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

[Morgan, Michele]

Benjamin,

I'd encourage opening a Launchpad bug also, as a place to explore how such
a feature could work.

Since the patron's profile is part of determining the circulation rules,
perhaps the loan information could display when a patron is logged into the
catalog, so the system knows who the patron is and can determine the
appropriate rules. I'm not sure how circ rule info could be displayed in
the general staff client catalog, though, perhaps it could display when
searching the catalog from the context of the patron's holds tab?

--
Michele M. Morgan, Technical Support Analyst
North of Boston Library Exchange, Danvers Massachusetts
mmorgan at noblenet.org



On Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 1:21 PM Ryan Eby <ebyr at aadl.org> wrote:

> 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 / bkalish at forbeslibrary.org
>
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