Documentation: Basic concepts
From ReservesDirect: Open Source EReserves System
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Users and Permissions
All users of ReservesDirect log into the system from the same screen. Depending on the level of access defined for the user, he or she will see a different set of screens and options. Many screens in ReservesDirect appear differently to different users. The interface is designed around a series of tabs that provide the major categories of functionality. These tabs are also the most basic division of access for users. As the level of permission increases, users get access to more tabs and more functionality on the pages that fall under each tab. For a summary of how different users see the interface, see Tabs and their behavior.
Standard permission levels (roles)
Access to the various features of ReservesDirect is controlled by defining a "role" for each user. Each role has varying levels of access to system features through the interface. There are six basic roles (from lowest to highest):
(0) student (1) proxy (2) custodian (3) instructor (4) staff (5) admin.
The permissions for each successive role build on those of the previous role.
- Student: default role for for all users when they first log into the system. Students read-only access to classes and readings.
- Proxy: users who have "write" (or edit) privileges for certain classes. A user's role automatically changes to proxy if they have a role of student and a user with privileges of instructor or better adds them to a class as a proxy.
- Proxies have "edit" access only to the class or classes they have been added to. Within that class, they may make changes as if they were the instructor (add items, edit items, add crosslistings). However, proxies may not create or reactivate courses, and some class editing functions are limited. See Tabs and their behavior for more details.
- When a class expires, the proxy immediately loses access to it, even though their role remains "proxy".
- After being assigned as a proxy the first time, a user's role will remain "proxy" even if they are not associated with a currently active class. "Proxies" not associated with an active class effectively have the same access as a "student".
- If a class is reactivated at a later date, users who were previously proxies for the class will not have access to it unless they are specifically added to the new class.
- Because higher-level roles include privileges of lower-level roles, users with a role of "instructor" or greater may be added to a class as a proxy, but their role will remain at the higher level and not change to "proxy".
- Custodian: users who effectively have the same privileges as students, except that they may assign override passwords to any user in the system. This functionality is designed primarily for service desk staff (such as reference librarians) who may need to assist users who have forgotten their passwords. Custodians can set a temporary password so that the user can access his or her course readings.
- Instructor: have full "write" access to any class that they create and can manipulate their own classes in any way they choose. They may also add proxies and other instructors to their classes. Instructors have read-only access to classes in which they are not listed as an instructor.
- Staff: have full read and write access to all classes in the system. They also have access to additional staff-only functions, such as processing physical items, and the "Search" tab.
- Admin: have access to certain system-wide functions above and beyond what "staff" have access to.
This table shows the complete breakdown of system actions and which roles have access to them.
Basic attributes of users
All users have the following attributes, which make up their user profile.
- Username is a unique system identifier for each user. This is the primary key for identifying the user throughout the system. When authentication by Kerberos or LDAP is being used, the username is generated automatically by default and is set to equal the username that the user logs in with. The username cannot be changed except by an administrator.
- First name and Last name make up the display name for a user. These can be changed by the user as desired.
- Email is the user's primary email contact. Email is used for various system functions and notifications and is required for all users.
- Default role defines the default permission level for the user (see below).
The following attributes are active only for users with a role of instructor or greater.
- ILS User ID is a key to match the instructor with an instructor ID in the library system for purposes of setting up reserve records for physical items. The scripts that integrate ReservesDirect with the ILS require this value.
- ILS User Name is an additional field used in conjunction with the ILS User ID. The ILS User Name is not required, but if used should match the instructor name in the ILS.
The following attribute is only available to staff.
- Library defines what library the users is associated with. This value is used when the system is being used in a multi-library environment to determine what defaults to display to staff when processing items, especially physical items.
"Not trained" table for instructors
If it is not desirable for instructors to have "write" access to their classes, they may be put into the "not trained" table (so called because they have "not been trained" to use the system). Adding an instructor to the "not trained" table effectively gives them "student" access to the system. In their user profile, they must still have a role of "instructor", however, so that they may be listed as the instructor of their classes.
To mark an instructor as "not trained", simply edit their user record and check the "not trained" checkbox.
Terms, libraries, and departments
A term is the default period of time that a class is active, usually identical to the semesters or terms used by your institution. Each term has a beginning and ending date. A class assigned to a given term will be accessible to students on the first day of the term and will disappear from public access after the last day of the term.
In the case of a semester system, the terms would be Spring 2005, Summer 2005, Fall 2005, etc. Each term is independent of the others. Dates of terms may overlap if desired. When a given class is created (or reactivated), the user selects which term the class should be active for and the default dates for that term are displayed. At the point of creation, a user may adjust the beginning and end dates for a particular class. In that case, the semester will display with the same name, but the class will conform to the user-specified dates rather than the default dates of the term. The begin and end dates for a specific class may be changed at any time on the "Edit Class" screen.
A library is the unit responsible for processing reserves for specific departments. ReservesDirect can be set up for a single library, for five, or for as many as you wish. For example, you may have a main library, a chemistry library, a math library, and a business library, all with seperate reserves operations. Each library has a number of different attributes that can be set up by system admins.
"Staff" users are assigned to a library as part of their user profile. This should be the library where they work. Users with a role of "staff" or above can change the home library for other staff from the "Edit User" screen.
Departments are the academic units of the college or university, such as Anthropology, Literature, Physics, German, etc. In ReservesDirect, you associate each department with the library that is primarily responsible for processing that department's reserves. If you are using ReservesDirect for physical items, it is possible to indicate separate libraries for the same department for processing physical monographs and physical multimedia materials. Requests for monographs will be routed to one library, requests for multimedia items to the other. Administrators can add and edit departments from the Admin tab.
Courses and classes (course instances)
ReservesDirect distinguishes between courses and course instances for purposes of controlling what classes are active for the current term (or semester or quarter).
A course is similar to what defines a course in the main course catalog for a university or college. It is the information that usually remains constant from one iteration of the course to the next: the department, the course number, the title of the course.
A course instance, or class, defines the attributes of the course as it is taught in a specific period of time: the semester (e.g., Fall 2005), the instructor, the proxies, the list of readings, etc.
Activation and Deactivation.
In normal usage, the distinction between "course" and "course instance" should not be of importance to students, staff, or instructors. When creating a class, the course and course instance are created at the same time (the user enters the course name, number, etc. and selects the semester the class will be taught at the same time). When a class is created, it receives an activation date and a deactivation date. The course is "active" as long as today's date is greater than the activation date and less than the deactivation date. These dates automatically default to the dates defined for the current term, but can be customized either at course setup or on the Edit Class page by staff (instructors cannot customize these dates). As soon as the deactivation date is reached, the class becomes inactive and remains inactive until it is "reactivated" by an instrutor or by staff. Upon reactivation, the course (ANT 110 Introduction to Anthropology) remains the same, the old course instance (FALL 1999, Prof. Brown, plus all the readings) remains inactive ("archived"), and a new course instance (SPRING 2006, Prof. Brown, plus the same list of readings) is created. All course instances for a given course remain in the archive and may be viewed or reactivated independently of each other. In other words, for ANT 110, Prof. Brown can at any time reactivate the version he taught in FALL 1999, FALL 2000, FALL 2001, or SPRING 2003.
Enrollment.
The concept of "enrollment" is of minor importance in version 2.1. This has primarily been implemented for features planned for future versions. Each class has an enrollment list that consists of the students who have added that class to their profile (the MyReserves list). Each class also has an enrollment status. The default status for all classes is "PUBLIC", meaning that any student can add the class to their profil and gain access to it.
In future versions, instructors or staff may set enrollment of a class to "MODERATED" or "CLOSED". Moderated classes will allow students to request to be added to a class; instructors or staff will get the request and be able to approve it or reject it. Closed classes will be locked--no new students will be able to add the class or request to be added to it.
Course instance actions: edit, merge, delete, copy.
A number of actions may be performed on course instances as a whole or in part. Any course instance may be edited by going to the Edit Class screen. Every aspect of the course instance can be edited, including the instructors, proxies, crosslistings, and all the readings. Users may also merge course instances, delete them, or copy them to a new course instance. Reserve materials in a given course instance may also be deleted, moved, or copied to another course instance (version 2.2 and above only). Because course instances create their own "reserves list" of materials that are separate from the source items in the ReservesDirect database, deleting items from a course instance, or editing them in any way, does not affect the source item or remove it from the database.
Crosslistings (course aliases)
Items and reserves
Items refers to materials as they are added to ReservesDirect the first time. These can also be thought of as "source items". ReservesDirect's "archive", or the database of items that instructors and staff search when they want to re-use a reading or other material, is a list of all the items that have ever been added to the system.
Items are distinguished from reserves. Reserves are the instance of the item as it exists for a particular class. The reserve is independent from the item insofar as it has an activation and deactivation date, status, a sort order, as well as any instructor notes (see below for how notes behave). The reserve shares with the item the title, author, and other metadata indicating the original source of the item (pages, times, year, etc.).
A user must ALWAYS be in a class before they add an item to the system. The system is set up so that the user must be inside a class or select a class before they can move to the forms that allow them to upload items to the system.
It is important to note that every item has a status of either "ACTIVE" or "INACTIVE", and every course instance also has a status of "ACTIVE" or "INACTIVE". In order for a reserve to be visible to students, both the course instance AND the item must have a status of "ACTIVE". Further explanation on statuses below...
Every item has an "item type". There are three item types: electronic, multimedia or monograph.
Electronic items
When an instructor or staff adds an electronic item for the first time, both an item and a reserve are created since items cannot be added to ReservesDirect without also being associated with a class. So, if I added the PDF of the article "Strange misadventures in aerobic parachuting" to ANT 110, I would be creating the item in the main database as well as the reserve for ANT 110.
Electronic items are available in the database to be added to any course instance, regardless of who first added the item. The exception is items that were added by instructors who checked the "this item is from my personal collection" checkbox at item creation. These items are shadowed from being searched and added by other instructors. Staff, however, may still search these items and add them to other classes. If a user is searching the database and selects electronic items to add to a class (course instance), those items immediately have reserves created for the course instance. As long as the course instance is currently active, those reserves will be available to students immediately.
ReservesDirect tries to guess the type of file for electronic documents based on the extension and assigns an icon for display to users. In version 2.1 there is not a way for users to change this icon through the interface. Version 2.2 will add this capability.
Physical items and requests
Physical items are archived along with electronic items and appear in the same search results lists. Physical items can have an item type of either multimedia or monograph. Multimedia items (DVDs, CDs, etc.) receive an icon of a compact disc in the user interface. Monographs receive an icon of a book. Except for this distinction, multimedia and monograph items are treated the same in the system as "not electronic" or "physical" items. If you are not going to use physical items in your installation, your system administrator can turn off the interface elements for processing physical items.
There are two ways to add physical items to a class: by adding them for the first time through the "add physical item" wizard (available only to staff on the Manage Classes tab), or by requesting the physical item (either by reactivating a past course instance or searching the item archive and selecting the item to add to a course instance).
When staff add a physical item for the first time (using the "Add physical item" wizard), an item and a reserve are created, just as for physical items. If integration with your library catalog is turned on, a reserve record is also created in the library catalog. The following describes what happens when a physical item is created and catalog integration is turned on:
- Staff scan the barcode. ReservesDirect queries the ILS (catalog) for a match on the barcode. If a match is found, the catalog returns the MARC fields to ReservesDirect, and RD populates the add physical item form with the title, author, etc. ReservesDirect also receives the holdings information for all available copies and the location of those copies (Checked Out, Stacks, etc.).
- Staff select the reserves desk (or service library), the loan period, the item type (monograph or multimedia). There is also a "Create [catalog] record" check box. By default this is checked. If the staff user unselects this box, RD will *not* attempt to create a reserve record in the catalog--it will only add the listing for the physical item to the course instance.
- Staff select the copy (or copies) from the holdings information that they would like to place on reserve. In general, the location of the selected item must have a location of STACKS (or the equivalent in your system) in order to be put on reserve.
- Staff hit the "submit" button.
- ReservesDirect now does two things. It adds the item record to the RD course instance. This is a display-only record. RD also attempts to set up a reserve record in the ILS for purposes of circulating the item. In order to do this, your ILS must have a functioning reserves module. Currently, the scripts for physical item integration are designed to work with Sirsi Unicorn systems (has been tested on Unicorn 2002 and later).
- The "success" screen that appears indicates two things: whether adding the RD record to the course instance was successful, and whether adding the reserve record in the ILS was successful. If adding the ILS record was not successful, RD will echo whatever error message that the ILS returned.
Since physical items must be retrieved from the shelves, they are not immediately available to students when they are reactivated.
Status indications for items on reserve
Items on reserve for a class can show one of four different statuses. These statuses show on the Edit Class screen next to each item. Users with a role of proxy or above (all users who can access the Edit Class screen) can see the status of all items.
ACTIVE. Active items are visible to students. Items receive an "activation date" that specifies when they will appear to students. The default activation date for an item is the activation date for the class, which is usually the first day of the semester (default). It is possible to modify the activation date for an individual item by clicking on the "edit" link for that item and entering a new activation date (see below for effects of modifying this date).
INACTIVE. Inactive items are not visible to students. Staff or instructors will generally want to make an item inactive when there are no current plans to use the item, but it is not desirable to completely remove it from the class. Inactive items will remain inactive until they are manually changed to "ACTIVE". Activation dates do not apply to items with a status of INACTIVE. Items must be changed to ACTIVE status before an activation date appplies.
HIDDEN. HIDDEN items are not visible to students. An item is HIDDEN when its activation date is greater than today's date (e.g., in the future). As soon as the activation date arrives, the item's status changes from HIDDEN to ACTIVE and the reading automatically becomes visible to students. An item must be ACTIVE and have an activation date in the future in order to be HIDDEN and automatically appear on the activation date.
IN PROCESS. This status is for physical items only. IN PROCESS items are not visible to students. An item has a status of IN PROCESS while it is waiting in the request queue. This accounts for the time that staff must take to go to the shelves and retrieve the book before actually placing it on reserve. As soon as the item is processed (placed on reserve), it disappears from the processing queue and the status changes to ACTIVE.
Note that physical items can have any of the statuses above, but only staff can modify the status of a physical item. Proxies and instructors can see the status of physical items, but cannot modify the item in any way that changes the status.
Items can be changed to ACTIVE or INACTIVE in batches by selecting the checkboxes next to them and performing the action through through the drop-down menu at the bottom of the item list. In version 2.1, it is not possible to batch-change the activation date of multiple items--this must be done one item at a time (version 2.2 will add this capability).
Notes
Notes can be added to any item, electronic or physical. There are several different types of notes, each of which behave in different ways. Staff can add any type of note to any item; instructors and proxies can add only Content Notes and Instructor Notes.
Types of notes
Content Note. Content notes are permanent notes that attach to the item itself and always travel with the item to whatever class it is placed on reserve for, until the note is deleted manually. Content notes can be added by proxies and above to any electronic item at the moment of creation. After the moment of creation, only staff can add content notes to items. Only staff can add content notes to physical items. Content notes are visible to all users and appear to students.
Instructor Note. Instructor notes are semi-permanent notes attached to the reserve, not to the source item. This means if instructor A creates an instructor note for an item on reserve for class A, that note will only appear for class A. If instructor B searches the archive and adds the same item to class B, the note that instructor A created will not appear for class B. If instructor A reactivates class A in the future, his instructor notes will still be there. This note field is designed for class-specific annotations like "read this item for Tuesday's class" or "The last ten pages of this reading are key passages for next week's class."
Staff Note. Staff notes are permanent notes that appear only to users with a role of staff. These notes attach to the source item and remain until they are permanently deleted. This type of note is designed to allow staff to make notations about the source of the item, processing information, or other behind-the-scenes notations that staff do not want instructors and students to see.
Copyright Note. These notes function in the same way as Staff Notes but have the label of Copyright Note to specify that the content refers to copyright restrictions or permissions that apply to the item. Copyright notes are visible only to staff.
Editing and deleting notes
If a user has sufficient privileges to view a note (excluding students and custodians), they may also edit or delete the note. This may be done by going to the Edit Class screen and clicking the "edit" link next to the item. Changes to notes do note take effect until the "Save Changes" button on the Edit Item screen is clicked.
Foreign language support
ReservesDirect does not currently have built-in language support.
