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IRC log for #evergreen, 2015-03-25

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

Time Nick Message
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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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