Renewal Options and Limits

When you renew an item for a patron, the following message always appears: 

• Clicking "Yes" (the items are present) is categorized as an "Other Renewal".

• Clicking "No" (the items are not present) is categorized as a "Phone Renewal".

An override message displays if the borrower has reached the renewal limit for the selected item. The wording of this override will be slightly different depending how the previous renewals were counted: "Other" or "Phone".

Either way, you can override the maximum number of renewals under certain situations as permitted by library policy (i.e. no outstanding holds on the item). Note: not all staff have Horizon permissions to override the maximum.

rev. 4/2018

Where does the email address go in a customer record?

In regards to the new Perm/Mailing/Temp address types, if the borrower has more than one address, it does make a difference which type their email address is attached to.

If a customer has:

• Perm Only – Use Perm to set email address & related fields
• Mailing & Perm – Use Mailing to set email address & related fields
• Temp & Mailing/Perm – Use Temp to set email address & related fields. When those dates expire, it will revert to whatever method is set in the Mailing/Perm.

Note: This affects hold and overdue notices. Preoverdue notices don’t care where the email address is listed on the record; they are controlled by a separate program. Lost notices are always printed and mailed to the borrower. If

In case, the email is not put on the proper address type, don’t worry. The notification will still be sent by print or phone (based on other settings in the record). 


rev. 4/2018

Unusual Emails of ValleyCat Records

Recently, a peson from another state called to report they were receiving emails like this for titles/items in ValleyCat. They have never been a borrower. What's going on? Are they being spammed? 

No, someone is not using ValleyCat to spam people. Unless we get more reports, this is most likely one person trying to harass another person by emailing them ValleyCat records.  It only happens once every few years. Actually ValleyCat isn't a very effective way to spam someone, since you can only email from the search results screen, the only thing you can change is the subject line and you can only send one record/email at a time.

Tell the person receiving the annoying emails to add the 'From' email address pictured above to their spam filter to prevent any more of these emails from reaching them. 


rev. 4/2018

Borrower Moves From One SJVLS Jurisdiction to Another

If a patron has moved to Fresno County permanently, but was previously registered at another SJVLS library (Coalinga-Huron, Kern County, Kings County, Madera County, Mariposa County, Merced, Porterville, Tulare County, or Tulare Public), update their borrower record as follows:

i.   Update their address, email and/or phone as appropriate
ii.  Change the Location field to your branch code
iii. Change the BType to the appropriate FCPL code i.e. FAD, FCH, FYA, etc.
iv. Change the Bstat to the appropriate FCPL code i.e. f93705, f93721
v.  Change the Internet access to either Fresno Filtered or Fresno Unfiltered

It is not necessary to issue them a new library card.


rev. 4/2018

Looking Up Prior Borrower Information

Ocassionally an item arrives in the shipment damaged or missing disks. It would be nice to know the name of the prior borrower to charge them for the damage or contact them regarding the missing parts.

The name of the prior borrower is on the item record for 15 days after the item has been returned. That amount of time is typically the most an item might be in the shipment as it travels from one location to another. But once that time has elapsed, there's no way to tell who had it out last. We do not want to retain prior borrower info longer than that as one way to safeguard patrons' privacy in case their library records are subpeonaed.

To find prior borrower:

• F2 - Search by item barcode
• At the bib record - Show Copies
• Highlight the item - click Detail Status at the bottom of the screen.
• A new window opens. Page Down until you reach the Prior Circ Info section. 
• If it's been less than 15 days since the item was returned, the borrower's name will appear here. If this section is blank, it's been more than 15 days. 

rev. 4/2018

New Address type in Horizon

One of the changes in the Horizon 7.5.4 upgrade is the addition of a 3^rd address type: MAILING.  The following are the correct ways to input the 3 different addresses.

ADDRESS – PERM – Borrower's physical address of their permanent residence. REQUIRED for all borrowers.

* Enter address in ALL CAPS, no punctuation, on a single line whenever possible.

* Put the apartment (APT), suite (STE), mobile home space (SPC), etc. at the end.
* If the street name makes the address too long to put apartment/unit number at the end, put the APT / STE on Line 1 and the street address on Line 2.
* Proper entry of mailing address affects our postal rates and is based on USPS standards.

DO NOT enter PO Boxes here. See MAILING.

ADDRESS – MAILING – Use only if borrower has an address for mail delivery of correspondence / notices that differs from their PERMANENT address.

* Click "New" to create an additional address.
* Click “Mailing” radio button

ADDRESS – TEMP – Use only if borrower has a temporary mailing address, e.g. summer resident or college student

* Click “New” to create an additional address
* Click the “Temp” radio button.
* Enter the begin and end date for which that address will be used, using the format DD/MM/YYYY
* Enter the street address, City St, and postal code following rules
*If a customer had both a PO Box and physical (temporary) address, set the Begin and End dates for the Temp address in the past. Otherwise their temp (physical) address will be used to send them mail instead of their perm (PO Box) address. To make this easier set Begin = yesterday's date (i.e. 5/1/2017) and End = today's date (i.e. 5/2/2017).

The complete SJVLS Borrower Registration Data Entry Standards can be found here.

rev. 2/2018