21. Додавання відвідувачів

Now that you know how to add a bibliographic record into Koha, we turn to living breathing people.

From the lime green intranet screen, mouse over Members. Select the Add Member option. This will cause the add member screen to appear.

The first text box to fill in is the Member number, Card Number box at the upper left. If your patron cards are barcoded, this is where you would scan in the barcode from the back of the patron’s card. It is a very good idea to give all of your patrons unique numbers. My library is very simple and we just assign numbers in order of registration.

Notice that this field had a * next to it, meaning that it was mandatory to fill it out.

Now fill in the patron’s personal information using the

• Ім’я
• Прізвище
• і, за бажанням, поле для обраного ім'я (прізвиська).

The preferred name will not show up in the search listings or the issues screen for a patron. It will show up when one looks at the detailed member information screen, however.

Make sure that you use the male/female radio button.

The category pulldown menu is incredibly important! After working so hard at determining your patron types, be sure to use this pull down to make sure your borrowers are sorted by the computer into the categories that you want. For instance, in Massachusetts, I need to turn in statistics at the end of the year on Resident and Non Resident use as well as Adult and Youth tallies. If I didn’t use the options on the pull down, my data would be flawed.

Continue filling out the Patron’s address. The only two fields mandatory are:

• Поштова адреса; та
• Населений пункт.

BUT this is where you would add the patron’s phone number and email address, both of which are very useful for reserves.

Alternate Contact Details is the section I use to add a spouse. You could also add a spouse under Given names. If you want to add a child, there’s a special button just for that, but you need to wait until the parent is fully added to use it.

Under Library Use there are two note fields, and it’s critical to know the difference between them.

The Borrower message is what you use if there’s something you want the borrower to see if they happen to log on to the Koha OPAC. Comments like "You accidentally left your glasses, please pick them up at circulation." would go here.

The Circulation message is something that you want your staff to see. For instance "Please request that patron return their extra late copy of Great Expectations" would be the type of thing that went here.

The sorting fields are new to me, and I think that they might help achieve some of the statistics I referred to earlier.

When you’re all through this form, click the Save button at the bottom. This will take you to the detailed borrower record screen.