Unfortunately the North Country van route for today Friday, May 16, 2025 is cancelled due to van repairs.
The affected libraries are:
Center Sandwich
Tamworth
Chocorua
Conway
North Conway
Jackson
Bethlehem
Littleton
Best,
Jill M Witham
Van Service Coordinator
New Hampshire State Library
Heather had to cancel today’s North Country van route, unfortunately [Thursday, May 15]. She has to get work done on her van, so in anticipation of that, she made up her once-a-week stops in advance. She will be back on the road tomorrow.
Charles ShipmanA recent software update in the NHAIS ILL System changed the way days are counted when determining how long a request can remain unanswered at a library before it automatically moves on to another potential lender. The day a request first appears as Pending at a location, whether first thing in the morning or late at night, now counts as Day 0 rather than Day 1. To compensate, the Days to Respond setting in the Participant Record has been changed for all libraries from 4 to 3 to maintain previous behavior. In effect, a request will still wait for a response 3 full days and a fraction of a 4th day. The settings change is now reflected in a 2022 blog post explaining the Participant Record.
The NHAIS ILL System will be offline briefly tonight (Tuesday, May 13) starting at 10 o'clock to allow installation of program updates.
In results from the new Borrower Requests and Lender Requests searches (under Staff Dashboard > ILL Admin), on some screens the edit icon may require a horizontal scroll in order to be visible on the far right of the screen. To enable easy access to request details, the title (on the left) will now display as a clickable link to open the full request record. This restores the functionality of the previous request searches.
Two of the reports under Staff Dashboard > Statistics > Reports (new) are being updated. Lender Response Requests and Filled Borrowing Requests will now show the system (NHAIS), library ID (HSA code), and trading partner (town/library name) in separate columns. Currently, the system name and town/library name (e.g., NHAIS - Concord - NHSL) appear in a single column.
The rest of tonight's changes affect only libraries that offer patron-initiated requesting.
Limits can be set in the system to prevent patrons from placing more than the allowed number of requests. Prior to tonight's update, requests in Awaiting Lenders status (used while the lender list is built) did not count toward the ILL Request Limit and did not display to patrons in their Items From Other Libraries list. With this release, requests in Awaiting Lenders will count toward the ILL Request Limit and will show in the patron’s Items From Other Libraries list with a default message of “This request is processing.” This change will prevent patrons from circumventing the ILL Request Limit by placing several requests in quick succession while the lender lists are being built.
Also, requests in Pending Cancel status were not displayed when patrons viewed their Items From Other Libraries in their account but were counted as active. That could prevent additional requests based on the patron’s ILL Request Limit. Requests in Pending Cancel will now display. Statuses considered active were reviewed and made consistent across different configuration types to correct reports of ILL limits not behaving as expected.
I have noticed twice today [Thursday, May 8] that we had bags being retuned to us that were not labeled correctly. What I mean by that is that two bags came back to NHSL, and they still had the routing slips saying the name of the towns/library on the top part of the slip.
We have many hands that help us put away the material that comes in from the vans in the afternoon. I think we had one bag make two trips to a library before we caught it.
Please fold down the name of your library on your returning bags.
I have also seen some bags that come through not labeled properly. If you are a library that receives deliveries via another library, those bags (and books) need to be labeled as to where they are being delivered to. For instance: To Alstead for Acworth.
If the label reads To: Acworth, most of the drivers don’t know where it goes, and if it’s a small library that only receives one delivery a week and it could have delivered the same day, but because the label wasn’t clear as to where it was going it comes back to NHSL and sits here until it’s time to go on the van again.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to either contact me or someone at the Circulation desk.
Best,
Jill M Witham
Van Service Coordinator
New Hampshire State Library
603 271-2206
Jill.m.witham@dncr.nh.gov
Hello, folks. I’m writing to let you know that the state library is accepting Letters of Intent for Moose Plate grants aimed at preserving historical documents. Libraries are absolutely eligible to apply. Please also share with your town clerk!
A few specifics:
The documents in question should be of historical significance specifically to New Hampshire, or a New Hampshire community. So for example, a diary of a town resident from the 1820s would be eligible. A diary from someone who never stepped foot in New Hampshire would not be.
The documents must be publicly owned. That is, they should be the property of a municipality, public library, college or other public institution. However, the documents may be housed in, say, a town historical society, as long as the documents are publicly accessible and the property of the town.
The maximum grant amount is $10,000.
The deadline for submitting a Letter of Intent is May 16, and grant applications will be due June 23. The letter should briefly describe the documents to be treated, where the documents are currently kept, and who owns the documents. It does not need to be detailed, a single page should suffice. Should the letter be accepted, I will provide further documentation on how to complete your grant application.
Charles Shipman
N.H. Department of Natural & Cultural Resources
New Hampshire State Library
20 Park St.
Concord, NH 03301
603-271-3302
Charles.A.Shipman@dncr.nh.gov
dncr.nh.gov
A couple of enhancements plus two minor fixes are part of a software update being installed in the NHAIS ILL System tonight (Tuesday, Apr. 29). The site will be offline briefly starting at 10 o'clock.
-For libraries that allow patron-initiated ILL requests, requests created by patrons (or staff logged in as patrons) were going immediately to Unfilled status if no lenders were found. This has been corrected so patron-created requests will go to Awaiting Approval status as expected.
-During the lender list build process, some lenders were not added to the list when the match required publisher validation and there were quotation marks in the record title. This has been corrected.
-One major enhancement, involving prioritizing reasons for request deflection, requires a bit of background explanation. Locations in a lender list are often skipped for reasons such as the format is not lendable or the library is on vacation. The order of the deflection reason could cause, for example, a borrowing library to retry a request due to a history note saying “Try again after [date]” only to have the request come back in Unfilled status due to a policy problem such as the format not being lendable.
With this release, the deflection will be prioritized so that “permanent" reasons resulting in Unfilled status (such as the format not being lendable) will take precedence so the borrowing library will not retry sending the request to the library with the "permanent" condition. Temporary reasons causing deflection and resulting in Retry status, such as vacations or an item currently being checked out, will be processed as usual as long as there isn't also a "permanent" reason to deflect the request.
-Further streamlining of options on the Staff Dashboard's ILL Admin menu is part of tonight's update. The Borrower Title Browse and Patron Browse will be combined into Borrower Requests and the Lender Title Browse will be changed to Lender Requests with more field options available to display, search, and sort. Meanwhile, Request Number Search will be renamed Search by Request Number to better differentiate it from Request Manager.
The ILL Admin menu as it has been recently:
The new look for the ILL Admin menu:
Fields will display in the following order:
Borrower Requests
Title*
Req. No.*
Author* (formerly "Author Name")
ISBN (new: up to 3 ISBNs will display)
Format (new)
Lender* (formerly "Library")
Lender's Item Barcode (new)
Patron Name*
Patron Barcode (new)
Due Date (new)
Need by Date (new)
Status*
Req. Type ("Returnable"/"Non-Returnable" formerly "Borrows"/"Copies")
Lender Requests
Title*
Req. No.*
Author* (formerly "Author Name")
ISBN (new: up to 3 ISBNs will display)
Format (new)
Borrower* (formerly "Library")
Lender's Item Barcode (new)
Due Date (new)
Need by Date (new)
Status*
Reason/Condition (new)
Req. Type ("Returnable"/"Non-Returnable" formerly "Borrows"/"Copies")
• Fields indicated with an asterisk (the prior available fields) will be displayed by default.
• By default, requests will be listed in alphabetical order by title but can be sorted by any displayed field.
• Fields can be added or removed using the column selector.
• Field selection is sticky by login and persists between sessions.
1. Columns can be searched by entering a term in the search box at the top of the column.
o Any term or part of a term can be entered and searched. For example, entering “demo” in the Borrower field will narrow the results to “AAAA: A Demo Library – AAAA” (this differs from the old pages, where the search was restricted to the beginning of the field).
o Additional filters can be used as in the example below, where Borrower was filtered to “demo” and then Status filtered to “Lost.”
o Click the “X” in the field to remove the filter.
2. Hover to the right of a column name to display the sort arrows. Click the up arrow to sort in ascending order; the down arrow can be clicked to sort in descending order.
3. Click the column selector to add or remove displayed fields; use the scroll bar to see additional fields or enter a term in the “Filter Column” field to search for a specific field.
4. Click the edit (pencil) icon to open the request record.
5. Click the 3-dot icon for the “Help”; click the “x” to close the page.
The ability to change the status of requests from Borrower Requests and Lender Requests displays will be in a future release.
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| LP donations in process, April 2025 |
Our LP collection includes fiction, non-fiction, and biography on a wide variety of topics and in many different genres. Books for young readers, though at this point many fewer than are available for adults, are also included in the collection.
