[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Holds Prioritization Development

[James Fournie]

One challenge is that hold/soft boundaries only offer one "level" of hold fulfillment expansion -- the only levels are "within the soft boundary" and "outside the soft boundary but within the hard boundary".  You can't have a medium boundary.   I think multiple configurable tiers would be great instead of just two boundaries, particularly if you could define tiers as lassos.  This would allow you to have boundaries like this:

1.  Local 3-branch radius that someone happens to drive every day anyway
2.  Local library system with it's courier system
3.  Local library system including a nearby branch from another system
4.  Local library system including another entire system
5.  Local library system including 3 nearby systems

In some areas this may help save courier costs, as you could use different courier systems for different ranges, or even offset the cost to the patron where palatable.

I would add though that a related concept is the "proximity", however this feature isn't really usable right now -- tinkering with it may break if you run autogen.  And while it does solve a problem of prioritization, it doesn't really allow you to define specific tiers of delivery which should only be crossed under certain circumstances.


James Fournie
BC Libraries Cooperative / Sitka


On 2012-04-06, at 11:00 AM, Jason Etheridge wrote:

>> A hard boundary just says, "never go past here", and a soft boundary
>> says, "if there's a potential item within the boundary, never look
>> outside the boundary" (and this never gets re-evaluated, so if the
>> potential item disappears, you're stuck).
> 
> Actually, that soft boundary description isn't _quite_ right.  The
> effective "boundary" can shrink once a potential item is found.
> What's actually happening is the selection depth is changing.
> 
> So let's say there's an eligible item checked out at the hold's pickup
> lib, and the software boundary is set to System (assuming a stock
> Consortium -> System -> Branch hierarchy).  Since the potential item
> is at depth greater than or equal to the setting, the selection depth
> of the hold will be set to match the item, at Branch, in hopes of
> eventually getting that checked out item.  It'll never look past the
> pick up library at that point.
> 
> I don't really like soft boundaries. :-)
> 
> -- 
> Jason Etheridge
>  | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
>  | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
>  | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
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>  | Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org &
> http://evergreen-ils.org