2022-11-28 Resource Access Meeting Notes

Time	Item	Who	Description	Goals/Info/notes
5min	Administrivia		Calendar entries will be extended in to 2023 The CDL subgroup has a new meeting slot: Tuesdays 12-1 pm EST Reports by all subgroups will be given as they see fit	Notetaker: Laurence Mini
30 Min	Loan-related notes/comments	Cornelia Awenius

Meeting Notes

Cornelia introduced Kathrin Lorenz and Tamara Kreß, who presented the concept of having a way in FOLIO to add a note in the loan record for any transaction. Currently FOLIO only allows adding a note to the loan record when you override a block. The German library consortium Kathrin and Tamara represent would find the ability to add a note to any loan useful when lending items to other libraries. The note could hold the transaction number of the interlibrary loan. Having the transaction number in the loan record would make it much easier when, e.g., there is a question "We were expecting to receive this item, can you find out why we haven't received it yet?" Also, the receiving libraries need to have the transaction numbers. Having the loan comment be a token that could be included in the automatic emails sent out would solve this. Thomas advocated, to general agreement, that there should be a "staff only" option for the loan note. Two ways in the UI of adding a note would be to have an "Add comment" button, or to have "Add comment" as an action in the ellipsis menu.

Currently there is no integration between FOLIO and the desktop client used by the German library consortium for receiving ILL requests. Erin recommended that having an integration would be the best solution, and perhaps working on developing an integration in time for 2025 would be better? David said that at Chicago, they have built an integration with Illiad, so FOLIO does not need to store information about the loan.

The SIG members agreed that having a way to add a note to any loan could have various uses beyond interlibrary loan, and it is a "nice to have" feature. For U.S. libraries it is not a high priority.

David said that having a workflow engine in FOLIO would be very helpful for solving issues such as this, and it might be better to work on having a workflow engine rather than coming up with separate solutions to many different problems.

The SIG members have no objections to the feature, and would welcome having it if the German libraries developed it. Jana suggested that this feature is one that could be worked on during the "P.O. meetings" of the SIG. The German libraries will have discussions, and present again to the RA SIG when ready.