[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Hold targeting behavior - Always Try a new copy

[Josh Stompro]

Hello all, I was recently working on a reported problem with the hold targeting.  Our largest branch didn't run their evening pull list because of low staffing one day, and the next morning between the time when they ran their hold list and tried to capture the item, 20 copies has been re-targeted to other branches.  Since we are currently using hold stalling, none of the copies that they pulled would capture.

This caused me to figure out that the hold targeter always excludes the current copy when re-targeting if other copies exist.  I wasn't aware of this fact, and I don't remember seeing it mentioned in any of the docs or presentations on holds design.

This is not optimal in our situation because our targeting priority is very specific.  All our branches are ranked according to number of open hours, staffing and delivery proximity.  We have a wide variety of locations, those that are open 6 days a week to those that are open 1 day a week.  We also share materials between two regional system, so we always want to get the copies local to the system if possible.  So it doesn't work very well to have holds bouncing back and forth between the two lowest proximity locations, since the optimal one is always targeted first.  The hold may bounce between a location that is open 80 hours a week, that is only 24 hours delivery time away, to a location that is open 8 hours a week that may take 10 days for delivery.  It would be somewhat based on luck if the customer got their hold filled in 1 day vs 10 days in this admittedly worse case scenario.

The options that I think we have are.

1.       Design change so that the hold targeter optionally doesn't exclude the current copy.

2.       Change the re-targeting interval to something longer, 72 hours, to give the first location 3 days to pull the item.  I think this may have other negative impacts though.

3.       Stop using hold stalling, this would help in the situation where the holds get retargeted after the pull list is run.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?  Would anyone else be interested in having the targeter not exclude the currently targeted copy?

Thanks
Josh

Lake Agassiz Regional Library - Moorhead MN larl.org
Josh Stompro     | Office 218.233.3757 EXT-139
LARL IT Director | Cell 218.790.2110

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