Automation Report No. 00-02
Date: November 10, 2000
Subject: Network Library Home Page Changes
One addition and two changes are being made to the network
library home page of the World Wide Web (WWW), available at
<www.loc.gov/pics/>. A facility to set copy allotment
default quantities has been added. The interlibrary loan
(ILL) facility will no longer save all old requests; it will
save only those from the current month and the prior month.
The ILL facility will also have the check boxes for rush,
permanent, etc. that are on the paper ILL form. The
default quantities facility was added when this network
bulletin was distributed. The old ILL requests will be
deleted two weeks after the distribution date if no
objections are received. The check boxes will be added some
time later.
The new web facility for default quantities includes
significant changes to the way libraries set copy allotment
default quantities. Libraries may now change default
quantities at any time, instead of once a year in the annual
survey. Books are selected for copy allotment once a month
and are available on the copy allotment web page for about
25 days. The default quantities in effect when the book is
first assigned to a producer and announced to the network by
NLS remain assigned to the book throughout the copy
allotment process. A change to a default quantity will not
change the default quantity for books already in the copy
allotment process, including those on the current copy
allotment page. The new default quantity will take effect
in the next month's copy allotment selection.
The second significant change is that libraries will be able
to select three default quantities (normal, priority, and
rush) for each media-subject category for which they now
have only one default quantity. NLS selects certain books
for priority or rush processing based on a book's expected
demand. A definition of normal-priority-rush is attached.
Setting default quantities for rush books is important
because a rush book may be completed and shipped before its
copy allotment cycle is finished. In this case all
libraries will receive their default quantities for that
book rather than a selected quantity.
To start this web page function for default quantity
setting, the normal and priority quantities were each set to
the default quantities libraries had selected in the last
annual survey. Rush quantities were set based on the
response to the Network Bulletin 98-14. The print/braille
default quantity for a library is not available for
selection on this web page, though there is an entry where
it may be viewed. To change the default quantity for
print/braille books, please call the Production Control
Section at (202) 707-9235.
The default quantities web page allows the user to view the
normal-priority-rush definitions and also the extended
subject category descriptions with Dewey Decimal
equivalents. This feature, accessed by clicking on the
underlined name of each at the top of the web page, operates
in a new manner that may be confusing at first, but should
prove useful in the long run. When a user selects the link
to either of the definitions/descriptions, a second browser
(Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) window is opened,
displaying the requested document. When this happens,
another browser icon will appear on the Windows taskbar.
The default selection web page browser window and the
description browser window will be running simultaneously.
To go back and forth between them, the user selects the
appropriate icon on the taskbar. The back button on the
description window will not return the user to the default
selection window. This arrangement has an advantage. The
user may display both browser windows at the same time,
viewing the expanded subject category definitions while
making default quantity selections. More and more web pages
are using this arrangement for linking to other web pages.
The interlibrary loan (ILL) will be deleting all requests
older than the prior month. Retaining all old requests has
been causing problems with the View/Edit/Delete Outgoing
Requests function. The list of old requests for some
libraries has gotten so long that their browsers fail in
loading the page for display. After querying a few
libraries, it was decided that retaining requests from the
current month and one full prior month would be sufficient.
Some libraries print out one full month's requests for their
records. This change gives them all of the following month
to print their record before the data disappears.
The addition of the check boxes to the ILL facility for
"rush," "permanent," "submaster," and "RC from RD" has been
made at the request of the multistate centers. The
multistate centers will provide guidance on their use when
they are made available in the system.
If the deletion of the old ILL requests will cause you any
difficulty, please contact the NLS automation officer as
soon as possible. We plan to delete these requests two
weeks after the distribution of this network bulletin.
For further information contact:
Robert McDermott
Automation Officer
__DEFINITIONS OF RUSH, PRIORITY, AND NORMAL BOOKS__
All books selected for production by NLS are assigned a
priority by the NLS Collection Development Section (CDS).
The priority assigned to a title will determine how quickly
the book is delivered to the network libraries. The present
priority categories are RUSH, PRIORITY, and NORMAL.
RUSH books are few, only blockbuster bestsellers with high
demand, that are produced in a true rush, expedited through
NLS in one day, shipped to the producer via overnight
delivery, and pushed ahead of all other books in the
production schedule to ship as quickly as is possible. The
checks by the NLS Quality Assurance Section (QAS) are also
expedited, so the RUSH book receives special handling in all
steps of the production process. In one case the finished
book shipped three weeks after selection. We will rarely do
these books, only three to six a year. Since these books are
produced so quickly, there is a high probability that it
will ship before we have been able to collect your
selections from the copy allotment list, so in most cases
you will receive your rush default quantity for that book's
subject category.
PRIORITY books are also often bestsellers, or perhaps some
other title in high demand by our reading public. These
books are assigned to producers as soon as they arrive in
the Production Control Section (PCS) but they are not put
ahead of books already in production. They are given the
next available start date for that producer. The allowed
time for production for these books is less than that
allowed for normal books, and they are checked ahead of
normal books by the NLS Quality Assurance Section, so they
will usually ship more quickly than normal books, but not
nearly as quickly as RUSH books.
NORMAL books are all books not classified as RUSH or
PRIORITY. They are handled and produced on a first-in,
first-out basis depending on the availability of an
appropriate narrator, and the production time is determined
by the length of the book and the difficulty of the
material, which may require more research.
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