Calling Patron Holds on the Cheap


We've gone high-tech with our phone notification of holds to be picked up.

I figured out how to get the data I needed out of Horizon, sort & weed it, then import it into PhoneHerald, the autodialer software. I used a combination of regular AppleScript for the basics, then GUI scripting via System Events for talking to PhoneHerald. I've set the scripts to run automatically using iCal alarms, which appears to be the weakest link. I might switch the method to Cron.

We run two jobs a day for each location. PhoneHerald let me set up calling windows, so we only call between the hours of 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays we stop calling at 5 p.m., since we close at 5:30. We don't call on Sundays.

PhoneHerald notifies me by email when a job is completed. I set up a rule in my Mail account to run a script that sends an instant message to the circulation desk when it sees that email in my inbox, notifying the staff at the desk to check their own inbox for the job results.

So far the calling has been going great. We're going to finalize the process, and make it SOP come January. We're going to buy a Mac Mini for the dedicated caller, and if I can figure it out, run it headlessly. I think I can access it for GUI via VNC.

I'm very happy with the cross-platform solution. A lot of what we do lately seems to be going this way. We use Windows for what we have to, but if the option is there, we get it out quickly to the Macs, where AppleScripting saves the day. My scripting skills, both in AppleScript and Visual Basic, are increasing daily, and I've come to realize how much of what we librarians do can be scripted. In my next post, I'll describe how we have simplified our Pull List workflow using FileMaker Pro.

Posted: Mon - December 11, 2006 at 03:35 PM      

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