[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Can you answer these questions three?

Thu Feb 10 09:24:08 EST 2011

Hi Ben,

I was discussing this with a co-worker yesterday, and it's pretty much
the conclusion we came to, once we started going over the holds matrix
sheets.  A combination of patron type/circ modifier should solve this
problem, and because there are several different types of children's
materials, we can limit the no reserves policy to, say, the fiction
books while allowing parents to be able to hold the parenting books
(which are in the children's departments) and seasonal material.

Thanks for the illustration - it will help when it comes to describing
the solution to the children's Librarian.

Rebecca

Rebecca Larocque
Head of Information Services, North Bay Public Library
 271 Worthington St. East
North Bay, ON P1B 1H1
705-474-4830 FAX 705-495-4010
rebecca.larocque at cityofnorthbay.ca
<mailto:rebecca.larocque at cityofnorthbay.ca> 

"[N]othing is more fatal to the maidenly delicacy of speech than the run
of a good library." -Robertson Davies

-----Original Message-----
From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org
[mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of
Ben Shum
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2011 7:56 PM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Can you answer these questions three?

Hi Rebecca,

I'll make an attempt at trying to explain how the circ/hold behavior
might work.  You asked: "I guess what my question is whether or not it's
possible to limit holds by age while not limiting circulation (i.e.
adults can take out material with a collection code of JFIC, but they
can't put holds on it)"

In Evergreen, circ/hold behavior is defined using circulation modifiers
(circ mods, for short).  "Collection code" sounds like it would roughly
translate to an Evergreen copy location (which acts more like a label
defining its place in the library and doesn't fully control the behavior
of an item).  Each patron group would be a "permission group".  In more
recent versions of Evergreen, circ/hold behavior is setup using policy
editors (found in Admin --> Local Administration --> Circulation Policy
Editor  Hold Policies Editor) that relate to tables in your Evergreen
database.  If you were to create two different circ mods for your
collection, one for adult material and another for children, you can
define different policies per circ mod per permission group.

So for example, you had a circ mod of "abook" for adult material, vs.
"jbook" for children, you could write your circ policies this:

For the "adult" permission group, allow circulation of "abook" items.
For the "adult" permission group, allow circulation of "jbook" items.
For the "child" permission group, allow circulation of "jbook" items.
For the "child" permission group, do NOT allow circulation of "abook"
items.

Then for the holds, you could define that:

The "adult" permission group is allowed to place holds against items
with a circ mod of "abook".
The "adult" permission group is NOT allowed to place holds against items
with a circ mod of "jbook".
The "child" permission group is allowed to place holds against items
with a circ mod of "jbook".
The "child" permission group is NOT allowed to place holds against items
with a circ mod of "abook".

Using different circ mods, you can create many items for the same bib
record in this fashion, but use the circ/hold policies to define
different behavior for the items even though they may hang off the same
record.

I hope that helps a little, please feel free to ask more specifics about
this to the general list and we'll do our best to answer.

I'll leave your first two questions to those that may have more
experience in explaining those areas.

Cheers and happy migration!

-- Ben

On 02/07/2011 10:48 PM, Rebecca Larocque wrote: 
Good evening all!

My library is hoping to migrate to Evergreen sometime in June.  I've got
questions coming out of the ying-yang, but here are a couple to get
things started:

Once upon a time, there was some discussion about homebound service.
What happened to that?  Is there a way to capture circ history for
certain patrons?  Otherwise, what do libraries do for work-arounds?

In the 2.0 version of EG, there is an Acquisitions module (and the users
rejoiced!).  One of the features my Acq librarian is missing is the
ability to apply vendor discounts to a) individual items or b) whole
invoices. I've come up with a work-around which might work in the short
term, but we'd like something for the long term; if anyone is doing
development in this area (or is interested in it), we'd be happy to
partner with someone.

Finally (and this is a long one), I have a cataloguing question.
Patrons under the age of 12 are unable to take out material in the Adult
department but adults are able to take out material in the Children's
department.  This creates problems when there is a popular children's
book that both the under-12 set and adults are interested in reading.
If there are copies available in Children's department, under-12s and
adults can put reserves on the copies but the under-12s don't get
priority (even though it's material in their "department").  The
solution has been to have two separate bib records, one with copies in
the Adult department and one with copies in the Children's department;
adult holds go on the adult copies, under-12 holds go on the Children's
copies.  There must be a way to do this in EG with one bib - the idea
that I floated is we separate the departments into branches, with
under-12s being members of the Children's branch and only able to take
material out from that branch.  However, adults need to be able to take
out material from the Children's department/branch which means they
would be able to put holds on Children's material and then we're back to
the original problem of adults getting on the list for Children's
material before the under-12s.

(Clear as mud?  I've got a great interpretive dance I can do to
highlight the main points!)

I guess what my question is whether or not it's possible to limit holds
by age while not limiting circulation (i.e. adults can take out material
with a collection code of JFIC, but they can't put holds on it).

Cheers!
Rebecca

Rebecca Larocque
Head of Information Services
North Bay Public Library
271 Worthington St. E.
North Bay, ON    P1B 1H1
Phone: (705) 474-4830 x2821
Fax: (705) 495-4010

-- 
Benjamin Shum
Open Source Software Coordinator
Bibliomation, Inc.
32 Crest Road
Middlebury, CT 06762
203-577-4070, ext. 113
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