[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] ***SPAM*** Question about putting books on display

[Thomas Berezansky]

For the record, I have given this some thought (in how it could be  
improved) and come up with a number of solutions. All of which I have  
notes (some mental, some not) on implementation. I just haven't dug up  
the tuits needed to do any of it yet.

The way I see it, there are two basic ways to flag something as "On  
Display". One is a copy location, the other is a status. The copy  
location has the effect of sticking with the item after circulations  
occur and remaining visible to staff and patrons in the catalog during  
those circulations. The status has the effect of being temporary, but  
also (currently) requires code modifications to prevent errors at  
checkin/checkout (or staff having override permissions).

For copy locations I can see some possible improvements:

1 - Add an "alert" flag to locations. Any item going to reshelving  
with an "alerting" location gets a prompt similar to the "route to  
cataloging" prompt, to ensure that staff know it is in a specially  
handled location. I suspect this would be nearly trivial, actually.

2 - Add a "temporary" copy location in some fashion. I would go for a  
secondary table saying "after this date, at checkin, switch this copy  
to this location". The copy's location then gets the new location. If  
you use "now" as the date it will switch back as soon as it is checked  
in later, whether it be from a return or otherwise. Using a date in  
the future, such as when the display is to be taken down, allows the  
system to automatically return the copy to the original location when  
done.

For copy statuses, on the other hand:

3 - Add a "allowed for direct checkout" flag. If set no override is  
needed for a direct (non-renewal) checkout from this status.

4 - Add a "target status" for checkins. If set no override is needed  
for checkins from the status *and* at checkin the status changes to  
the specified one. For a display status you could set the checkin  
status to "Reshelving" to allow a pass through checkin to auto-clear.  
This would be useful for custom workflows as well, and that goal was  
actually the origin of this idea.

5 - Add a "preferred status" for copies that is used instead of  
"Available", perhaps with a date-mapped table. In this case I would  
use a "until date X use status Y as preferred for this copy" model.  
Perhaps a null date could be used as the "default" status for  
something that should never fall into "Available"?

6 - If making heavy use of preferred statuses you may need to be able  
to pull from them on the pull list, so a flag to say "this is a valid  
pull list status" may be useful.


I see locations as being better for display purposes, in part because  
there is already work completed for keeping track of the location an  
item was in at checkout, so you can very easily get statistics on when  
your display items are being checked out. Locations are also  
Evergreen's collection codes, and thus are well suited for the task.

Thomas Berezansky
Merrimack Valley Library Consortium


Quoting Brian Herzog <bherzog at mvlc.org>:

> I'm curious how other Evergreen libraries handle marking books that  
> are on display.  For us, "Display" is a copy location that we  
> manually mark for books on display, and then manually switch back to  
> their real copy location when the books come off display.
>
> The problem is that we miss a lot of "Display" books when they get  
> returned, and so they just go back on the normal shelves instead of  
> back on display.  Pretty soon, the catalog no longer matches our  
> shelves, which is a problem.  We've tried to clean things up a bit  
> using Copy Buckets, but there are always items that slip through the  
> cracks and produce inaccuracies.
>
> Our previous ILS (SirsiDynix Horizon) had a Display item status,  
> instead of copy location.  The benefit to that method was that, once  
> a book marked "Display" was returned, the system automatically  
> removed the "Display" designation so that it could be shelved and  
> the catalog would be accurate.
>
> If you have any best practices or a solution to this, I would really  
> appreciate hearing them.  Thanks.
>
> Brian Herzog
> Head of Reference
> Chelmsford Public Library
> Merrimack Valley Library Consortium (MVLC)
>