Word of the Week

Parameters:

Perhaps you’re wondering what’s going on with Millennium. We ILS folks talk about it a lot, but not much seems to be happening yet. What’s taking so long?

Although it seems like a lot of “hurry up and wait,” right now, the ILS Committee is hard at work setting up the parameters for Millennium. Parameters are rules that must be spelled out to tell the system exactly what to do in any given situation.

Parameters are used to determine everything that Millennium does automatically, such as:
· Assigning a due date (and making sure it’s the right one) when a patron checks out a DVD
· Printing overdue notices after the appropriate amount of time has elapsed, in the format we’ve specified, with the text we’ve specified
· Determining whether or not an item can be renewed
· Maintaining a list of patron holds
· Assigning an item that’s been ordered to the proper library, shelf location, and fund
· Printing a purchase order with the information we want to have on it

Think of our transition to Millennium like building a new library. Not only would we have to build a building, but we also would have to buy shelving, carpet, computers, tables, chairs, and copy machines. We’d have to hire staff and create a work schedule for them. We’d have to put in telephones, hang up signs, buy books, catalog the books, and put spine labels and barcodes on them. We’d have to put the books on the shelves and make sure they were in order. We’d have to do some publicity so the public would know about the new library and what its hours were.

Some of the parameters being set up are customizations — changing from the Millennium default to the specifics for our library district, so that they match the way we do things. Others are blanks to be filled in — meaning that until some information is entered, that part of the system will not function at all. All of them are essential to making Millennium work for us!