November 2008 Archives

At the last AAC meeting, we heard about some email approval forms libraries have been receiving in response to emailed notices.  These aren't actually bounced notices, but do arrive in the same place, and around the same time as the bounced email notices.  The forms are coming from Earthlink and PeoplePC and request that libraries fill out a form to be "approved" by the patron.

Here's a sample:

 
I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.

It you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below.)  Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox.  You do not need to resend your message.  I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

Click the link below to fill out the request:

I talked with Earthlink about these forms, and they explained this is an optional service customers may sign up for, in which all incoming emails are screened (until the individual customer approves of the sender.) They cannot put OWLSnet emails on a global "always allowed" list, because no such list exists.

Here is our recommendation.  While you may choose to fill out the form for a specific patron's email account, it's likely that every library sending a notice to that patron will also have to fill out the form.  Since the patron has requested emailed notices, it should be the patron's responsibility to ensure that our emails are on their approved list, rather than our responsibility to fill out these forms.  We'd recommend considering this a bounced email, and asking the patron to add emails from the domains mail.owls.lib.wi.us and mail.nfls.lib.wi.us to their approved list.  If you receive this form more than once, than you may choose to turn off email notices for this patron.

As always, please note putes on the patron's record so that others viewing the record will know what has happened.

A new feature has been added to InfoSoup, and its name is "My Lists." This feature allows you to save materials to lists that you name and describe, and then allows you to manipulate your lists via sorting, deleting titles, or creating new lists. View the screencast for a quick demo of how it works and give it a try today.



Feel free to post your comments or questions about My Lists here.

> contributed by Beth

If you're printing out the OWLSnet Directory, the following page has changed and should be updated:

*Page 20  Oneida Community Library - Lou Williams' contact number has been corrected.

We're experiencing a problem with keyword searching in InfoSoup and have opened a call with Innovative. The problem occurs when doing a keyword search for two words (like modern scholar or big house) in a scoped search.  Results come up fine, but if you attempt to sort by date or title, you simply get a blank screen. 

We'll post an update once we know more.

If you're printing out the OWLSnet Directory, the following pages have changed and should be updated:

*Page 3  Black Creek Village Library - Staff information has been updated

*Page 22  Shawano City-County Library - Staff information has been updated