ILL issues Tue 4/21

Tuesday, Apr. 21, 2:50 p.m.: If you were having trouble using the NHAIS ILL System earlier this afternoon--connection failure or sluggish response to searches--try it again now. Auto-Graphics restarted its servers in the past hour to address performance issues. 

2025 Public Library Survey Countdown

As of noon today [Tuesday, Apr. 21], 55% of NH public libraries have submitted their annual reports/public library surveys for 2025.
 
There are 10 days left for the remaining 100 libraries to turn in theirs. 
 
You can do it, folks. I have faith in you!  
 
Tip: Remember to click the SUBMIT button after Verifying.  😊
 
Please email or call me if you are having trouble.
Thanks!
Jen
 
Jennifer M. Finch (she/her)
Reference Librarian and State Data Coordinator
New Hampshire State Library
N.H. Department of Natural & Cultural Resources
20 Park St.
Concord, NH 03301
Office: 603-271-2060
Ref Desk: 603-271-2144
Jennifer.M.Finch@dncr.nh.gov

No SW-B van Wed 4/15

The SW-B van route is cancelled today, April 15. The affected libraries are:

Nelson
Alstead
Westmoreland
Chesterfield
Winchester
Richmond
Fitzwilliam
Rindge
Jaffrey
Hancock

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Jennifer M. Finch (she/her)
Reference Librarian and State Data Coordinator
New Hampshire State Library
 

Title sorts in tables

As promised, non-filing characters for initial articles in titles are now ignored in title sorts in NHAIS ILL System tables. That may not be evident when you open a table:

You need to click on the column header to get a proper sort. Clicking on that header several times will cycle you through ascending sort, descending sort, and the default (which is...semi-sorted).

Until last night's program update, requests created before last June 25 included initial articles in the sort so, for example, The Da Vinci Code showed up in the T's rather than the D's.

Public Library Survey/Annual Report Update

As of 2:15pm today [Tuesday, Apr. 14], 50% of our NH public libraries have submitted their 2025 PLS (annual report).  Thank you!

April 30, 2026 is the PLS deadline. 17 days remain to submit your survey/report.

NOTES
For weird, unknown reasons, the LibPAS survey software has been really laggy and slow to calculate totals. In several cases it has refused to update itself even after several days have passed. To add to that frustration, sometimes the survey is lagged on the library’s end but when I log in as the State Data Coordinator and look at that library’s report, it looks fine, with all numbers filled in appropriately.

Why is that happening? I hope to find out from the vendor asap.

TIPS
1)    There are Save and Recalculate buttons at the top of your survey. If your survey is lagging or totals won’t total, try mashing Recalc and Save.

2)    If #1 doesn’t seem to do anything, close the survey and your web browser and take a little walk. Get a nice beverage for yourself. Play a couple games of hopscotch. Practice some primal scream therapy.  
3)    After 15 minutes or so come back to the survey, log in again, and see if anything has changed.
4)    If still nothing seems to populate/change/update in your library’s report, send me an email and ask me to look at it from my side. I might be able to kick it into submission.
5)    After you click VERIFY and get the coveted “Verified!” message, make sure you then click on the SUBMIT/LOCK button. This will summon the email saying, “Thank you for your submission!” and then it will all be over.

Thanks again, folks. You can do this!
Jen

Jennifer M. Finch (she/her)
Reference Librarian and State Data Coordinator
New Hampshire State Library
N.H. Department of Natural & Cultural Resources
20 Park St.
Concord, NH 03301
Office: 603-271-2060
Ref Desk: 603-271-2144
Jennifer.M.Finch@dncr.nh.gov

Brief ILL outage Tue 4/14 10pm

The NHAIS ILL System will be offline briefly starting at 10 o'clock tonight (Tuesday, Apr. 14) to install program updates.

-When sorting by title in tables (as in Staff Dashboard > ILL Admin > Borrower Requests or Lender Requests), non-filing characters have sometimes been ignored and sometimes not. That involves an update last June which affected new requests but not existing requests.

With tonight's release, all non-filing characters will be ignored for a more logical sort of titles, with The Antidote and The Assassin of Venice appearing in the A's rather than the T's.

-When running the Lending Activity report under Staff Dashboard > Statistics > Activity and Request Reports, an incorrect Customer Code occasionally displayed in the LibCode field. This has been corrected.

Another 2025 Public Library Survey UPDATE

Hello, folks,

As of noon today, 46% of NH libraries have submitted their 2025 surveys.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!

There are 21 days left to the deadline of April 30th. 

Do not fret, don’t have a cow, 
You can do it, ask me how!
Submit your surveys, one and all,
Then say “Hurray!” and have a ball!

Have a good weekend, everyone,
Jen

Jennifer M. Finch (she/her)
Reference Librarian and State Data Coordinator
New Hampshire State Library
N.H. Department of Natural & Cultural Resources
20 Park St.
Concord, NH 03301
Office: 603-271-2060
Ref Desk: 603-271-2144
Jennifer.M.Finch@dncr.nh.gov

Searching NHAIS Notes

From the NHAIS Help Desk mailbox:

Is there a way to keyword search the NHAIS Notes blog besides the Posts by topic list?

Yes, just look for the search box in the upper left of the screen:

It's small and it disappears when you scroll down even a tiny bit. You'll be searching text of the entire 20-year archive of NHAIS Notes posts. Be aware that messages from before the fall of 2019 may refer to the workings of the ILL program in use prior to the current one.

Searching by month/year or topic are also options. 

Sending lists from the NHAIS ILL System

Seen on the NHAIS-L e-mail list:

"If a patron makes a list on share it and supposedly sends it to me where is it? I have not done this before but it would be helpful if this is a possibility."

Anyone, whether logged in or not, can save titles to a list in the NHAIS ILL System and send that list to any valid e-mail address. How users add titles to the list varies. On screens with multiple search results, click the icon under "List" for the desired title.

When viewing a single search result on the detail screen, choose "Add to Your List" from the menu on the left.

To send the list, users can choose the Email List button if visible. If it's not on the screen, click on the Your List icon in the upper right (just above "Login"), then choose Email List.

An e-mail address must be entered--let your patrons know which address you'd like them to use to send titles to you. The default subject line is "Session List" but that should be changed to indicate who's sending the list, which will appear to come from no-reply-nhais@librarycard.com.

The resulting e-mail, with "ILL request from..." entered in this example to replace the default "Session List" in the subject line: 

All the above can be done without a login. At libraries allowing patron-initiated ILL requesting, patrons have the option to log in to save lists for future sessions. Otherwise, the list disappears in SHAREit when the current session is ended.

Another option for anyone to send bibliographic information from the NHAIS ILL System: choosing the "Email This Item" option in the left-side menu of the detail screen.

This sends more details than the basic title/author info transmitted with the list option and has more editable fields (just don't change "no-reply@auto-graphics.com" in the FROM area) but it only deals with one title per e-mail. 

The resulting e-mail, with a patron name entered in place of "guest" in the FROM area for this example: