What’s happening at your library?
Bobbi, Grand Forks Public Library- The HVAC system in the library is broken and they are working to get that fixed. Also, the elevator is supposed to be fixed this month. They are still trying to figure out orders for books and where to order from. Amazon has been a problem since they were delivering books to the library when the library was closed and leaving the boxes outside the front door. Right now, she and Audrey are cataloging Ukrainian books.
Stacey, ND State Library- Cheryl Pollard has retired, and has been replaced by Joanie at the administrative desk. They have some snowshoes as a kit that they have partnered with the State Historical Society who owned them, and now they circulate from the State Library.
Cindy, Dickinson Public Library- The library was closed in May because they emptied out the basement for new carpeting. Then in August the basement flooded, so they emptied it again, while the basement was getting new drywall, and carpets cleaned. While this was happening, the expansion project for the library started. There has been a lull in purchasing, but it will start up again soon. Ordering is having problems with Amazon and Ingram that they are trying to work out.
Jessica, ND State Library- There is a special session of the legislature right now, it doesn’t affect the library directly except for parking on the Capitol grounds. So, with the cold, the snow, and the session parking has been an interesting challenge.
Michele, School for the Blind- It is quiet now. She is continuing to catalog some Braille books and writing up a process for doing that. She’s been researching what some other libraries are doing to get a best practices document together, which she will bring to the group at some point.
Jane, Marshfield Clinic, Sanford Health- We are merging with Sanford Health. They are new to ODIN, and so far, it looks good with just a couple of glitches to the system.
Dustin, West Fargo Public Library- They have had three people leave the library recently, and at the end of the month they will have four open positions. So, they are shuffling things to get coverage for the desk and programming and things like that. So, if you know anybody looking for a job, tell them to look at the City of West Fargo page. They received a large binder this morning from Northern State Power and other power companies. It looks like a government document, titled: A Certificate of Need Application for a Transmission Project. He’s deciding whether they need to keep it or not.
Old items:
Bobbi Wood was elected to second term as the Cataloging User group chair. A big thank you to Bobbi for volunteering!
Baker & Taylor fallout- how are things going with purchasing?
Bobbi- They do use Ingram for children’s materials; Ingram is not as good for timely best sellers. So, they are ordering from Amazon and Barnes and Noble and places like that. What they don’t like about Amazon is the many tiny boxes they get.
Cindy- They are also getting lots of tiny boxes from Amazon, but their Interlibrary Loan librarian loves to get them and hasn’t had to replenish his supply. They too have been going with Ingram and supplementing with Amazon.
New items:
Question: I have a braille record for a book, and it looks like someone added a regular book to that record. (Usually, it happens the other way around where braille books were accidentally added to regular book records).
Michele said she will reach out to the library that added a regular book to the Braille record and have them create a record for the regular book. She also thought it was good to call attention to the fact that the Braille records are out there. Liz pointed out that there is a directory of ODIN libraries and their contacts on the ODIN website.
Polaris 8.0 was loaded on to the training server on January 13. Polaris 8.0 will be loaded onto the production server on February 26. New in LEAP for technical services: Management of bibliographic Templates, MARC export, automatic import of MARC files from third-party vendors (OCLC via TCP/IP, and others like Ingram via SFTP in supplier records). ODIN plans to have a Polaris 8.0 highlights session on March 5.
Tips:
- You can search for item records by ISBN even though the ISBN is part of the bibliographic record. This is helpful when adding records to a record set. You don’t need to create an item record set first and then convert it to a bibliographic record set.
- Add an Outlook calendar entry for tasks that need to be done periodically.
- In Leap, for some searches you can just click search without any criteria to get a quick list. This works for bibliographic templates, item templates, and record sets.
- All your saved customizations in Leap stay with your login. So, when you use a different computer all your settings are how you’re used to them.
Standard (aka “canned”) Reports in Leap
Nicole did a demo of the standard reports in Leap.
Changes to LC cataloging: On February 2, 2026, the Library of Congress will cease adding form subdivisions ($v) to the end of LC subject heading strings and expand its use of LCGFT headings. There is no requirement for any institution to follow the LC practice of not using $v. Here is the full announcement (opens in a new window), and a FAQ document (opens in a new window).
New(ish) website for Polaris webinars (opens in a new window)
Question: If you are not using Leap for cataloging, what is holding you back from using Leap?
- Finds it clunky. You have to click a lot to get what you want to look at. “Too many roads to take to get what you want.”
- Appreciate being able to have multiple records open at one time to look at them.
- I like having all the different windows open. I’ll have my item record search open and then the bib record search open and get them all lined up.
- Doesn’t find anything that Leap does better than the client at this time. It seems more geared towards people who don’t do a lot of cataloging, or who are less familiar with it. There isn’t a lot to lure me over until I absolutely have to be lure over.
New subfield z in the 245 field. Information about this is in the MARC standard. Polaris is still discussing how to implement this new subfield in the PAC.
Connect to the group: