Reading Room Workflow - Leipzig University Library

Reading Room Workflow Leipzig University Library

Notes:

Our current LMS Libero enables loans to the reading room, including a check out to the user and the display of the loan in the user account. It stores stack requests apart from hold/recall requests. My colleague Björn has described the process in the original ticket (UXPROD-1835).

I can present the Libero solution if you think that helpful.

We actually do not use the full functionality of our LMS because a large part of our holdings, especially journal volumes that can only be used in the library/reading room, are not catalogued and do not have item barcodes. We are therefore unable to handle them via our LMS. As this situation will not change in the long term, we only need basic functionality.

Our workflow (for items that have an individual barcode and can be handled via our LMS) is as follows:

Step 1.

The patron requests the items from the closed stacks (page), the stack request is written to a table, status "in process". Items can only be ordered to specified pick-up locations/service points.

Two different pick slips are created and printed out, which are used for staff to collect the items and then placed in the books as pick-up slips. Only the patron barcode is printed on the slip for borrowable items that are made available on self-service shelves (for GDPR reasons); for items that are made available at the reading room desk, the surname and first name are printed on the slip.

Step 2.

The items are retrieved from the stacks and in the LMS the pickup location/ service point (for reading room items that’s the assigned reading room desk) is assigned via batch processing as well as the new status “available for pick up”. The items become “on hold”. As long as the items are available for pick up they are “on hold”.  Until that point that applies for all stack requests (borrowable and reading room items – only the pick up locations/service points differ)

In a second step, the items which can only be used in the reading room are moved to a separate reading room table.

This table gives us an overview of which items are located at which reading room desk at the moment.

Step 3.

At this point, our manual workaround kicks in. Because we do not want to have two different workflows when it comes to interaction with the patron, that we we would have if we would handle the check-out via our LMS for items that have an individual barcode and a manual process for those that don´t. Therefore we handle the back and forth process manually.

When a patron comes to the desk, we hand them their items and pull out the corresponding paper slips, which are then stored under the patron´s name.

When the items are then returned to the reading room desk, we ask whether they are still needed /which ones are still needed, and we sort the slips of paper into these again and put them back on the shelf.

Step 4

The items that are no longer needed and that were handled via our LMS are checked in - a pop-up appears "Should the item remain reserved in the reading room?" with a Yes / No option (regardless of whether it was previously checked out or not). In our workflow we select "no" and the item goes back to its location in the stacks and becomes available again (and is of course deleted from the reading room table).

This last step is very important for us (so to say our requirement). We need a functionality that gives us the possibility to decide whether the item should remain in its reading room status or if it should become available again in order to get the item that is no longer needed directly back into the status “available”, even if the hold shelf expiration date has not expired yet and without the item having to be checked out beforehand.

Simple outline of the workflow