2017-03-30 Resource Access Meeting Notes

Date

30 Mar 2017

Attendees

• Andrea Loigman

• Charlotte Whitt

• Deb Lamb
• Joanne Leary
• Mark Canney
• David Lasron
• William Weare

Goals

• Finalize hold shelf issues.

Discussion items

Notes: 

Resource Access SIG meeting – 3/30/17

Attending: Andrea Loigman, Joanne Leary, Deb Lamb, Mark Canney, David Larson, Charlotte Whitt, William Weare

Administrative business:

• Filip was unable to attend today’s meeting due to other priority deadlines.
• Mark called for a volunteer to present a brief progress report of our group’s work (the issues currently being discussed and what issues have been resolved) at the upcoming Folio Community Forum on Weds. April 26, 11:00am EST. Andrea might be able to do this but would have to reschedule a prior meeting. Any takers? (Crickets.)
• Deb will contact Holly about the continuing problem with Zoom meeting locations (URLs)
• The Monday Apr. 3 meeting is cancelled

We continued our discussion about Hold Shelf issues. See https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1usv_VRzNBRAu9jfW2Suz6jrhYXUsOTJIH1EPpnAq8eA/edit#gid=0

Hold Shelf Available Notice generation – When a requested book becomes available, it requires some processing time after discharge to actually place it on the hold shelf. Small libraries may be able to place the item on the hold shelf immediately, but larger libraries may have larger quantities and/or other procedures that make the processing time longer. Notifications should not be sent until the item is actually on the hold shelf, so how should all these variations be accommodated? The two options are:

1. 1. By a standard scheduled batch process, uniformly applied for all circ desks (“Voyager model” – one size fits all) - configurable at the institution level
   2. By a scheduled batch process customized by individual libraries to their own processing work flows

These choices differ only in terms of degree of customization allowed; we have to ask the developers in the Systems SIG about this. The arguments for and against each option are recorded on the Google Doc, but essentially it boils down to the simplicity that comes with standardization, versus better-fitting -- but potentially more difficult to implement and confusing -- custom tailoring. The group prefers the customization at the library-level option, pending input from systems group.

Reminder Notices for unclaimed materials on Hold – unanimous agreement that this is desirable; timing set at the institution level

Hold Shelf life – we agreed that for consistency, this needs to be configurable at the institution level (rather than the unit library level), but we should have the ability to set different hold shelf lives by loan type (for example: if a type of material circulates for 3 days, it would not make sense to have those items remain on hold for one week)

Hold Expiration and Clearing – in the case of unclaimed items on the Hold Shelf, two options for clearing the holds are:

• 1. “On Hold Shelf” status is deleted by the system automatically at the end of the hold period and is replaced by an available status. Staff have to run a “Hold Shelf Expired” report daily to know what items need to be physically removed from the hold shelf. The items are discharged, and if there is another requestor, the item goes back on hold for the new requestor. Otherwise, the items get reshelved or routed back to the owning library.
  2. “On Hold Shelf” status is changed by the system automatically to “On Hold Shelf (Expired)” until the item is physically removed from the Hold Shelf and discharged. This preserves the accuracy of the location information at all times. The staff need to run a Hold Shelf Expired report every day, the same as in option (1). The patron whose hold has expired will get a notice informing them of the expiration. If there are other requestors, the notifications would not be sent until the book has been discharged to complete the removal from hold. We agreed that this option is preferable.

Unfilled Holds – holds that expire without being filled: this will be a separate discussion topic.

 - Joanne Leary