[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Deleting items that are lost or long overdue

[Laurie Love]

I'm so glad this problem is being looked at.  It's a huge problem and I've been struggling with it since we went to Evergreen three years ago.

Laurie Love
Circulation Mgr
Wilkes County Public Library

-----Original Message-----
From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Michele Morgan
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2014 9:42 AM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Deleting items that are lost or long overdue

We are looking for the best way to handle items that are severely overdue. These are items that are overdue enough to make it unlikely they will be returned, but not overdue enough that we want to write them off and remove them from the records of the patrons that checked them out.

Ideally, here's how we would like these overdue items to behave:

The items should NOT appear in patron or staff catalog searches.
The item information should be visible on the patron record.
Staff should have some way to search for the item in the client.
It should be possible to check the item in should the barcode be scanned at Checkin.

We have looked at deleting these items, but then they can't be checked in normally and are no longer searchable by barcode in the staff client, so there is no way to find the patron record.

We have looked at unsetting the opac visible flag, but these are still visible in staff searches.

We have also looked at marking the items Lost and charging the patron the cost of the item, then deleting them. But again, they can't be checked in normally and are not searchable by staff.

We have encountered the problem where a long overdue item had been deleted, then was returned and reentered into the system with the same barcode. This resulted in an available item and a long overdue checked out item visible on the patron's record with the same barcode, which is very confusing for patrons and staff.

How do others handle these types of items?

--
Michele Morgan, Technical Assistant
North of Boston Library Exchange, Danvers Massachusetts mmorgan at noblenet.org