MnLINK VDX Blog

There is an issue with request title searching. This only affects requests placed prior to the upgrade. Requests placed since the upgrade should not be affected by the title searching problem.

You may want to try searching by author or ISBN instead of title if you can’t find something. Use the Request Advanced Search option. Select the Borrower or Lender radio button to help limit your search. You may need to further limit by checking the Display Not Supplied requests box or selecting the Authorization Status of Complete. Choose the option of Author or ISBN from the drop-down menu options and enter your search term. If you choose to search by author you may want to try truncation like with title searching, for example %grisham.

Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

Posted by Nick at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Question: We have a patron who had to get a new card for some reason (old one was lost, stolen, whatever). He had placed 10-15 requests on the old card. Because that card is no longer valid in our ILS, it doesn’t validate in MnLINK. His new card validates, but there are no requests attached to it. What happens to his requests that are still in process in MnLINK? Will they ever arrive? Will we be able to connect them to him?

Response: Good question. The requests previously placed are still active. Those requests have the name and barcode used for requesting attached in the Borrower Details. You can do a Client Barcode search for that user in VDX to locate all of the requests if your user contacts you about their status, but the user can not access the account via ZPortal. On your circulation system’s end, if you remove the barcode from the user account you will only be able to match the MnLINK request up with the patron by looking at the Borrower Details. If your library leaves old barcodes attached to the patron circulation record and somehow denotes that it is invalid, you may still be able to search by the barcode on the bottom of the Pick slip depending on your system’s capabilities.

To search in VDX for Client Barcode, you can either do a Simple Search or Advanced Search, and format the search with your 3 letter code, hyphen, patron barcode (e.g. cce-22086000000000).

Posted by Nick at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What do you do when you have the patron barcode, but you need the request number? You can use that barcode with either Simple Search or Advanced Search.

When you want to use Simple Search you change the radio button under Borrower then you enter your library's 3 letter OCLC code, hyphen, barcode: e.g. hco-21972123456789. You will get no results if you only enter the barcode. This Simple Search will only look for active requests.

When you use the Advanced Search you change the ILL no. to Client Barcode and then format the search in the same manner as the Simple Search (3 letter OCLC code, hyphen, barcode). With Advanced Search you can search for Not Supplied requests by the patron when you check the Display Not Supplied Requests. You can also search for Complete requests using the Client Barcode by selecting the Authorization Status of Complete. Remember, Complete requests will only retain the patron barcode for 30 days.

Posted by Nick at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ah ILL request numbers, you can't live with them and you can't live without them. One of the most common questions I get is why does the request have 2 ILL numbers? Well, I'll make this as brief as I possibly can. There's this group called the ILL Protocol Implementers Group (IPIG) that defined the standards that are used by the VDX system. IPIG decided that each request should have a Requester ID (ILL number), Transaction Group Qualifier (TGQ), Transaction Qualifier (TQ), & Subtransaction Qualifier (STQ).

There are 2 important numbers here for us, the ILL number and the TGQ. The ILL number is your party's identifying number when you are the Borrower or Lender. This is the number you scan for searching and actioning a request. The TGQ is the other party's ILL number when they are the Borrower or Lender. TGQ is one of a drop-down Field search options for Advanced Request Search. I don't believe anyone is using the TQ, and I am not aware of any place where the STQ is currently being utilized in our system.

For more information on the ILL Protocol Implementers Group, you can read all about the standards here http://www.arl.org/access/naildd/ipig/ipig.shtml.

Posted by Nick at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For some reason I always think of VDX in comparison to Newton's 3rd Law of Motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you want to Cancel a request you need an acknowledgement from the Lender for the request to be Cancelled. When you want to Renew an item you need an acknowledgement from the Lender for the Renewal to be OK. Sometimes there is important information being passed through Messages which needs to be responded to. Even though each of the previous scenarios would be in a different file in the Work Queue, there is one easy way to isolate all of your requests which need a response.

On the ILL Reports page near the bottom of the list there are 2 options to isolate all requests which need a responding Action. To Be Acknowledged requests requiring action - as Borrower and To Be Acknowledged requests requiring action - as Lender are 2 reports which will isolate all of your requests that need a response. Some of the responses that will be required will be a specific Action, while others may only need the Authorization Status be changed to Acknowledged.

If there is anything that you would like to know more about, don't hesitate to ask.

Posted by Nick at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When the Simple Request Search option was set up a few months ago we were given a few options to search for one category at a time, i.e. Requested Title, Client Name, etc. If you have the complete information you can just select the search option and enter the information in the search box.

Let’s say you want to find the request for the title A history of the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota. You would select the option Requested Title and put the title history of the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota in the search box. You can also just search by the first word of the title and it will bring back all of the titles starting with the word “history”. If you only remember a word somewhere in the title, such as “Minnesota”, you can search for that word by doing a truncated search. A truncated search is similar to a keyword search for a single word. You can do a truncated search by using the % symbol before your search term. If you were to search the term Minnesota you would format it like this, %Minnesota. But a truncated search is different from a keyword search in that the multiple search terms must be in sequence. You would find the previous title by searching the term “%labor party”, but not by searching “%farmer party”.

The truncated searching also works for the Client Name option. If you wanted to truncate a search for all active requests placed by Nicholas Banitt, you would select the Client Name option and search for %banitt. You can also truncate a search for just a portion of a name or title term. You can truncate a search term as %anitt or %holas to find requests in my name.

Let me know if I there is something about this issue that I did not explain clearly. Likewise if you have any other questions about VDX don’t hesitate to ask.

Posted by Nick at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)