[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Making loan rules clear to staff and patrons

[Ryan Eby]

For the public, you would probably have to do some template magic but for item-detail display in the staff client, we try to make our circ modifiers have human-readable names with that type of information. 

This is mostly for our "tools" and other weird items that have special rules. That said we've tried to simplify things now so there aren't as many exceptions. Since rules are assigned to items rather than the record you have to kind of go down a bit to see this information. 

So for Circulation Durations, we have names like: 

- 7_days_0_renew 
- 7_days_1_renew 
- 7_days_2_renew 

Similarly the Circulation Modifiers we try to do names like: 

- DVD 1-week 
- DVD 4-week (we have a 'binge' section where whole seasons are a single checkout) 
- Tools 1 week 1 renewal (most items are endless renews) 

I've attached an image of what that looks like on the item detail view. The Item Status lookup page properly displays both fields as well when scanning. 

The 'Holdings View' of a record, unfortunately, seems to do the circulation modifier number when adding the column instead of the human-readable name (on 3.3.5 at least). So it likely would be a good wishlist to have it display the name instead of the number. No existing bugs jumped out. 

Ryan Eby 


From: "Benjamin Kalish" <bkalish at forbeslibrary.org> 
To: "Evergreen Development Discussion List" <open-ils-dev at list.georgialibraries.org> 
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2020 10:28:58 AM 
Subject: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Making loan rules clear to staff and patrons 

When patrons view an item in the OPAC they have no way of knowing what the loan rules are (loan duration, number of renewals, etc.) And too often when staff view a record in the staff client they also cannot figure out what the rules are. 
I know that circulation rules can be complicated with many exceptions and conditions, but at least in some libraries they are often quite simple and it would be so, so helpful for staff and patrons to have access to this information. 

How realistic would it be to create a human readable description of the circulation rules on an item by item basis? I would love to see this available from the Record Summary/Item Detail View page, and as something available optionally via a setting as a mouseover or link from the holdings list in the OPAC. 

Also, for folks more familiar with Launchpad than me, is it appropriate to submit this as a wishlist item? Or is it important to have a more flesh out idea of how it would work first? 

Thanks! 

Benjamin Kalish 
Forbes Library / 413-587-1012 / [ mailto:bkalish at forbeslibrary.org | bkalish at forbeslibrary.org ] 

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