Serials Module Overview

Serials Module Overview

This tutorial walks through how to setup subscriptions in the Serials Module.


Using Mana for Serial Subscriptions

The Mana knowledgebase is a way for the Koha community to share knowledge such as Serial Prediction Patterns. If you would like to integrate this with your Koha system you can follow the tutorials below.


Older Item Types in Serials

This particular field is found when a new serial is being created, Item Type: and Item Type for Older Serials:


These options when creating a serial work with a system preference called, MakePreviousSerialAvailable.

Once set to 'Make', the previous serial is automatically available when receiving a new serial issue. The previous issue can also be set to another item type when receiving a new one.

This is an option for libraries that do not lend out their current issue of a serial, but once a newer issue is received, they would like the older one to be checked out. The change is streamlined with this process, where a library can choose the item type the issue is when it is new, and then what the item type will be when it is considered not new.

If a library is considering this, they will need to create another item type and make that item type a 'not for loan'.

Notes
To use this system preference, the item-level_itypes system preference must be set to a specific item rather than bibliographic record.

Publication Date Template

Within the Serials Planning page, an option is available to libraries called the Publication Date template. This will allow libraries to enter specific subscription information, formatted in Template Toolkit, to display that desired information in the Published Date (text) column.

Steps
  1. When creating or editing a new subscription, within the Serials Planning page, a Publication date template text box will appear.
  2. The Publication Date Template area will allow libraries to display specific subscription fields with the date published (text) column in the subscription. This will require the use of the Template Toolkit. Any of these fields can be added:
  1. Serial seq.: [% serialseq %]
  2. Serial seq. X:[% serialseq_x %]
  3. Serial seq. Y:[% serialseq_y %]
  4. Serial seq. Z:[% serialseq_z %]
  5. Subscription ID:[% subscriptionid %]
  6. Biblionumber: [% biblionumber %]
  7. Status: [% status %]
  8. Planned date: [% planneddate | $KohaDates %]
  9. Published date: [% publisheddate | $KohaDates %]
  10. ** Notes: [% notes %]
    1. Routing notes: [% routingnotes %]
** This refers to public notes within the subscription.
  1. This publication date template can be used on any subscription. With each subscription, this template box will need to be filled out for the values to display.
  2. When you generate the next serial, the values from the template will appear.
Notes
Since Koha has already predicted the next issue, that ‘expected’ issue will not display this new information, it will only display when the next issue is generated.

Example of Using Serial Sequence

Entering this into the 'Publication Date Template':

Info
[% USE KohaDates %]
Serial seq.: [% serialseq %]




Example of Using Published Date

Entering this into the Publication Date Template:

Info
[% USE KohaDates %]
Published date: [% publisheddate | $KohaDates %]


Altering the Month-Year Display

Another example for libraries would be displaying the month and year in the date published column:

Entering this into the 'publication date template' to display the published date as a Month and Year:

Info
[% USE date %]
[% SET date_split = publisheddate.split('-') %]
[% month_text = date.calc.Month_to_Text(date_split.1) %]
[% month_text %] [% date_split.0 %]

This will display your published date as a Month/Year as opposed to a YYYY-MM-DD.


This is a nice clean look to display the published date. Below is an image of a few examples outlined in this blog post displayed from the staff interface from the record page:


We are using this piece of template toolkit:

[% USE KohaDates %]

in addition to the data elements. This part within the template toolkit will display the date in a format different than the default format. The default format looks like this:


Publication Date Parts for Serial Numbering

The numbering pattern for serials has the ability to accept substitutions for: {Year} {Day} {DayName} {Month} {MonthName}


Create a Numbering Pattern

To create a new numbering pattern or update an existing pattern to use the new fields, navigate to the Serials module.
  1. Click on Manage numbering patterns on the left navigation menu
  2. If you are editing an existing pattern, click edit under the actions column.
  3. If you are creating a new numbering pattern, click + New numbering pattern
  4. In the numbering formula field, you can enter the following values
  5. {Year} {Month} {Day} {MonthName} {DayName}
  6. you can also use / | : to adjust how the numbering formula appears
You can test your prediction pattern before saving. Once set, click save


Claims for Late Serials

If an issue is late and you have not received it inadequate time, you can send a claim through the Serials Module. This tutorial, Serial Claims and Notices, will walk you through setting up and customizing the notice in the Tools Module in Koha.

Vendor Setup

To be able to send a Claim Notice to a Vendor, the vendor will need to have an email address within the details. When creating or editing a vendor, you can add/edit the email address in the Contact section. Also, you will want to mark that this is the Primary Serials Contact and also the Contact about Late Issues.


Notice for Serial Claims

Under Tools > Notices & Slips there is a notice called SERCLAIM. This notice is pre-populated with some default text to create the notice for the library. This notice like all other Koha notices can be altered to fit the needs of the library. Here is an example of a slightly altered notice for libraries which includes the Biblio subtitles which are usually helpful with serial records.

Info
<<aqbooksellers.name>>
<<aqbooksellers.address1>>

The following issue(s) have not been received.

<<biblio.title>> <<biblio.subtitle>> <<serial.subscriptionid>> <<serial.serialseq>><<serial.serialseq_x>><<serial.serialseq_y>><<serial.serialseq_z>> <<serial.status>>

The issue(s) have passed their expected receipt date. Please trace and ship these issue(s) to
the library without delay.

<<branches.branchname>>
<<branches.branchaddress1>>
<<branches.branchcity>>, <<branches.branchstate>> <<branches.branchzip>>

Please check into this matter and notify us of the disposition of these issue(s).

Thank you.

<<branches.branchname>>
<<branches.branchemail>>
<<branches.branchphone>>

Making a Claim

Once you have set up the Vendor email and also verified the notice is the text the library wants, we can head over to the Serials Module to claim any outstanding issues.

From the Claims option in the Serials module, you will first identify which vendor you would like to filter this claim report by. Then you can mark any of the issues identified in this report and mark the Select Notice- and confirm with Send Notification.



Once an issue has been claimed- the status will appear as Claimed in this Report as well as in the Subscription details.

Another helpful option found in the Claims section of the Serials Module, a library that can export any or selected issues into a .csv for reference. That option is right above the option to send a Claim Notice.

Here is what the .csv will look like:



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