[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Recalls (was Re: Circulation and cataloguing questions)

[Dan Scott]

On Fri, Nov 05, 2010 at 08:30:41AM -0400, Duimovich, George wrote:
> Thanks for raising this question - I've also been asked to look into this as a number of our branches have long term loan policies for staff clients. As some of the items are on really long term loan (multiple renewals), they haven't been showing up in the pull list because the items haven't been checked in. It would be nice if the pull list had an optional feature (say, something like "include holds for potential recalls") so that you could see all holds and then optionally target some still on loan for recall. This probably won't be useful for those libraries with strict circulation rules, but for those like ours where we have lots of items on extended loans, it would be good to have. So "potential recalls" might be those items on loan that have been renewed more than so many times, or are on some kind of extended loan.

On the subject of recalls...

I just spent two days with Art Rhyno, Robin Isard, and Rick Scott
working on automated recalls for scenarios like this, based on the
requirements raised and agreed upon by the circulation staff at the
University of Windsor, Algoma University, and Laurentian University.

I committed the results of our efforts today into Evergreen trunk as
http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/changeset/18630 - in a nutshell, the
result is that if a library sets a few configuration settings, then the
act of placing a hold (by any patron) on a title that has copies out for
extended loan will pick one of those copies and automatically shorten
the loan period and notify the person who currently has that item that
they now have an earlier return date. It also sets the remaining renewals
to 0 and optionally applies a different set of fine rules.

If there are any items available for targeting, this code is not
invoked. If the pertinent settings are unset, this code will not be
invoked. But once the settings are in place, any user can invoke the
recall simply by placing a hold - assuming that the loan period for the
desired item is greater than the recall threshold interval.

This is only in trunk, not in 2.0, as there are undoubtedly still a few
bugs to work out, but the commit message provides more details on how
this operates:

Initial support for recall of items triggered by placing a hold In
academic libraries, it is common for groups like faculty and graduate
students to have extended loan periods (for example, 120 days), while
others have more common loan periods such as 3 weeks. In these
environments, it is desirable to have a hold placed on an item that has
been loaned out for an extended period to trigger a "recall": truncating
the loan period, setting available renewals to 0, optionally changing
the fines associated with overdues for the new due date, and notifying
the current patron of the recall. 

New actor.org_unit_setting entries and hold targeting logic enable
libraries to control whether a hold will trigger a recall of a
circulating item as follows: 

  * "Recalls: Circulation duration that triggers a recall" (recall
threshold) is specified as an interval (for example, "21 days"); any items with a 
loan duration of less that this interval will not be considered for a 
recall 

  * "Recalls: Truncated loan period" (return interval) is specified as an 
interval (for example, "7 days"), such that the user who currently 
has the item checked out will get the greater of either the recall 
threshold, or the return interval. 

  * "Recalls: An array of fine amount, fine interval, and maximum fine" 
is an optional setting that applied the new fine rules to the current 
circulation period. 

When a hold is placed and no available copies are found by the hold
targeter, the recall logic checks to see if the recall threshold and
return interval settings are set; if so, then the hold targeter checks
the currently checked-out copies to determine if any of the currently
circulating items at the designated pickup library have a loan duration
longer than the recall threshold. If so, then the eligible item with the
nearest due date will be recalled.