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Hebah Amin-Headley

Valerie Burnett

Hebah Amin-Headley

Valerie Burnett

LASSO

your data

LASSO

your data

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Valerie Burnett

Data & Migration Librarian

ByWater Solutions

Academic library background

Hebah Amin-Headley

Content Creator & Educator

ByWater Solutions

Public library background

Fiber Arts

Fiction

Cats

Libraries

Talk to us

about…

80s music

Board games

Doctor Who

Koha

Tea

Transgender humans

Fountain pens

Stuffed foods

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Table of Contents

A Brief Note on Permissions
Reports
Batch item modification
Batch record modification
Import patrons
Batch patron modification
Batch patron deletion
Future possible developments

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A Brief Note on Permissions

Koha allows a lot of customization of permissions based on staff role.
As we mention each tool/process, we will address permissions for that tool.
With one exception…

Photo: Jewell Mazique, clerk with Library of Congress from LOC Prints and Photographs division: http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8d02858/

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Cataloguing Permissions

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Chapter Two

The Intrepid Report(er)

Picture used with permission of Ryan Bedke @RancherRyan

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What is Borrowernumber, Biblionumber, and Itemnumber?

The key to performing actions lies in numerical references, such as cardnumbers (patrons) and the database reference numbers: borrowernumber, biblionumber, itemnumber.

Cucurbita pepo
Summer squash
Zucchini
Courgette
Cucuzza
Marrow

Picture by Valerie Burnett

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SELECT biblio.title, (@partial:=LEFT(extractvalue(metadata, '//datafield[@tag=\"035\"]/subfield[@code=\"a\"]'),7)) AS "partial 035$a"

FROM biblio_metadata

JOIN biblio USING (biblionumber)

GROUP BY @partial

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SELECT biblio.biblionumber, biblio.title, (@partial:=LEFT(extractvalue(metadata, '//datafield[@tag=\"035\"]/subfield[@code=\"a\"]'),7)) AS "partial 035$a"

FROM biblio_metadata

JOIN biblio USING (biblionumber)

GROUP BY @partial

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NEW WINDOW!

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Chapter Three

Corralling item data

Picture used with permission of Ryan Bedke @RancherRyan

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This option checks in items to remove them from patron accounts.

Items are not marked found, nor do damaged/withdrawn statuses prevent this return, nor are item locations updated. This feature is intended to allow removal of checkouts from patron accounts without affecting fines or other statuses.

“ ”

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Want to live dangerously?

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Chapter Four

Corralling biblios

Batch Record Modification

Picture used with permission of Ryan Bedke @RancherRyan

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Chapter Five

Gather up the townsfolk

Importing patrons

Picture by Valerie Burnett

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Important points:

Branchcode, surname, and categorycode are REQUIRED
Branchcode and categorycode must be already defined
Branchcode and categorycode must be uppercase
Headers must be lowercase
Headers must be the defined database names
Date format is picky

'01/02/2008'. NOT ‘1/2/2008’
'2010-10-28' (ISO format)

Helpful points:

Only upload fields with data (delete empty columns)
Never upload “flags” column
If you overwrite passwords, you might overwrite passwords for staff users
Leading zeros in cardnumber, userid, and zipcode can go missing

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Automated uploads

Valuable for school and special libraries where the patrons are members of a defined group
Library’s IT department sets up an automated export of patron list, formatted to upload
Export file has a predictable naming convention
Export file is placed on an sftp server
Koha admin sets up an automated import to run

Picture used with permission of Ryan Bedke @RancherRyan

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Picture used with permission of Ryan Bedke @RancherRyan

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Chapter Six

Rounding Up Patrons

Photo credit: Johnson County (KS) Archives

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Batch patron updates

Update whole family’s addresses at once

Update to a new patron category in batch - example: new juvenile category or creating non-resident category

Update patron attribute

Delete patron attribute - find via report and delete in bulk

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Patron Tools - Modification

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Batch patron modification from Patron Search

This ability to modify patron accounts from patron search is new as of 23.05. Staff with top-level borrowers permissions and at least edit_borrowers + list_borrowers can do this; without view_borrower_infos_from_other_libraries, they will only be able to do so for their own branch’s patrons. Mandatory fields cannot be blanked out (surname and category code at minimum, but usually other fields marked mandatory), but this can be used to blank out some fields or update information in bulk. Nice way to update a family’s information in much fewer steps if they all come in to update cards. For the Bennets, we may choose to update address and primary email since Elizabeth is contact on all notices, and possibly new home branch if they’ve moved to a closer location. Or maybe you want to make changes to everyone and then make changes specifically to Kitty and Lydia to change their accounts to a no-internet juvenile category.

Do pay attention to number of selected patrons - 24.05 fixes issue of patrons selected for batch mod or merge by prompting if you want to keep them selected.

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Quality of life improvement!

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Identify group of patrons via report

For larger scale projects, you’ll probably want a report to help you out, especially if you want to do something like work with patron attributes. The Koha Reports wiki has sample reports to help identify patron attributes. They will be starting places where you can customize to what you need. Important thing in a report like this one is that you should have a column for borrowers, or p, .borrowernumber to unlock batch actions from the report, and you need to know the attribute code. Use case: library used to collect driver license numbers and has decided as a policy to stop collecting it and remove it from patron records. You’ll want to find, in Administration, what the Code is and enter it at run time. And it can be for things besides attributes - maybe you are creating a new patron category by residency and are looking for specific zip codes or want to identify cards created in partnership with local school district. Or grab a list of accounts owing more than a certain amount to add a collections attribute or move to new patron category. Or you are finding accounts aged out of minor categories but don’t automate process of changing those to adult. All sorts of uses! Reports wiki can often get you at least 75% of the way there, and then you can tinker with it.

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Batch modify or delete from results

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Chapter Seven: Git on Out of Here

Photo: Dan Cook, via Unsplash

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Batch patron deletion

Tool

Limitations on deletion

Identify via report (using borrowernumber and last seen, no checkouts, fines, guarantees, etc if you want to see who’s getting deleted

Delete from patron list

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Patron Tools - Batch Deletion

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Batch patron deletion tool*

*some exceptions apply

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Check your work - are these expected numbers?

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Reporting

Create report to identify who would be deleted by criteria entered
Create report to identify accounts ineligible for deletion (need to end checkouts, or have guarantor, expired staff account, etc)
Reports wiki has many reports on patrons by criteria as starting place: https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/SQL_Reports_Patrons

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Patron Tools - Lists

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Patron Lists

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That’s All Well and Good, but…

Enhancement requests in the Koha Community

Bug 6532 - Way to move items to another record in batches

Bug 23205 - Enable barcode links in reports

Bug 23260 - Anonymize (remove) patron date from items_last_borrower

Bug 24483 - When batch deleting patrons, report who was not deleted and why

Bug 30281 - Schedule batch patron deletion and anonymization

Bug 37514 - Batch patron modification should have renewal as option

Don’t see a feature you want here? File a bug!

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Questions? Great use cases?

Valerie Burnett

Data & Migration Librarian

ByWater Solutions

valerie@bywatersolutions.com

Hebah Amin-Headley

Content Creator & Educator

ByWater Solutions

hebah@bywatersolutions.com