We’ve officially entered the ‘Season of Collaboration’ in RSA! This will be an extra long season as we’ll be needing your help, via surveys, email forums, online meetings, and on person meetings for the next 18 months or so! Here are several issues RSA’s Board, Staff, and Member Libraries are formally starting work on.

• Strategic Plan 2027: RSA’s previous Strategic Plan was finalized in December 2019 and was a great process with LOTS of member input. The end result was a highly specific document that immediately got overshadowed by COVID closures and the resulting aftermath. However, 2/3rd of that Strategic Plan were things RSA’s Board and Staff could do even working from home and were accomplished. Strat Plan 2027 will set RSA’s direction and efforts for the next 3 to 5 years and its VERY IMPORTANT for all our members are participate in the surveys, online events, and in-person meetings in year to ensure the new Strategic Plan covers everything the Membership wants to ensure we do. This will run until May 2027 or slightly longer.
• Project Harmony: What’s better than a Symphony? A Symphony that’s playing in Harmony. Those of you who’ve ever attended a 5th or 6th grade band/orchestra concert know the difference between individuals playing in a group and a group of individuals playing together. We’re working towards the latter! The Harmony Project replaces the not well named “database cleanup project that is now unlikely to result in an in-place migration but might end up leading to a full migration in three years” effort we’ve been slowly working on the last 8 months. This was announced at Directors Day on 30 September and will be an agenda item on the Director’s Advisory Committee (DAC) meeting on 14 October at Alpha Park. This project will run through the end of 2027, perhaps longer. Come to or attend online to DAC meetings for more details.
• Reports and Dashboards for your Boards and Administrators: We are working on a series of example end of month style interactive dashboards and we need your guidance and help. We don’t know what you want to show your Boards or Administers, but we want to create whatever that might be. To do so, you need some examples to look at to understand the types of things we can do, then provide feedback on what you want to see. Creating more useful dashboard reports is a long term project and the fruit is just beginning to form.
• System Annoyance Central: Does some aspect of our automation system annoy you? Maybe you need to work around the system? We’re here to help! Frequently your offhand comment about working around the system results in our ability to tweak things to work the way you want. Or at least less annoyingly. We know the system, you know what you want from it; collaboration makes that happen.
• RSA Staff Communications to Members, help us help you: Rabbit holes! RSA staff stumble down rabbit holes all the time as we’re working on things. Some we can ignore, but some rabbit holes are actually deep canyons that need to be corrected, cleaned up, or otherwise mediated. For the most part, everyone is good about getting back to us, but sometimes not so much. Please, if we’ve emailed you asking about something that needs work, help us help you to make the database and system work better for everyone.
• Extra: No-Transit Item Types are now Live: I hear you asking “how is not sending certain of your items outside your library collaboration?” Well, it’s going to take collaboration between libraries who receive items that can’t be returned to that library, the owning library, and the patron who returned the item over the next year or so until everyone understands how these items work. Fondulac has added several of these new item types into the database, you can find any no-transit item simply by searching RSAcat for “for checkout and return only” which are required words in the brief record title. FYI, no-transit items can be no holds, local holds only, or open to anyone placing a hold on the item. But in all cases, the only library the patron can pick up and return the item to is the item owning branch library. Contact the Help Desk for assistance setting up new item types, circ rules, hold rules, and for the cataloging and operational use guides.
• Our “Please Bug Us” campaign was set up to encourage one-to-one collaboration between Members and RSA. That’s still in effect as well and is exactly what we’re here for. We’re not always able to help, but there’s nothing we enjoy more than fixing problems or annoyances.