Ever have one of those mornings where the printer is non-responsive and you end up losing your OPAL paging slips to the network abyss? Instead of smacking your forehead and muttering “doh”, take these simple steps to re-generate your OPAL requests:

1. Go to View Outstanding Holds mode in Circulation. Note: View Holds mode is one day behind; meaning if you want today’s hold notices, you’ll have to perform this task both the day of missing slips and the following day to ensure all requests are caught.

2. Generate a list limited to holds placed before the date in question. (No need to make any further limits in the Patron Name drop down menu.)

3. Run for ALL pickup locations.

4. Sort the list first by date placed and next by item location. (Double-click column headers to do so)

5. Email the list to yourself and copy/paste the chunk pertaining to your specific institution.

Have you ever wanted to find out which records in your collection are missing a particular OPAC message, holdings information, or virtually any other field lacking data?

To pull these records, you will go to Create Lists and begin building your query by designating the type of record that contains that particular field. For example, say you want to find all serials check-in records that lack a “LIB HAS” statement. Your query would look something like this:

Store Record Type: CHECKIN c
Term 1: CHECKIN c LOCATION equal to “xxper” (where “xxper” is your institution’s serials location code)
Term 2: CHECKIN c LIB HAS equal to “” (literally, leave the “Value A” completely blank)

This same tactic can be used to locate most empty fields within any record type. Happy hunting….

III now offers a tutorial for Millennium beginners on its site (you will need to use your CSDirect password to access it).  It requires a web browser with Flash and a sound card.

 http://csdirect.iii.com/tutorials/basic/

To sort the order of your Paging Slips go to Millennium “Notices” mode. Choose your list then choose “Edit” or “Create” (to create a new list). Once your list is open:

Choose the “Sort By” button. Millennium Circulation will open a new window. Entries in the Sort Notices table consist of three elements: Line - type -field

If you double-click on either “Type” or “Field” a choice box will open. Millennium Circulation displays the list of valid values for that element.

Choose the value that you want to use by clicking it.

You can then choose “Append” to add another line after the first line. Or “Inset” if you need to add a line above the previous line. (creates an entry after any previously specified criteria) or Insert (creates an entry at the currently selected line).

Choose “Save” when you are done.

You read ‘em from the bottom up, but don’t let that get you down!  A new tutorial on Rule Determiners has been posted to the opal-libraries website, so please check it out.

http://staff.opal-libraries.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/15/Rule_Determiners.htm