[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] sub libraries

[Jason Etheridge]

> The collection codes are used to keep a collection that was brought in as a whole together under one name. Items are not always placed together. So it is important to link the code to an individual item. We want to know if the shelving location connects to a marc 21 field (852 c).

It could.  It's all malleable.

> We have another question concerning the library tree. In our case we have this situation: We are an institution incorporating 10 libraries. The libraries do not physically exist. The cataloger must be able to catalog the material of all these libraries using one workstation.

The libraries will physically exist at some point?

> Can we do:
>
> Branch 1: IISH
>        Sub-Library 1:IISG
>        Sub-Library 2:NEHA
>
> Or should we use:
>
> System 1:IISH
>        Branch 1:IISG
>        Branch 2:NEHA
>
> Or System and Sub libraries?
>
> We are not really sure what the System does.

The discussions here may help:
http://markmail.org/message/rsaeandoagpgw2gv
http://markmail.org/message/n2u5gmnph5o5r5qv

You need not use System at all; it's just part of the stock example
that Evergreen comes with.  You have an organization hierarchy.  At
each level/depth in the hierarchy (the org tree), you can have
different "types" of organizational units, and you can label these
types anything you want.  Some of these types can be "abstract", in
that they're not intended to hold volumes directly and are used more
as a grouping mechanism for libraries/units of other types that come
beneath them.

These abstractions can be political, geographical, functional, etc.

So to build an example, let's call the top of your org tree
Consortium.  That'll be the name of that org unit, and let's give it a
matching org unit "type" also called Consortium.  The type has a depth
of 0 (the top of the tree), and is set to not directly have users or
volumes.  We may give it an OPAC visible label of "Everywhere".

Now, let's add some politically separate entities that wish to be a
part of the Consortium.  These entities may or may not have multiple
physical locations, but we're going to represent their political
aspects first and deal with any physical locations as separate org
units.

So let's add an org unit type of Institute, with a depth of 1 (comes
directly beneath Consortium), and is set to not directly have users or
volumes.  Let's add these 4 org units to the org tree with a type of
Institute:

IISH, NEHA, Press Museum, ReclameArsenaal

Now, in a consortium like PINES, the majority of the tree is 3 levels
deep: CONSORTIUM, SYSTEM, BRANCH, with Branch representing the
physical buildings.  For political Systems with just one building,
they'll have one Branch.  They may duplicate their library shortname
and have things like IISH for the system, and IISH-IISH for the
branch.

-- 
Jason Etheridge
 | VP, Tactical Development
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com