2025-11-17 Resource Access Meeting Notes

Date

Nov 17, 2025

Recordings

NOTE: RESOURCE ACCESS SIG USES EITHER ZOOM’S AI NOTES FUNCTIONALITY OR MICROSOFT COPILOT TO PROCESS THE TRANSCRIPT. If you would prefer that we do not use AI any session you attend, we are happy to! Please alert the convener at the start of the meeting.

Find all recordings here: https://recordings.openlibraryfoundation.org/folio/resource-access-sig/ (pw: folio-lsp)

Zoom

https://zoom.us/j/337279319 (pw: folio-lsp)

Attendees

@Kajsa Bäckius

@Anna Olofsson

@Niels Erik Nielsen

@Charlotte Whitt

@Andreas Mace

@Susan Kimball

@Cornelia Awenius

@Amelia Sutton

@Anja Kakau

@Anne Ekblad

@Brooks Travis

@Claire Hoag

@David Bottorff

@Jacob Dudley

@Erin Weller

@Kara Hart

Katharina Anding

@Katharina Kupfer

@Katie Rahman

@Kimie Kester

@kristin.olofsson

@Laurence Mini

@Magnus Andersson

@Marie Widigson

@Mark Canney

@Martina Tumulla

@Nina Morgenstern

@Olga Kalachinskaya

@Petra Schneider

@Scott Peterson

@Steve Strohl

@Sylvia Hamann

@Thomas Trutt

@Vanessa French

@Karen White

Discussion Items:

Meeting Notes

Team Klemming is a joint development team between Index Data and National Library of Sweden. The originally named “Reading Room Circulation” became “For use at Location” to avoid confusion with Reading Room Access App. Foundation of work came out of small subgroup of RA focused on Reading Room Circulation requirements. Work is being developed for Sunflower and Trillium. See the Use cases section under the RA-Reading Room Circulation Functionality area of the RA SIG web site. Team Klemming is a joint development team between Index Data and National Library of Sweden.

NLS testers tested the 91 Jira tickets prior to the code being merged, in both FOLIO and Eureka Snapshot. There will also be testing in Trillium bugfest. See the Jira dashboard (linked from the slideshow) to see all the details of the Jira features.

NLS requirements included:

• Being able to see if a checked out item is in use in the reading room or on the hold shelf

• Being able to see which service point the item is held or in use at

• Being able to see the hold shelf expiration date for held checked out items

• The capability to create Reports for use at location items, for example Hold shelf expiration report for held items, overdue and recalled items, items in use at the end of the day.

• Loan policy settings for the whole loan period, guaranteed and maximum loan periods, recalls etc.

• The hold shelf expiration period for held items is reset after every use.

The initially proposed, but then rejected, solution involved re-utilizing existing loan and request components in FOLIO. Rather than closing the Request upon return of loan at location, a request would remain “persistent” , so the patron would stay first in the request queue and the request would stay open for future use. This solution was not used, because it would force the requests object to behave in a way it was not intended for—keep track of the due date, etc., essentially behave like a loan. This would cause all kinds of coding issues, requiring lots of exceptions and branching in the code.

Instead, the solution that was adopted keeps requests as requests and loans as loans. This approach meant changing Check in and Check out, and enabling loans for the For use at location items to be able to remain open when they were checked in. This was achieved by adding a “For use at location” flag to the Loan policy, which can track whether the item is in use or not in use. An open loan can either be “in use” or “held”.

Two new APIs were created that could flip an open loan between “in use” and “held”. The Check in and Check out apps were modified, so that, e.g., a patron can check an item in, but have the loan stay open and held, or the patron can say they don’t need the item any more and have the loan be closed on check in.

In Settings > Tenants > Service Points > Edit, you can choose the default action for the For use at location items from among Keep on hold shelf; Close loan and return item; and Ask for action. The other setting you need for the For use at locations items is in Settings > Circulation > Loan policies, where you can check the “For use at location” checkbox. Items where the circulation rule applied includes a Loan policy with the For use at location checkbox checked will become For use at location items.

Loan type is now displayed in the New request page, to make it easier for library staff to see if an item has a “For use at location” named Loan type. The new request page will also display a “For use at location” label when a For use at location Loan policy applies. Requested “For use at location” items are retrieved from the stacks and placed on the hold shelf in the same way as usual. When a patron’s barcode is entered in the Check out app, the usual Items awaiting pickup notification will display (if a patron has both items awaiting pickup, and held open loan items, these will display on separate lines). When the barcode for an In use at location item is scanned in Check out, the item’s status will change to In use. The Circulation log will show Loan in the Object column and In use in the Circ action column.

Check in app has a Check-in action for use at location drop-down where you can choose among Keep on hold shelf; Close loan and return item; and Ask for action (the default will be the one that has been selected in Settings > Tenants > Service Points). If you have Ask for action selected, a popup with the choices Cancel; Close loan and return item; and Keep on hold shelf will display when the For use at location item is scanned in. If you have Keep on hold shelf as the selection in the Check-in action for use at location drop-down, then when the For use at location item is checked in, the Item status will remain Checked out, and “Keep on hold shelf” will display in the For use at location column. This action will be recorded in the Circulation log with “Held” as the value in the Circ action column. The check in of items where the Loan policy is not a For use at location Loan policy works the same as currently (the value in the Check-in action for use at location drop-down is irrelevant).

In the Users app, in the Loans accordion, you can see the Use at location items a patron has, and whether the item(s) are Held or In use. Under Users > Open loans, the Use at location column will display, e.g., Held in [Service point] until [Hold shelf expiration date]; or In use in [Service point]. Loan details will record the Action, e.g. Held for use at location.

Simple HTML and in-line CSS coding can now be used for staff slips. There is a wiki page describing how the HTML can work with example slips. New tokens were also added to support the For use at location functionality.

You can see Testrail tickets in FOLIO Bugfest in Testrail. Most tickets are under the Circulation section, with some in other areas, such as Staff slips. Testing can be done in FOLIO Snapshot or EUREKA Snapshot (the environment variable ENABLE_FOR_USE_AT_LOCATION has been set to True). See the last few slides in the slideshow for setting up the test environments.

Note that no notices are sent to the patron when an item goes from Held to In use, since the loan status of the item does not change. Fees/fines are calculated when the item is returned and the loan is closed. No notice is sent if a patron fails to check in a for-use-at-location item when they leave the reading room, as the item is not overdue. That is a feature that may be added in a later version. In cases where the patron may have taken the item home by mistake, stolen the item, or the library failed to check it in, the practice at NLS is to check to see if they can find the item, and follows up with the patron as needed. The desirability was expressed for the capability to have a courtesy notice sent, warning a patron that they need to check out the Held item before the hold shelf expiration period expires.