March 3, 2021
Hello, and welcome to my first official weekly update! There’s a lot of good stuff in here, including several opportunities to further engage with the Evergreen Indiana community, so if you have ever wondered about what goes on behind the scenes or sought ways to amplify your voice, read on!
2021 Committee Elections
We are currently accepting nominations for seats on the Executive Committee, Patron Services Committee, Cataloging Committee, as well as anyone interested in participating in the Econtent Committee. Joining a committee is an excellent way to have maximal impact on the consortium with minimal time investment. Presently, we need more nominations across the board in order to ensure a healthy election, so if you know of someone (including yourself – self-nominations are accepted, encouraged, and appreciated) who might be a good fit, you can fill out the form here: 2021 Evergreen Indiana Committee Nominations
Nominations will be accepted through March 15th, 2021, so be sure to get your nominations in soon! Information about the different committees can be found here: Evergreen Indiana Governance
Sheridan Cataloging Party
We will be officially welcoming Sheridan Public Library into the Evergreen Indiana Consortium on Tuesday, March 16th. In a final push to help get their collection cataloged in, they are hosting a cataloging party at their library on Friday, March 12th. If you’d like to be a part of the action, please contact myself or Ruth Frasur at rfrasur[AT]library[DOT]in[DOT]gov so we can make accommodations. We would love to see you there!
Evergreen Indiana Annual Meeting
The Evergreen Annual Meeting, which is not taking place at the Annual Conference this year, will take place via Zoom on March 30th, 2021 at 2 PM EST / 1 PM CST and will last for one hour. The candidates for the 2021 committee election will be presented, alongside the State of Evergreen Indiana report. Registration for this event is now available: 2021 Evergreen Annual Conference.
Evergreen International Conference & Scholarships
The 2021 Evergreen International Conference will once again be held online this year on May 24th – 27th. The international conference is another great way to get some behind-the-scenes looks at Evergreen, and you can read more about the conference format and presentations here: 2021 Evergreen International Conference.
Since it’s taking place in cyberspace, the cost of conference attendance is substantially lower than normal. But what’s even better than low cost is no cost, and to that end, we are making scholarships available so even more Evergreen Indiana members can participate! If you’d like to apply for a scholarship, we’re currently accepting applications until March 31st: 2021 Evergreen International Scholarships
Consortial Collection Item Request
In case you weren’t aware, Evergreen Indiana periodically purchases and catalogs a number of high-demand titles and adds them to our Consortium Collection to help alleviate burgeoning holds wait lists. Ruth has done a wonderful job of weeding through the collection recently, and we have a number of titles that are up for grabs on a first-come, first-serve basis to interested libraries. If you’re interested, please do fill out a request form: Consortium Collection Item Requests.
Evergreen Indiana Item Reclamation
Do you, or someone you know, have an item currently on hold for Evergreen Indiana Item Reclamation? If so, while you may not be entitled to compensation, you are entitled to getting your item back on your shelf. Periodically, we place holds on items that have been renewed an excessive number of times (we’re talking “into negative renewals” territory). When these items are returned, we route these holds so they can be “picked up” back at their owning library.
So what do you do when you checkin an item at your library that shows up as on hold for Evergreen Indiana Item Reclamation? Just cancel the hold and check it in! The easiest way to get to the Evergreen Indiana Item Reclamation account is to use the following “patron barcode” on the “Search for patron by barcode” (F1) screen: ei-item-reclaimer
You can then navigate to the Holds tab and cancel the requisite holds. This part can be a bit tricky: you’ll probably need to set the number of rows to 500 to see all the holds, and it will take a while for all of them to load in. To make finding your holds easier, consider clicking the “Pickup Library” column header to group together all allegedly available holds at your location.
I hope everyone has a great rest of the week! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me by e-mail or phone. Due to limitations, we currently cannot accept communique via carrier pigeon or smoke signal.
Take care, and be safe out there, folks!
Cheers,
Keith