[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Questions about Locations

[Frances Dean McNamara]

This is great.  Thanks.  I think in the long run it might be a problem for us if people had to press a button all the time to see the shelving location in the opac, but that could probably be dealt with eventually.  I think you have given me the right way to go with the setup.  Org types of University, Circulating Library, Shelving Location (or copy location or Collection, however we want to call it).  Then the actual org units filled out with our specific libraries and collections.

Frances

________________________________
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


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-dev/attachments/20080530/94cee421/attachment-0001.html