, and chronology and enumeration (labelling) patterns. These patterns enable you to create accurate predicted pieces. These are different from the receiving pieces. Receiving pieces are created from predicted pieces. The reason for this separation is that predicted pieces might create multiple receiving pieces for multiple copies.

    • Automated claims are out of scope.

    • Binding/disposal is out of scope.

31:37

Demo Time!

  • Owen provides a demo using the snapshot environment.

    • Owen shows us the Serials app.

    • First he creates an order (34:00)

    • Next he goes to the Serials app (37:44), creates a new serial record, and links it to a purchase order line (38:06)

    • He shows searching by Purchase Order Line (38:25)

    • He creates a Publication Pattern (39:17) and explains the logic of entering time unit, number of time units, and number of issues published per cycle. We look at options/strategy for defining the day format. We also look at Labelling (43:08), including the Template and functionality under "add label".

    • Owen notes that eventually we hope there will be easier ways of entering template variables, perhaps similar to patron notices.

    • Owen demos previewing predicted pieces (50:21). There is some work outstanding in this area if you look at snapshot today.

  • Question (52:00): Lynne notes this is like the MARC holdings pattern. Owen concurs. Much of the requirements were driven by Duke coming from Aleph. We may be able to go beyond the MARC holdings pattern because it is limited to 6 levels of enumeration. Owen asks if anyone in our community goes beyond 3 levels of enumeration, as that does not seem to be common in practice.

  • More Demo

    • Owen demos actually generating predicted pieces (54:49). There's no undo, so previews are important. This creates a predicted piece set. A single record will have several predicted pieces sets

    • Owen demos generating receiving pieces (58:00). There are some bugs in this area in snapshot still to be resolved. (These will be fixed.) We do see the pieces in receiving (01:00:19)

      • Owen notes that Dennis is leading a group looking at improving representation of display summary/captions information across apps.

01:02:00

Questions

  • Stephanie asks: what happens at the end of the pattern period? Do we have to manually go in and create a new predictive piece set?

    • Owen says: currently the only way of creating a new set of predicted pieces is manually. In the future, we would like this to work across all of the prediction patterns at a time but this will not be in the initial release.

  • Thomas asks: would you be able to set a starting volume number for a pattern. What if I wanted to start it at 16 rather than 1?

    • Owen says: Yes, it's just not in Snapshot today. This functionality will be available in the initial release.

  • Kara asks: what if you start a subscription in the middle of the year?

    • Owen says: The only way to accomplish this at the moment would be to generate all the pieces for that year and then delete the ones you don't need.

  • Wen-ying Lu asks: My library is migrating from Sierra to FOLIO. Will the predictive patterns and the pieces checked in on the Sierra check-in cards be able to be migrated or integrated into the FOLIO serials app?

    • Owen says he's not sure specifically, but surely the Library of Congress is in the same situation. The aim is to have this supported.

  • Natalie asks: What if the publication changes frequency during the middle of the publication schedule?

    • Owen says: you'd have to delete the pieces that have already been done, similar to starting mid-year. You would delete any pieces that were no longer valid, do a new prediction pattern, create the new pieces, and delete the ones that weren't valid from the new set.

  • Natalie asks: Does this appear as a holdings statement in the OPAC?

    • Owen says it depends. There are many variables, so it depends on your set-up. If you are able to do this with your current receiving workflow, there's no reason that Serials would cause this to change.

01:07:00

Closing

  • THANKS OWEN! YOU'RE THE BEST! WE ARE ALL EXCITED FOR THIS FUNCTIONALITY!

Action items

None!