Good morning. Welcome to another round up of recent happenings in the Mid-Hudson Library System Vega pilot project, including release notes from the developers. As always, if you have any questions or thoughts, you can send them to this group (mhls-vega@googlegroups.com) or techsupport@midhudson.org, or you can always email Laurie or me directly.
Welcome Mahopac!
We’re happy to have Mahopac Public Library on board as our 6th pilot site. We hope you enjoy using Vega to search, filter, bookmark, manage your account, and generally stress test. We value your opinions about it as both staff and patrons.
Here is a roundup of useful links for you:
- The Vega area of the Mid-Hudson knowledgebase, including pilot information and our ongoing list of known issues, where we collect problems and ideas from you and pass them along to Innovative.
- The Vega product roadmap from Innovative.
- Videos: BIBFRAME & Vega and Showcases (you can skip ahead about 14.5 minutes).
- Evaluation and reporting form for staff.
Here are two examples of a list (curated manually) and a saved search (an automatically-updating search of new DVDs at Adriance) created in Vega Discover, both of which can be turned into showcases, which can then be embedded elsewhere – as seen on our Vega knowledgebase page. Published showcases will also appear in searches within the catalog. We’re still working on our policies and procedures for sharing showcases, so you won’t have access to them yet, but you can play around with your own lists and saved searches.
Recent updates
Kiosk mode
Kiosk sites are special URLs that can be used within the library building that will display the call number and checked-in status of items at that particular library without the patron needing to sign in. The entire catalog can still be searched, unless you choose to display only your local collection. The automatic sign-out time can be adjusted to the library’s liking, instead of the 90-day default used to keep patrons signed in at home. If a patron who belongs to another library is using a kiosk, Vega will also indicate if the materials are available at the patron’s home location but will still present the kiosk location call number and availability first.
Patron can update password/PIN in Profile
We now have the option to allow patrons to update their PINs/passwords. An additional Passcode policy message configuration has been added to the Patron Settings that allows the library to communicate the password policy required for the creation of new patron passwords.
When editing is enabled, patrons will see a button to change their password when editing their patron profile. Using this button will open a modal where the patron must supply their previous password/PIN and enter their new password twice to update this field. The Passcode policy message, if configured, will display in the modal to help the patron choose a valid password.
Patron can change pickup location for holds
Patrons can now click the Pickup Location link displayed above the current pickup location for their pending holds. Clicking this link will open a modal where the patron can choose from the available pickup locations and make a change. If a pickup location cannot be changed due to ILS settings, the patron will receive an error message from the ILS indicating why the pickup location cannot be changed.
Improved diacritics handling in search results
Searching with or without diacritics will now return the same results, regardless of whether items have or do not have diacritic characters. The changes handle predominantly single-letter diacritics like those you find in romance languages. Innovative will be following up with more improvements for the handling of more complex language characters in the near future.
Examples:
- Beyoncé will now return the same results as Beyonce
- Les Misérables will now return the same results as Les Miserables
- Günter Grass will now return the same results as Gunter Grass
- Sueño will now return the same results as sueno