Andreas,
Our consortium simply does not show the patron where they are in the
queue. We find it to be misleading, due to the number of items available to be
placed on hold, local holds priority, cancellations, and high demand loan
periods that kick in. Plus there is the rare occasion a hold is shifted.
Showing that information is just inviting patrons to try and manage what the
system is doing. We do let them know how many requests are on the record, but
that is it. We never let them know where they are in the queue, even if they
ask. This has worked very well for us.
___________________________
Christopher Brannon
IT Coordinator
702 E Front Ave
Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814
(208)769-2315 Ext. 456
[email protected]
www.cdalibrary.org
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-----Original Message-----
Hi all!
We are at Stockholm University Library experiencing some difficulties with how
Koha is currently handling hold queues, and are considering development in this
area. Are there any other libraries who are experiencing similar issues (see
below), and would be interested in the development of separate hold queues? Or
have an opinion on whether this would be a good/bad idea?
In Koha today it is possible to limit the fulfilment of holds per branch (same
pick-up location as home/holding library) and item type. For us, it makes most
sense to view this as several hold queues for one bibliographic record. For
example: a person queuing for a book from the textbook collection (item type =
”TC”) isn’t actually queuing for books for the general collection (item type =
”GC”). But Koha handles this as one big queue. This isn’t a problem for the
holds per se, as Koha only fetches the book that has the right criteria to fill
the hold (i.e. the correct item type or home/holding library) but it has proven
to be an issue for our patrons.
As Koha displays it as one big queue, it might seem that the queue is much
bigger that it actually is. This has confused a number of patrons, and have
discouraged others from placing holds. Continuing our example: a book has three
patrons on hold for item type GC, when a new patron adds a hold for TC. This
makes this person number four in the queue in Koha today, making the patrons
believe that they will have to wait weeks or months for the book (in our
library TC is 7 days, GC 28 days) when in reality it is only one week.
For us, this would better be described as two queues:
One with 3 patrons on hold (General collection) One with 1 patron of hold
(Textbook collection)
The same is true for hold fulfilment that require pick-up location to be the
same as home/holding library (i.e. hold fulfilment per branch). Say a public
library also have a school library in it’s organization, that is a special case
where books from the other libraries should not be sent to the fulfil holds, or
vice versa. As in our example above it would be better to display queues
separately so 5 holds at the main library won’t discourage a student from
placing a hold on that same book at the school library.
So my question is basically, is there are other libraries out there who are
using any of these hold fulfilment features (or would like to), and would want
to see a new feature to separate/split hold queues? Or who could see the
benefit of such a feature.
Please note that separate hold queues would of course only come in effect if
any system preference that limits hold fulfilment is set to allow. Also, this
would not effect holds to pull.
I look forwards to hearing people’s opinion about this!
Best regards,
Andreas
________________________________
Andreas Hedström Mace
Librarian
Stockholm University Library
Stockholm University
106 91 Stockholm
Tel: +46 (0) 8 16 49 17
su.se/english/library<http://su.se/english/library>
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