[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Question about Setting up OU Types

[Catherine Buck Morgan]

Thank you! Very helpful. You completely answered my question. 

--Catherine.

 

From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
[mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of
Jason Etheridge
Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 1:34 AM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Question about Setting up OU Types

 

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Catherine Buck Morgan
<Cmorgan at statelibrary.sc.gov> wrote:
<snip>
> Or considering future expansion, would it be better to have the single
> library listed at both the system level and the branch level, with the
> holdings and users at the branch level?
<snip>
> Actually, I'm not trying to set up the types; I'm trying to set up the
OUs
> themselves.

Hi Catherine,

You should definitely consider doing both, and I'd vote for considering
future expansion now, as it may save you from drastic re-organization of
your org tree later.

So one way to think of this from top to bottom (errr, or left to right
in this case):

Consortium ->  Some level or levels of Abstraction -> Physical Locations
-> Possible sub-locations, sections, departments, etc.

	Depth 0    ->  Depth 1                             -> Depth 2
-> Depth 3


If you define an org unit at any layer here, the org unit type
associated with that org unit must have an appropriate depth for the
org's position in the tree.  So depending on how you do this, you'll
likely need to tweak the org unit types.

The example hierarchy in a stock install looks like:

Consortium -> System -> Branch -> Sub-library / Bookmobile


System in this case is an abstraction, and not a real physical library,
so the org unit type for that depth has settings that say Can't Have
Volumes and Can't Have Users.  You only want those for locations that
are more "real".

System is also more of a political abstraction, but you can organize
your libraries on other criteria, for example, by geography or
functional type.  Perhaps something like this:

Consortium -> Geographical Region -> Political System -> Physical
Building


Being from South Carolina myself, I'll take the liberty of constructing
a more concrete fictional example and hopefully not offend anyone (I
personally don't know which libraries are in your consortium).
I'm going to resort to HTML email here to help with the formatting:

	 

	Consortium
-------------------------------------------+----------------------------
-----------------------------+

	  \                                                    \
\

	   Lowcountry                                           Midlands
Piedmont

	    \                                                    \
\                                    

	     Charleston Public County Library ---------+
Orangeburg County Library ----+---------------+           Spartanburg
County Public Libraries

	      \              \                          \          \
\             \               \           \                  \
\

	       Main Library   Cooper River Memorial      etc.
Orangeburg      Holly Hill    Bookmobile      etc.        Headquarters
Chesnee    etc.


If you were to organize your consortium like this, then you would want 4
org unit types to represent a 4-tier hierarchy, something like:
Consortium, Region, System, Branch

One feature that exists but needs some polish involves a concept called
Org Lassos.  For example, in the hierarchy above, we could arbitrarily
group (or lasso) together Cooper, Orangeburg, and Chesnee and give them
a shared label like "Good Libraries", and then staff and patrons would
be able to do a search against "Good Libraries" and automatically search
across just those libraries.

Does this help give you any ideas?

-- 
Jason Etheridge
| VP, Community Support and Advocacy
| Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
| phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
| email:  jason at esilibrary.com
| web:  http://www.esilibrary.com

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