[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Missing vs. Lost

[Bill Ott]

Chris Caughey wrote:
>
> I’m wondering two things:
>
> 1. How do other Evergreen users think about the categories of 
> “Missing” and “Lost”? At what point do you mark an item as either one?
>

We consider missing, something that appears to be Available, but can't 
actually be located.

Lost is an item that was checked out and never returned.

We use the overdue notice generator (see link), with an added call to 
open-ils.circ.circulation.set_lost. This automagically sets the item to 
lost when it's x days overdue, and adds a bill for the value of the item 
to the patron's record.

http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/browser/branches/rel_1_2_4/Evergreen/src/support-scripts/eg_gen_overdue.pl

> 2. Is the category of “Lost” only available from within an individual 
> patron’s account? Also, the only category that seems to have survived 
> our data migration was “available.” Anything that was marked “Missing” 
> or “Lost” now shows (after the data migration) that it has been 
> checked in and is available. We don’t seem be able to set back dates 
> (e.g., a book was checked out by Patron X back in November and still 
> hasn’t been returned; or, our previous ils shows that Item Y was 
> marked “Lost” on 5/10/08). Any advice?
>

The call I noted above takes an auth token, and the item barcode. It 
would be relatively simple to process through a list of items and set 
them to Lost.


> Thanks,
>
> Chris Caughey, M.Div.
>
> /Library Assistant/
>
> /Adjunct Professor/
>
> WILLIAM JESSUP UNIVERSITY
>
> 333 Sunset Blvd.
>
> Rocklin, CA 95765
>
> *Tel. *916-577-2293
>
> *Fax* 916-577-2290
>
> ccaughey at jessup.edu <mailto:ccaughey at jessup.edu>
>
> www.jessup.edu <http://www.jessup.edu/>
>