There is a desire for copies to fill local holds before going into
transit, even when there are already copies in transit. This would
result in copies showing up to fill holds that are already filled, but
would also allow for holds to go to the hold shelf faster when a copy
is already right there.
I have worked out the following thoughts for this, but would like more
opinions before work is started on it.
The general idea would be to add a new Org Unit setting to control the
behavior. When enabled copies returned to the library would:
1 - Look for non-captured holds at the current location. If any exist,
capture for them and move on to the hold shelf.
2 - Look for captured but in transit holds at the current location. If
any exist, "hijack" that hold and move on to the hold shelf. The
original copy will remain in transit.
3 - Resume all other holds/transit/reshelving/etc code normally.
This may require teaching the hold targeter to update the list of
copies *without* wiping the captured state of in-transit holds,
perhaps with a special parameter passed in. That parameter may be best
supplied when doing the "Retarget Local Holds" checkin modifier work,
rather than as part of normal hold targeting. Especially if the first
additional limitation below is included.
I am thinking that there may need to be additional limitations, for
sanity purposes, but am not sure about them:
1 - Limit to copies owned by the library that the checkin is happening at.
This would basically prioritize local copies as filling local holds,
but would not prevent someone else's copy from transiting. That
transit may even be back to their own library.
2 - Not run the code if capturing local holds as transits.
Because otherwise you may just be displacing things that are
intentionally in a limbo-transit state.
3 - Require a checkin modifier be active, which may remove the need for YAOUS.
If replacing the YAOUS then this would allow for per-workstation
decisions. If alongside the YAOUS then the YAOUS being disabled could
be used to hide the checkin modifier outright. Either way SIP may need
to be taught how to (optionally) enable this modifier.
4 - In the event of a Force or Recall hold being in the stack, *never*
fill a different hold instead.
These are copy level "force cut in line because we have a really good
reason" holds in Master/2.2, and I don't think we should avoid
transiting to fill them.
Thomas Berezansky
Merrimack Valley Library Consortium
