[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Questions about Locations

[Frances Dean McNamara]

I wanted to report on this issue that when I went to create some items in the database this way it turned out that trying to make University of Chicago (the very top of the org unit hierarchy) the Owning Library did not work well.  I created some volumes/items where the item attributes show  shelving location Regenstein, Bookstacks; Circ Library Regenstein and Owning Library University of Chicago.  When I go back to look at the Holdings and edit them, I see University of Chicago listed as having 1 volume but I am unable to get to the item to display and edit it.

So I think it will work better in our situation to have Catalogers work logged on as the top, University of Chicago, then to add items to Regenstein as being Owned by Regenstein and in a Regenstein Bookstacks Shelving Location, and have a Circ Library of Regenstein.  Then Law would be Owned, have a related Shelving Location and have a Circ Library of Law.  The Catalogers would log on at the top level, and see each others items, but that is what they are used to in our environment.  The Circ staff would log on at the Circ library so that if something needs to be sent back to Law it goes in transit.  From experimenting, I think this will work in our situation where they actually do want to see the items in the other libraries.  We do not have much overlap between libraries, so it's not an issue as it would be in a big consortium.

I just wanted to ask if anyone saw an issue with this?  We would set our OPAC to search at the University of Chicago level, as we do now since we don't have much overlap and we want users to find out if there is a copy in one of the other libraries.  So I don't think I actually have to have the top org unit University of Chicago be the Owning Location.

We are experimenting with Circulation and would plan to do what we do now which is to have borrowers set up as belonging to the top org unit University of Chicago and then be able to check out at any of the libraries.  We haven't done anything with notices so far but we would want one notice to go to a patron listing anything overdue from any of the libraries.  I'm hoping we could do that with this set up.

Let me know if anybody who made suggestions before thinks this might not be the way to go for any reason.  Thanks.

Frances McNamara
University of Chicago

________________________________
From: open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Murphy, S.K.
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 2:04 PM
To: open-ils-dev at list.georgialibraries.org
Subject: RE: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Questions about Locations

Hi, Frances -

I'd probably set it up so that University of Chicago is the owning library for all items.  The physical libraries on campus would be the Circulating Libraries, and then the Collections locations within them would be the Shelving Location - from your description, it sounds like the "Shelving Location" attribute would be the appropriate way to designate 'collections' (with the exception of your Special Collections items, see below).

An example hierarchy:

            University of Chicago[sk]  - Owning Library

                        Regenstein [sk] -Circulating Library
                                                Reserves  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                Reading Room First Floor  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                Reading Room Second Floor, etc.  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                Periodicals  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                Recordings  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                5th Floor Middle East Microforms  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                3rd Floor Microforms  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                etc.  [sk]  - Shelving Location

                        Law [sk] -Circulating Library
                                                Reserves  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                Reference  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                Periodicals  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                Microforms  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                Sharp Collection  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                Storage  [sk]  - Shelving Location
                                                etc.

So, and item located at Regenstein in the Read Room First Floor location would have "University of Chicago" as the Owning Library, "Regenstein" as the Circ Lib, and "Reading Room First Floor" as it's Shelving Location.

For items held by Special Collections, I imagine that they'd have "Special Collections" as both the owning and circulating library, though if these items are checked out from the Main library circ desk, you may wish to have the Main Library as the circulating library to prevent creating "transits" for items held in the same building.

The advantage of Shelving Locations is that they allow you to set OPAC visibility and circulation rules; you could set up the "Reserves" Shelving Location to disallow holds, for example.  Plus, Shelving Location is displayed in the OPAC - clicking on an item's "details" link shows the status and location.

Also, I may be mistaken about this, but I believe that strings in the OPAC are internationalized as of EG version 1.4.  This would allow you to change the display string "Location" to "Collection" within the OPAC.

Hope that helps!
-Murph

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