OPALS Tip for Today

How you can make public or private notes

Need a way to "flag" a patron's account? Use notes...

Today a librarian asked if we could ask OPALS for a way to flag a patron's account. There's a way to do that!


Go into the "edit" mode for a user's account. There are spots there for "notes" (which are more public...they show up in that rectangular box under the patron's name when you pull up a patron under circulation-->loans), and "private note". If you use the "private note" option, it will place a red flag near the patron's name, with a hyperlink. Clicking on the hyperlink will open up those private notes so that you can see them.

Did you know you can import pictures?

I know that I never went down the picture road when I was in the trenches as a K-12 librarian. I wasn't sure who to ask, if I could get permission, and didn't have time to even begin to explore the possibility to figure it out. My school was small enough that I quickly learned who the students were, and once we had the class list feature we were able to virtually eliminate the issue of the occasional checkout to the wrong kid. (Have you ever checked out a book to the wrong "Mason" or "Jayden"? I have.) However, if you do not currently have student images for your patron accounts, it is something you can absolutely do if you wish.


You will have to ask your IT, main office, or Yearbook advisor to find out how to get access to the school photos for your students. In order to import those images, they have to have a file name format that can be matched up with information in OPALS (such as student ID or name).


If you use student ID, make sure it matches up with whatever you have in OPALS. For instance, if your student IDs in OPALS have leading zeroes on them, like 0001234, the file name of the pictures has to have that as well, or the import won't work. The choices that OPALS gives for file names of imported pictures are as follows:


User Barcode

Student ID

Last name, First Name

Last Name First Name

First Name Last Name

(Yes, a couple of those look repetitive. Notice the use of a comma in one of those choices.)
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