Monday Minutes: Using Clubs for Summer Reading

by Kelly McElligott on Jan 16, 2023

In this week's Monday Minutes, Christofer Zorn from Ajax Public Library joins Kelly and Jessie to talk about how their library utilized Koha's Club Feature for their Summer Reading Program.

The Ajax Public Library wanted to ramp up its Summer Reading Program - they discovered they had tools within Koha that would really help their staff signup, track and report on their successes.

Patron Clubs

Ajax used the Club Feature in Koha to sign up both children and family groups for the Summer Reading Program. Here is a link to the basic setup for the Club Feature

Monday Minutes: Using Patron Clubs

Ajax used Enrollment fields with the Patron Club template to gather the child's age, the patrons' school, the branch they were registered at, and if the patron-allowed media pictures. They connected each enrollment field to an Authorized Value to have customized dropdowns, making this easier for the staff.

For the families that wanted to enroll the whole family, the library created a club template for this option and included an enrollment field for the number of participants in the family.

Incentives

Christofer talked about Incentives that the library would 'checkout' to the patron adding more data to the programs. These incentives included biking to the library, attending a library program, reading 20 min, reading an hour. These incentives were an Item Type, Program, within Koha, and had barcodes attached to each one. Within Koha, an item type can be marked as an "automatic checkin".

For more information about this option in Koha,

Monday Minutes: Automatic Checkin by Item Type

This allowed the library to 'check out' the incentives to the patron but not have it be part of their allotted checkouts.

Each staff member would have pre-printed barcodes for these items to easily check out to the patron. Barcodes for items within Koha can be printed up, here is how a library can print Barcodes in Koha:

Tutorial on Creating Barcode Labels in Koha's Label Creator

Outreach

The staff created dummy patron accounts in the system with expired registration dates to expedite the registration process while they were at local events promoting the Summer Reading Program. They could easily just add the name and the new enrolled date to add them into the system.

Additional Resources

Christofer Zorn is available in the ByWater Slack Channel if you have any questions for him! He can also be reached at: christofer.zorn@ajaxlibrary.ca