Update on Sirsi Issues

Now that Tracy is back from vacation we are making headway on understanding why Sirsi has been acting up, but it's not good news yet.

The university got a new program called Workday for Human Resources that handles evaluations, leave time, etc.  Apparently, our patron load now comes from Workday but we were not notified of the change.  Workday does not distinguish between faculty and staff, which is why suddenly everyone is loading as compguest in Sirsi.  We are seeing if ITS can modify the patron load, but we're not sure this is something we can be fixed.  It's possible that we will have to create a new account type that encompasses both faculty and staff.  I'll let you know when we have more information.

The second Sirsi issue involves student workers.  Any student worker on campus now shows two accounts in Sirsi- one associated with their student ID number and one with their student worker ID number.  This is NOT something we can fix, so we need to adapt.  As long as the student brings their Texan Card, their student account will load just fine.  The problem comes into play when a patron brings an alternate photo ID and we can to manually search for the patron.  We need to make sure we only check out materials on the student account, not the student worker account.  So please pay close attention when searching by name, and ask the student to verify that they are a student (and not faculty or staff) and provide their student ID number to help you be sure you're accessing the correct account.  It is my understanding that student worker ID numbers do not start with 000 but I want you to verify just in case.

Note: This process is somewhat complicated for faculty and staff members who are also students.  It's not too common, but in the instance that a faculty or staff member brings in a photo ID, you want to make sure you check the item out to their faculty or staff account and not their student account, since we do not charge fines for faculty and staff.  This is why you need to verify with each non-Texan Card checkout if the patron is a student, faculty, or staff member.