How to Use the Service
The system tries to send you mail only when there's something you should
know about. That is, you'll get a message if you are requested to return a
book, but not if you're allowed to keep it. You should also get a message
if you've ordered a book and it has arrived. The behavior is parameterized
by your
panic horizon . It measures your anxiety, with regard to
the library loan system, in units of days.
Let's look at an example; suppose you set it to one week. This means
you'll get no mail unless there's a book you have to return in the
next 6 days. For normal books in the Technion library, this means you'll
get a mail message only when someone else has ordered your copy of the
book, but never before that.
If you are paranoid about returning all your books on time, set this to
a high value (a week, or even a month). This means that once the return
date approached, you will get a message reminding you every day.
If you feel you will not forget to bring the book back on time, and the
repeateing messages start to annoy you, set this to a lower value, like
three days or even just one day (brave!).
A related feature is the following: by default, you will also get a
single email message every time someone orders a book you hold (no matter
how long you can still keep it). This is called the Early Warning feature, and it is designed to remind
you to return wanted books if you no longer need them.
You don't, really. You'll have to take our word for it. We use the same
system for our own books. We're concerned about it's operation as much
as you are. LibAgent is running since October '96, with thousands of
registered users in different libraries around Israel (for an exact
count, see the
statistics page). They
trust us. If you want, you can log-in to library website yourself and do the book
extension procedure manually, or just check that LibAgent did its job,
but that just defeats the purpose of using LibAgent, doesn't it?
If you really feel mistrusting, set the panic horizon to something
very large (like a month). This way, there will always be something you
should know about, so you will get a daily mail after all, you
disbelieving geek!
Another option is to peridically check our renewal status page. It will tell
you when was the last time we have successfully renewed the books at
your library. If you have a RSS client, you can do that easily
by subscribing to one of the RSS feeds.
This is an easy process:
- Go to the
main page and click on "Create an
account"
- Fill the form with your details, and read the usage agreement
- Proceed to choose a library, and renewal-related preferences
- Open your mail-reader (eg. "Outlook Express", "Eudora") and
respond to the email-confirmation message that was just sent
- All done! You are a happy LibAgent user!
Nothing. LibAgent does not know what type of loan
(standard/permanent/fixed duration) a book is on. Therefore, when it
fails to extend your loan on the book, it will assume this is because
someone ordered it. If you know the book was given to you permanently,
or until the end of the semester, simply ignore this message. LibAgent
will not send it more than once (see also the explanation on
Early Warning).
Short answer: No. Long answer: log in to
the official library website and do this yourself (or call your
librarian). This is a one-time operation; LibAgent is concerned with
automation of things to be done every day. It will be too much work
for us to provide this to you, and the benefit for everyone will be very low.
We have way too many users and way too little time to do this manually. You
can update your record yourself. Just browse to the
main page and update your account details.
The obvious thing to do when renewing your books, is examine your library
record, and issue a renewal command for
all of the books. However,
there are situations where it is not optimal. For example, some books have
a limit on the number of times they can renewed. Suppose you have such a
book, and it is given out for a week at a time, and limited to 5
renewals. In theory, you should be able to hold it for 5 weeks (assuming
no-one else orders it in the meantime). But if you use LibAgent, it gets
renewed every day, whether needed or not. Therefore the sixth renewal will
fail, and so you will be able to hold it only for one week plus 5 days.
So we now offer another way to renew books. It looks at the return date of
each book, and decides whether to renew this book or not. If the book's
return date is in your panic horizon, then
a renewal is attempted. If not, the book's entry is left untouched.
You can choose how we renew your books. If you have never heard of
limits on the number of renewals on books (and many libraries don't impose
them), you're better off renewing your books every day. But, if you know
about renewal limits, choose the option ("only if it's due soon"). You will
probably also want to set your "Panic Horizon" to a low value, like 3 days
or even 1 day. Note that this means LibAgent will send you a rather short
advance warning when you have to return a book.
Note: you can either have "Gentle Renewal" on all of your books, or
"Aggressive Renewal" on all of your books. But you can't mix. So if you
can't seem to decide which one is better for you, you might want to choose
"every day" for now, and when you do take out a book that is limited, go
back to the site and change your preferences to "when needed". And,
when you're done with the book and have returned it, switch it back
again.
Additionally, you can also choose "not renew". This will mean LibAgent will
check to see if you have books to return soon, and will notify you if there
are. It will also check if you have ordered books that arrived. But it will
not renew your books. This is meant for users of libraries
that automatically renew the books for their users every day.
This is how far in advance we try to renew your books. It may be
different than your panic horizon.
If you don't use "gentle renewal" (in other words: chose to
renew books "every day"), then this parameter has no effect, and you
can safely ignore it.
Our system does that when the due date is beyond the daylight-saving
(SHEON-KAITZ) switchover day. Do the math - you have one day which is
shorter by an hour, or 1/24 of a day. So you have one hour less in which
you can read the book. It's all about accuracy.
This controls whether you get notices on serious conditions on your reader
card which are not book-specific. For example, when your borrowing
privileges have been suspended. This selection lets you inhibit these
kinds of messages, if they annoy you and you think they're wrong.
This controls whether you get notices on books in your account which you
need to return soon (how soon exactly is determined by your
Panic Horizon). This selection lets you inhibit these
kinds of messages, if they annoy you and you think they're wrong.
This controls whether you get notices on books which you ordered, and are
now in the library waiting for you.
This selection lets you inhibit these kinds of messages, if they annoy you
and you think they're wrong.
LibAgent's Early Warning feature is meant to make LibAgent users more
friendly towards each other. Many of us, LibAgent users, when
borrowing a library book, tend to keep it until LibAgent asks us to
return it, even if we don't really need the book.
While LibAgent
can't tell when you no longer need the book, it can try and guess when
others need it. This is what Early Warning is all about.
Normaly, LibAgent only warns users when a book is due back in time
that is shorter than their panic horizon. With Early Warning, you will
receive one warning email the first time LibAgent can't extend
the loan on a book. This is usually an indication that someone else
has ordered the book. If you don't really need the book, this is the
time to be nice to your fellow readers and return it to the
library. If you need it, do nothing. LibAgent will only warn you when
you have less than your panic horizon left before you have to
return it.
This is whatever identifier the library recognizes you by. This is normally
your T.Z. number.
This is a password which might be required to access your library web
site. Not all libraries require this. You can check if your library
requires it
here.
If your library requires a password, and you don't know it, contact the
library staff. Tip: some libraries use default passwords which are the same
as the account number (normally, your TZ number).
If you choose this option, then you will get repeated notices of books that
you ordered and have arrived. If you don't, you will only get a single
notice for each book.
If you choose this option, LibAgent will
not renew your books at
all. This is for people who go on vacation or otherwise would not like book
renewal for some transient reason.
LibAgent can notify you about library renewals over SMS
(short text messages to your cellular phone). There are two methods to
achieve this: one is easier to set up, but costs money, and the other
is free, but requires more work from you. This one here is the option
that is free. It
only works if you
already have a way
to accept SMS from regular e-mail. How to do achieve that is,
basically, your business - we cannot provide a solution to this ourselves.
But, what you can do, is try to sign up to any third-party service that
provides this kind of thing. Here are some services we know about:
- Yaniv Hamo's ESend.
- If you have a Mirs/Amigo
cellular phone, then they provide the gateway for you.
You can leave this item empty. In this case we will still deliver the
full-length notifications to your primary email address.
In any case, if you already have an email address that is suitable for
accepting very short summaries of our notification, you are welcome to
update your preferences page and provide it. It will, in fact, work
regardless if this is really a SMS gateway or a "real" email inbox. We have
no way of knowing what is happening to the email after we send it.
Important:If the gateway service keeps a "white list"
of permitted senders, to stop SPAM, please allow the address
"libagent@libagent.org" to send messages to you.
LibAgent can notify you about library renewals over SMS
(short text messages to your cellular phone). There are two methods to
achieve this: one is easier to set up, but costs money, and the other
is free, but requires more work from you. This one here is the option
which costs money. You may get a few notices free as a promotion. But
after that, you need to arrange payment to get this service.
To let people get acquainted with the types of messages they get, and
to prevent abuse, we do not communicate by SMS for the first few days
after a new user has joined (currently, this period is 5 days). In
this period the service is marked "on hold".
If you sign up for SMS notifications, then normally each notice is
sent both to your email address, and to you mobile phone. But, if you
choose "no" for "Send all SMS, even repeats", then your mobile phone
will not receive the same message two days in a row. More precisely,
if the message is the same as the last message sent, and less than a
week has elapsed since it was sent, then it will not be sent to your
mobile phone. Messages are always sent to your email address,
regardless of what you choose here.
On most days, we can contact the library and check your books. But
there are (rare) situations when we cannot make contact with the
library for a whole day or more. Sometimes, it's due to an internet
connectivity problem of some sort (either on our end, or on the
library's end), a server going down, or some software issue. If you
absolutely depend on LibAgent to renew your books every day, you can
choose to receive email in the evening, telling you if renewal could
not be performed on that day. This is the "alert me daily..." option.
Note: you can also check the renewal status yourself,
or with the help of a RSS client. See the
status page.
If your email client (Eudora, Outlook, etc.) can easily handle character
encodings and fonts to display mail in Hebrew, we will send Hebrew book
names to you in Hebrew. If not - not a problem. Say so, and we will
transliterate the Hebrew names to Latin letters. This should be readable on
any email client, phone, etc.
This is where you specify if you would like to receive messages from the
LibAgent team, regarding matters that immediately affect their book renewal
status.