[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Issue with Closed Stacks and reference booksfor Reading Room and not lending

[George Tuttle]

The item is circulating even though it is only circulating within the
building. Treating these closed stacks reference items like a reserve
collection would add a level of security and would improve the speed that
these items got returned to the shelves. The downside -- the patron would no
longer have the convenience of leaving reference items at the copier and on
a table. They would need to return them to the service desk. Of course, this
might require a policy change and might take time to implement.

OR

Make them circulating so they will be holdable but don’t check them out to
patron. Also attach an alert message: "Non-circulating/Reading Room Use
Only" in case a staff member does attempt to check it out to a patron. Would
that work?

What ILS did you use previously and how did it handle this situation?

George Tuttle
Piedmont Regional Library System

-----Original Message-----
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, April 02, 2010 1:57 PM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Issue with Closed Stacks and reference
booksfor Reading Room and not lending

> A copy item that has Circulate "No"  (for in-house only)  is Holdable but
> does *not* appear on the Pull List. Dead end.

This is because Evergreen assumes Circulate "No" implies Holdable "No".

> So: we tried Circulate "Yes" and then "Reference" is "Yes" - but to our
> surprise, such an item can be checked out. Oops.

I don't think Reference has any behavior by default, though I've seen
circ scripts (prior to the in-db circ that 1.6 uses) configured to
stop circulation based on it.  It looks like the in-db circ matrix is
able to look at the item level Reference flag, so you should be able
to create a rule to stop circulation based on this.

> Anybody an idea how to tackle this ?

Correct me if I'm understanding, but you have "closed stacks", which
means only staff has access to them, so patrons have to make "stack
requests" for staff to go fetch those items.  Do the patrons need to
know at the time of a stack request whether the item may be used
in-house only or may leave the building?  Why not let a checkout occur
on the patron's account to show that the item is in their possession,
but otherwise tell them when an item may not leave the building?

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Tactical Development
 | 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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