WLS librarians unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains

The purpose of this blog is to exchange information that will make our job easier. It is not official in any way and does not reflect anyone's opinion except my own.

Please use the comments to share tips and tricks. If I get enough, I'll try to create a wiki or a web page compiling them.

Here are my tips of the day:

• Use MUSE and Sirsi's training module together. MUSE is good for grabbing a call number for a specific item, but there is no way to limit subject searches to your particular library. You can, however, limit your search geographically in the Sirsi training module. The data is old, but at least you don't have to click "availability" on 100 items to see which books on Kabuki your library owns.
• Don't go crazy learning Sirsi now because it keeps changing. One of my colleagues spent all her waking hours learning how to place beach blanket holds on bingo books and then they added a whole new tab on top which changed everything. Now all she does is sit at her terminal muttering, "Why? Why? Why did they change that? My life has no meaning now."
  

Here are my Gripes of the Day:

• Muse keeps timing out
• We call it Muse, but our patrons see catalog and more (unless it fails in which case they see Muse)
• Broken back button on Muse
  

I wish WLS had done something like this because the incredible lack of information flow between the system and us poor, front line librarians and clerks creates hard feelings.