[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Re: visibility

[Mike Rylander]

Unfortunately, this thread seems to have become broken during response ...

On 5/7/07, Jonathan Rochkind <jonathan at dnil.net> wrote:
>
> > Another option, assuming items exist, is simply to create a "staff
> > only" location (either shelving or organizational "sub-library") and
> > mark that as invisible to the public OPAC.  This is probably more
> > flexible overall.
>
> This may not be viable for some organizations. Sometimes one doesn't like
> to mess with the location, because if you are temporarily making the item
> 'invisible', you will need to remember what it's 'real' location is, to
> set it back to that when it should be visible again. Alternately, the part
> of the workflow where 'location' is assigned may come _before_ the part of
> the workflow where the record is actually finished enough to show to the
> user.
>
> I suspect that in many environments, an independent "publically visible"
> flag will really be required. I think in my own it would be.

Exactly that flag exists on the item itself, in addition to the org
unit and the shelving location.  This was just one suggestion, and
without knowing the full workflow could very well be sub-optimal.
However, based on the OP's examples:

> We have staff-only records that do not display in the opac, for a number
> of reasons.  One is that our acquisitions staff like to be able to put
> in records of out-of-print titles our researchers have requested and
> that we've been unable to acquire yet or where our copies have gone
> missing or are lost or damaged.  We don't put them in as "on order"
> because we've not yet found a vendor who can provide the title.  Still,
> we want a record in the staff pac to show that we are actively
> searching.  Some book distributors keep our requests on file and,
> sometimes months to years after we've let them know we're looking, come
> up with a copy for us.  There are enough out-of-print classic titles in
> photovoltaics, physics, chemistry, etc. to warrant our attention to this
> process for our researchers.

I don't think that anything complicated is required.
Lost/Missing/Damaged items won't (by default) show up in the public
OPAC, and records with no copies ("records of out-of-print titles our
researchers have requested and that we've been unable to acquire yet")
won't show up either -- unless the record is marked as transcendent,
but that's a story for another day -- and even the, a shelving
location might make sense in this case.

For more options, buckets (user defined containers for arbitrary
objects such as items, records, and users), as Jason suggested, could
be a solution to this, as could automatically expiring
"transparencies".  These will act as temporary overlays for any set of
item level attributes (including shelving location, callnum/volume
(useful for changing the effective owing library), and circulating
library links) and roll back automatically at the appointed time.  The
underlying infrastructure exists for these, but without a direct
(strong) need they have yet to be fleshed out.

As with all of the system, flexibility is paramount in the design.
This often means that the user is tasked with deciding on the best fit
for their situation, but it also means that the best fit may already
exist ... and if it doesn't, it can certainly be added.

Thanks for the discussion, folks!

-- 
Mike Rylander