IRC log for #evergreen, 2015-03-25

All times shown according to the server's local time.

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05:09	pinesol_green	Incoming from qatests: Test Success - http://testing.evergreen-ils.org/~live/test.html <http://testing.evergreen-ils.org/~live/test.html>
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09:19	ckolasinski	Has anyone been able to successfully send EDI orders to the new Penguin/Random House?
09:21	* kmlussier	waves to ckolasinski
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09:29	kmlussier	ckolasinski: If you don't get an answer here, it might be worthwhile to send your question to the list. It also tends to be quiet in here this early in the day.
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10:03	ckolasinski	thanks, kmlussier!
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11:40	pinesol_green	[sipserver\|Mike Rylander] Typo fix for inline documentation (cut/paste hazard) - <http://git.evergreen-ils.org/?p=SIPServer.git;a=commit;h=8545ee2>
11:43	gmcharlt	Alas, poor Mulletplex! We knew you well!
11:49	eeevil	it /was/ the MacGyver of Net::Server personalities
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12:09	Dyrcona	Heh.
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14:06	csharp	so, is there a way in the report to link a payment directly back the library where the payment was made?
14:06	csharp	s/report/reporter/
14:06	csharp	payment line item, that is
14:11	tsbere	csharp: Depends
14:11	tsbere	csharp: If you are saying "any payment": No. If you are talking desk payments you can link through the cash_drawer (which is a workstation ID), assuming that is set.
14:15	csharp	tsbere: the request is for a report of "total amount paid to the library" displaying line-item information
14:15	csharp	so the challenge appears to be what constitutes "paid to the library
14:15	csharp	"
14:15	* tsbere	wonders if his "money collected" report script would help here....not that it is a reporter template
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16:05	Bmagic	Can the staff client search the patrons by date of birth? What am I missing here
16:06	mmorgan	No, it doesn't. You're not missing anything.
16:07	Bmagic	mmorgan: oh ok, that's good. LOL. Was there an issue with this that I am not aware of (from a developer's point of view) ?
16:07	mmorgan	We've had that quesiton a few times, too. I'm not sure of the reasoning behind why it's not available.
16:08	Bmagic	mmorgan: I see, thanks
16:08	bshum	It's probably an easy enough field to add to the search form.
16:08	bshum	Though the formatting for said field is probably annoying.
16:09	Bmagic	bshum: yeah, that was the only thing I could think of
16:09	Bmagic	aka date picker would be nice
16:10	Dyrcona	A number of our patrons have no date of birth.
16:10	Dyrcona	Just throwin' that out there.
16:13	mmorgan	We have some patrons without. Some will not provide it. I was never sure whether there was a technical reason for it not being an option or if there was a concern about security of that information.
16:15	jeff	What's the circumstance where you're wanting to search by dete of birth?
16:16	Dyrcona	We've had staff ask about it in the past.
16:16	Bmagic	it was just a request from one of our branches
16:16	Bmagic	I didn't see a wishlist item on launchpad
16:16	Dyrcona	I believe it is usually to differentiate a JR from a SR.
16:16	Dyrcona	Or to narrow down a list of patrons with common names.
16:17	jeff	normally i look at the date of birth in the search results listing to determine that -- not search by dob.
16:17	jeff	Bmagic: do you know why they asked? that's sometimes more helpful.
16:18	Dyrcona	But, if you get more results than will display, using the dob to narrow it down might be handy.
16:18	Bmagic	Of course, with the web based staff client coming, features that are staff client specific, I tend to put off
16:18	* jeff	thinks
16:18	mmorgan	Some of our libraries have issues with the spelling of names, nicknames and changed names. A search by birthdate might allow them to recognize a different spellin.
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16:19	mmorgan	er, spelling.
16:19	tsbere	As a note: A number of people want to not only search on DOB, but want to search on just the month or day of the DOB.
16:19	Bmagic	tsbere: good point, an interesting twist for parsing the input
16:19	jeff	tsbere: same question as i had for Bmagic -- do you know why?
16:20	tsbere	jeff: Probably for some of the same reasons I have been asked if it would be possible to enter a DOB without the year at all. Some people are sensitive about their ages. :P
16:20	Bmagic	jeff: I don't know why, I could ask them for the goal of such a feature and perhaps the answer is using the staff client differently than they are
16:21	jeff	tsbere: is there a library business value in having someone's month or month + day of birth without having the year?
16:23	tsbere	jeff: More DOB data for people that are really anal about giving out their full DOB?
16:23	jeff	sorry, i don't follow.
16:24	tsbere	jeff: Some of it is that the patron doesn't want anyone to know their full DOB, but just month or month+day is fine to them. I am not one of those patrons, so I can't fully explain their reasoning. End result, they don't want their DOB in the system if the year is required to be part of it, or won't tell staff the year if the entire thing is in the system.
16:24	mmorgan	I can see it useful for helping identify the correct patron. Month and day is often enough to distinguish between patrons with the same name.
16:26	jeff	tsbere: right, i got all that. i was just wondering why there was a library desire/need to have a partial DOB as opposed to just leaving that DOB null for those patrons who do not wish (and are not required) to provide it.
16:26	Dyrcona	I've stopped asking "why."
16:26	Dyrcona	I just say, "open a ticket, and we'll get to it when/if we get to it."
16:26	tsbere	jeff: Searching or identifying patrons that are anal about the entire DOB being in the system but have no problem with the month+day being there? "Better to have part of it than none of it" mentality?
16:27	jeff	Dyrcona: to quote Mo Willems' pigeon, "Hey, I'm a curious bird!"
16:28	jeff	mmorgan: seems to me that there are many other ways of distinguishing patrons, not the least of which being their library card number... :-)
16:28	jeff	(or numbers, as the case may be)
16:29	Dyrcona	Ah, but see, many of our libraries don't require to have your card to check out....
16:29	mmorgan	Jeff: What Dyrcona said :)
16:29	mmorgan	And also when registering new patrons, to make sure they don't already have a record in the database.
16:30	Dyrcona	And, what mmorgan just said. :)
16:30	jonadab	We search by date of birth whenever we register a new adult female patron, because we know from past experience most of them don't volunteer "Oh, my name used to be...", and we have in the past had a lot of duplicate-card problems.
16:31	jonadab	We have a lot fewer duplicate cards if we are faithful about doing this.
16:32	jonadab	We probably should do the same for everyone under the age of about thirty, male or female, adult or not, because a lot of kids on our town don't know their last name, and sometimes their parents don't know it either.
16:34	jeff	so if Amy Smith registered for a card and you had an Amy Jones in the database who was also born on January 1, you'd ask the Amy in front of you if she had a previous last name?
16:35	mmorgan	Our libraries deal with lots of complex family issues, and lots of non-english names. Names can change, and the spelling of the same name can vary, too, for the same person.
16:35	jonadab	Yes, we're small.
16:35	jonadab	Any given date of birth, there's unlikely to be very many people with the same given name.
16:36	jonadab	And yes, we have name spelling, abbreviation, and nickname issues too.
16:36	jonadab	The staff all know about the really egregious ones, e.g., the one that's spelled "Martha" and pronounced "Sunny".
16:38	jonadab	Actually, for any given full date of birth, with the year (which we do use), we probably don't have more than a handful of patrons total.
16:38	mmorgan	jeff: I'm not sure a first name and month/day match would be enough to point to Ms. Jones being the same patron, as Ms. Smith. Usually there's more data that matches or is close, which would lead staff to ask the question.
16:39	jeff	mmorgan: right, like address, phone number, etc.
16:40	jonadab	Oh, the address and phone number are usually different.
16:40	jeff	they change more often than dob does. :-)
16:40	jonadab	Yes.
16:41	jonadab	People move in and out of relatives' homes sometimes several times a year.
16:41	mmorgan	Right, or middle name, email address, etc.
16:42	jeff	looks like 18 patrons sharing the same DOB is as high as we go, once you eliminate the likely "year only" ones that are clustered on Jan 1 and/or Dec 31.
16:42	jeff	2200 null, 1200 1970-01-01, etc.
16:43	jonadab	Usually, when we do the date-of-birth search, we get 1-3 records, total, before we start looking for anything to line up. If the given name is the same, that's definitely enough for us to ask the patron, "Did you used to live on [street]?"
16:44	jeff	jonadab: at the point in time that you ask them that question, have you verified their ID?
16:44	jonadab	jeff: Yes, we start with ID.
16:44	jeff	just wondering -- a tangent, really.
16:44	jonadab	We didn't used to require ID, but it became necessary, about ten years ago or so.
16:44	jeff	would you look at those patrons born before 1900... and all those patrons born after 2016!
16:45	jonadab	Heh. I don't think we have any from before 1900 any more. We did when I started working here...
16:46	jeff	we have patrons born in 0944, 0951, 0953... i think i'm seeing a pattern here.
16:46	jeff	not sure about the one born in 1036.
16:46	jonadab	Those look like school districts.
16:47	mmorgan	Hmm, appears we have more than a few born in the first century :-(
16:47	jonadab	Or I suppose it could be fingers on the wrong keys.
16:47	jeff	1979-1983 are our top five years.
16:47	jonadab	mmorgan: @blame data migration
16:47	jeff	jonadab: i was guessing fingers on the wrong keys more than school districts.
16:48	jeff	after those five years, we get into 1969-1970, which i can't trust for epoch reasons.
16:48	mmorgan	...and one born in 3327 :)
16:49	jonadab	Ok, wow.
16:49	jonadab	Time traveller.
16:49	mmorgan	Time traveller/historian :)
16:49	jeff	since we don't have a dob precision field, and since many records had just a year, then were "transformed" into a date by making them Jan 1 of said year, I've no way to know which of these patrons were actually born on Jan 1.
16:50	jonadab	@blame data migration
16:50	pinesol_green	jonadab: It really IS data migration's fault!
16:51	pinesol_green	Incoming from qatests: Test Success - http://testing.evergreen-ils.org/~live/test.html <http://testing.evergreen-ils.org/~live/test.html>
16:52	jeff	mmorgan: i have 6 patrons from farther in the future than that -- farthest being 9149
16:53	mmorgan	Wow! It's so gratifying that they would travel so far back in time to get a library card! ;-)
16:55	tsbere	We have dobs ranging from the year 0002 to 9962
16:57	tsbere	(most of our future ones are < 2023, with one 2039 and the 9962)
16:58	Dyrcona	Trouble with that 0002 birth day is you have to change calendars and off set by some number of days, and then does the offset happen in the 18th or the 17th cenury?
16:58	Bmagic	jeff: our library responded with the reason: "If we could search by name AND birthdate the extra step of sifting through patrons with the same name would be eliminated."
16:59	jeff	got it.
16:59	jeff	when searching by name, i generally search by name and then ask for further details if the search results require it.
17:00	jeff	as opposed to asking for every patron to give me their dob.
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