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

[Mike Rylander]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 10:03 AM, Bas Otting <b.otting at ppl.nl> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> At the Peace Palace Library we have Closed Stacks for all our works which
> are either in-house reference material or can be borrowed.
>
> Therefore: patrons or staff place a Hold, we need the Pull List for Holds
> Requests mechanism for accessing our Closed Stacks and we need a Circulation
> Policy rule that tells Evergreen that some works on the Holds Shelf can
> actually be borrowed and others can not and are Reading Rooms only.
>

The holds mechanism in Evergreen is designed specifically to
facilitate circulation transactions, so the workflow you want isn't
possible directly using holds, but there is another option (more on
that further down).

> Here is the issue: we can't figure out how to achieve this scenario (out of
> the box Evergreen 1.6.0.1): we did not tinker yet with Circulation Policies
> or Circ Modifiers but forced  behaviour in the copy editor:
>
> http://screencast.com/t/YzY1Yzk3Y2E
>
> A copy item that has Circulate "No"  (for in-house only)  is Holdable but
> does *not* appear on the Pull List. Dead end.
>

RIght, because holds in Evergreen that can't lead to a circulation (no
copy is allowed to circulate) don't make sense to the system.

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

That, as Jason mentioned, is just a flag that is available for use in
policy, such as "these don't circulate".

> Anybody an idea how to tackle this ?
>

George Tuttle mentioned item alert messages, and that is one way --
probably the best way in 1.6.0.x.

He also alluded to reserve items.  Evergreen doesn't currently have
academic reserves natively, but 1.6.1 will introduce Booking
Reservations, and this may be a good alternative for you.  Booking
Reservations differs from holds in that 1) the item does not have to
be cataloged (though your closed-stacks items are), 2) the item does
not have to be holdable and 3) it is pre-scheduled for a specific
checkout (or, hand-out, in your case) and return time.  That last part
is the biggest functional difference -- the patron has to request a
time slot, instead of simply waiting for the item to show up.  This
may actually be an advantage, though.  If, for instance, you have
limited reading room space, you would be able to schedule Booking
Reservations so that you don't run out of room at any given time.

But, of course, that will require 1.6.1, which is not released yet but
is getting close.

-- 
Mike Rylander
 | VP, Research and Design
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com