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Welcome to DCB Admin for Libraries!

Welcome to DCB Admin for Libraries!

Thank you for using DCB Admin for Libraries! This page is here to answer your questions about the application.

What is DCB Admin for Libraries?

DCB Admin for Libraries is a modern web application built by Knowledge Integration. It exists to help libraries manage their DCB experience, and it is laser-focused on the tasks that matter most to library staff. Whether that’s viewing circulation information, or placing staff requests, DCB Admin for Libraries is here for you.

I’ve heard of DCB Admin: what’s the difference between DCB Admin and DCB Admin for Libraries?

Essentially, DCB Admin is the original modern web app for DCB. The main difference is that DCB Admin is for consortia staff and implementation partners, and thus has a very different focus. Because consortia staff and library staff have very different needs, we decided that two applications would be needed: each targeted at delivering the best experience for its users. Hence DCB Admin for Libraries was born.

How do I access DCB Admin for Libraries?

Accessing DCB Admin for Libraries is simple. Just navigate to the URL provided in your setup email and enter your login information.

The next step depends on which type of user you are (this will be included in your setup email).

If you are a library admin user, you will see this screen.

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Whereas if you are a requesting-only user, you will see this screen.

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What is a library admin user?

A library admin user is a member of staff who needs to do more than just place requests. For example, a staff member who also needs to see the patron requests for a given library, or who needs to monitor the requests for which a given library is acting as a supplier.

Most individual, named users will fall into this category. Depending on the settings chosen by the consortia, a library admin user may also be able to edit their library’s mappings or location data. By default, this is set to OFF - so a library admin user will not be able to edit any of their library’s information.

 

What is a requesting-only user?

A requesting-only user has an account that will only be used to place requests. There are two types of request that can be placed in DCB Admin for Libraries (more on this later), and a requesting only user can place both types. Requesting-only users will be directed to the “Requesting” section on login and “requesting-only mode” will appear in the header of the application. To get started, a requesting only user will need to search for a record.

An example of a requesting-only user is a “general” library account. This account needs to be shared amongst all staff, and will only ever be used for placing requests.

How do I use DCB Admin for Libraries?

Note: requesting-only users should proceed to the requesting section. The other sections are only available for library admin users.

Home page

As seen above, the home page features information about your library. Depending on the settings chosen by your consortia, you may be able to edit this page and update values such as your address, support hours, and downtime schedule (if applicable).

Requesting (all users)

All DCB Admin for Libraries users have access to the “Requesting” section, allowing them to place requests for any available item within the consortium. The default option is a simple title search: however, there are many search options available to users, with more planned for upcoming releases.

Search options

  • Title

  • Keyword

  • Author

  • ISSN

  • ISBN

  • Subject

  • Language

  • Publisher

  • Format

  • Cluster record ID

Advanced search

For an advanced search, users can combine any number of any of the above (with the exclusion of cluster record ID), with the following Boolean operators.

  • AND

  • OR

  • NOT

Together, these options provide flexibility: whether you need a simple search or a more complex query, DCB Admin for Libraries will help you find what you need.

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Staff requesting

DCB Admin for Libraries users can place requests on behalf of their library’s patrons using staff requesting. This helps library staff support users in a range of situations: for example, a less technologically confident patron who doesn’t want to use existing online discovery services can now ask staff to place a request on their behalf, helping to bridge the digital divide and reach different types of users.

You may also find staff requesting useful for troubleshooting, testing, or any number of other use case. To see if a record is eligible for staff requesting, check out its search result card (see screenshot below) or visit the record page. A record is eligible for staff requesting if an item is available and requestable at any library in the consortium.

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With one-click requesting, you can request straight from the search page. Select “staff requesting” from the options presented.

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To place a staff request, you will need the patron’s barcode. Enter this into the “patron barcode” section and click “validate patron”.

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If the patron is valid, you can then progress to the next step. Select a pickup location for this request, and decide whether you would like to manually select an item, or whether you would prefer to have DCB automatically select an item for you. If “automatic” is selected, the DCB algorithm will automatically select the nearest available item.

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Click “Submit” to place your request. If you are a library admin user, you can then track it under “requests”. If you are a requesting-only user, your work here is done, and you can return to the requesting section to place more requests.

Walk-up requesting

Walk-up requesting is a new type of requesting recently introduced in DCB. Also known as ‘visiting patron’, this feature means that you can instantly check out any available item at your library to any visiting patron from a library in your OpenRS consortia. All the visiting patron needs to do is bring you the item, and tell you which library they belong to and their barcode. DCB will take care of the rest.

View the demo below to see walk-up requesting in action. A record is eligible for walk-up requesting if there is at least one available item for that record at your library.

Walk-up requesting in DCB Admin for Libraries

The record page

If you’d like to view more information about a record, you can click the hyperlinked record title and view the record page. This is divided into two sections: Record Information and Items. You can also make a request for this record from this page by clicking “place request”.

Record Information

The record information page has lots of useful information about a record: this includes format information, notes, subject and series information, and much more. See the screenshot below for an example.

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Items

The items page shows all of the individual items for a record. From this page, you can view the overall status of the items and individual information for each one. Just click the master detail toggle (the arrow to the left of each row) to view the additional information seen below.

You can also export item information by clicking the download icon, and filter the results by clicking the filters icon (the icon to the left of the download icon).

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This page also includes a summary of the items that cannot currently be shown to patrons in your discovery service. This is useful for understanding why an item is not available. Sometimes this will be for the correct reasons - for an example an item you do not want to be made available for requesting - but sometimes it may be because configuration is missing. The “Items not shown” section spotlights these items and will help you troubleshoot any items that are not showing up when they should be.

Patron Requests

The patron requests page presents an overview of all of the DCB requests placed by patrons from your library. DCB Admin for Libraries has many filters available for building different views of this data: the section below details some of these options.

Filters

A wide range of filtering options are available for patron requests, empowering users to understand DCB circulation activity and build powerful circulation reports. Available filters include the following:

  • Supplying library - the name of the “lender” library”

  • Date created and date updated

    • You can choose to specify a range (“Between”), or open ranges (“on or after” / “on or before”) or even “Last 30 days” and “Last 90 days” for a quick filtering option.

    • These filters can be combined to produce reports for a specific time period.

  • Status

  • Previous status

  • Next expected status.

  • The time this request has spent in its current status (in days). You can input a range for this filter option.

  • Description

  • Requester note

  • Active workflow

    • The options here are as follows:

      • “Pickup Anywhere” -for requests involving three different libraries.

      • “Walk-up requesting” - to get a quick view of all walk-up requests your patrons have placed.

      • “Local

  • Walk-up requesting

    • This is a true/false filter: use it to filter for the walk-up requests placed for patrons at your library.

  • And many more.

These filters can be combined to produce circulation reports for your library. For example, if you would like to see all requests that have been in a LOANED state for more than 3 days, you would follow the steps below.

  • Click “Filters”.

  • Select “Status” as the column you would like to filter by, “equals” as the operator, and LOANED as the value.

  • Click the “add filter” button to add a new filter. This defaults to the “And” operator, but other Boolean operators can be selected.

  • Select “Time in status” and then “Greater than” as the operator.

    • You can also choose “Less than” or “Between”. If you choose “Between” at this stage, you will see the range controls appear.

  • Your selection will be confirmed automatically, and the results will change accordingly.

Exports

This page also includes an export option, to produce a circulation report as a CSV or TSV file for use in other software. Click the download icon to get started.

More export options are planned for future releases, to continue to improve this functionality.

Supplier Requests

The supplier requests page is an overview of all of the requests for which your library is the supplier. It looks like this.

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The same filtering functionality is available on this page - use the filters to decide the granularity of the results and to get the information you need, and use the export functionality to export your supplying reports.

Individual patron requests

You can view information about an individual patron request by clicking on it in the grid. This will take you to the patron request page.

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This page is divided up into the following sections.

General

The “headline” information for this patron request. Includes information about the patron’s library, the supplying library, and the pickup library (only distinct for pickup anywhere requests). It also contains information about the current status of the request, its renewal status and count, and any notes or descriptions attached to this request.

Actions

Two main actions are available to library admin users when dealing with individual patron requests.

The first is “Check for Updates”. This triggers a manual tracking event - DCB directly polls the involved library systems to get the most up-to-date information about your request. This is useful if you need to know the latest information about a request now (for example if you think it has just changed), and can’t wait for the next automatic tracking run.

The second is “Force Cleanup”. This triggers a manual clean-up event, where DCB automatically finalises a request and attempts to delete the virtual records it has created in the local library systems. If you have erroneous requests, this is a useful option for making sure everything has been properly cleaned up. Equally, this can be used to return an unwanted item.

This is not available for requests that are in a Finalised state, as they will already have been automatically cleaned up by DCB.

Bib record

This page includes information about the bibliographic record for this request. Click the hyperlinked “Bib cluster UUID” to be taken to the record page from before.

Supplying

This page features information about the supplying library, and the status of the request at the supplier. It also includes information about the status of the selected item at the supplier, and the status of the virtual patron - the patron DCB creates at the supplier.

Borrowing

This page displays information about the borrowing library, the patron’s local ID, and the virtual item - the item DCB creates at the borrower.

Pickup

This page features information about the pickup location, the pickup library and the status of the request there (for pickup anywhere requests, where the request is being picked up at a different library).

For non pickup anywhere requests, this page has a link to the pickup location page, where users can see more info about the pickup location for this request.

Audit log

This page shows the progress of the request through the system. Useful for monitoring requests and troubleshooting, the audit log captures events as they happen and explains the steps the request passes through. Click on any entry to see more information, and use the filters to break the results down further. You can also export an audit log report using the “Download” icon.

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If you run into an issue with a request, the audit log is the first place to go. Provide the URL of the patron request to your contact at your consortium - they will pass it onto us if needed. You can even provide the URL of specific audit log entries: this helps us diagnose the issue quicker.

Service

This page contains information about your library management system.

Mappings

This page contains all of your library’s reference value mappings, which are used to configure aspects of DCB and are split into three types: ItemType, patronType and Location. By default, this page is read-only: this is regulated by a setting that can only be changed by consortia administrators.

For libraries with both reference value and numeric range mappings, the mappings page will incorporate two tabs to reflect this.

Locations

This page contains a list of all of your library’s pickup locations. It tells you if these locations are available for items to be picked up from them, and also if they have been set up to handle “pickup anywhere” requests.

Settings

The page for your personal DCB Admin for Libraries settings. Currently contains the control for “dark mode” - you can select dark or light mode from here. By default this will match your system’s settings.

Concepts

A guide to some of the concepts described in this document.

Agency

An entity closely associated with a library. References to “agencies” in the UX are gradually being phased out in favour of the more user-friendly “library”.

Advanced search

This is a search in the requesting section that involves more than one field. You can use Boolean operators to combine filters and get the record you are looking for.

Audit entries

When DCB detects a request has hit a certain stage, or a relevant change has happened in one of the downstream systems (for example the item has been checked out), it will create an audit log entry. These can be viewed in the audit log section: click on an individual entry to find out more about what happened. These entries are useful in diagnosing issues - for example, if a library management system is incorrectly configured, you will likely see errors coming back from it in the audit log.

Pickup anywhere

A request that can be picked up from any library with an eligible pickup location in the consortia. This occurs when users select a pickup location associated with a library that is not the borrower or the supplier. You can identify pickup anywhere requests by looking at the active workflow: this is set to “RET-PUA” for such requests.

Pickup locations

These usually correspond to branches or areas within your library. You can view these from DCB Admin for Libraries, but you’ll need to ask consortia staff to make changes (for example disabling a pickup location that is closed or undergoing maintenance).

 

Operated as a Community Resource by the Open Library Foundation