For the record, I have given this some thought (in how it could be
improved) and come up with a number of solutions. All of which I have
notes (some mental, some not) on implementation. I just haven't dug up
the tuits needed to do any of it yet.
The way I see it, there are two basic ways to flag something as "On
Display". One is a copy location, the other is a status. The copy
location has the effect of sticking with the item after circulations
occur and remaining visible to staff and patrons in the catalog during
those circulations. The status has the effect of being temporary, but
also (currently) requires code modifications to prevent errors at
checkin/checkout (or staff having override permissions).
For copy locations I can see some possible improvements:
1 - Add an "alert" flag to locations. Any item going to reshelving
with an "alerting" location gets a prompt similar to the "route to
cataloging" prompt, to ensure that staff know it is in a specially
handled location. I suspect this would be nearly trivial, actually.
2 - Add a "temporary" copy location in some fashion. I would go for a
secondary table saying "after this date, at checkin, switch this copy
to this location". The copy's location then gets the new location. If
you use "now" as the date it will switch back as soon as it is checked
in later, whether it be from a return or otherwise. Using a date in
the future, such as when the display is to be taken down, allows the
system to automatically return the copy to the original location when
done.
For copy statuses, on the other hand:
3 - Add a "allowed for direct checkout" flag. If set no override is
needed for a direct (non-renewal) checkout from this status.
4 - Add a "target status" for checkins. If set no override is needed
for checkins from the status *and* at checkin the status changes to
the specified one. For a display status you could set the checkin
status to "Reshelving" to allow a pass through checkin to auto-clear.
This would be useful for custom workflows as well, and that goal was
actually the origin of this idea.
5 - Add a "preferred status" for copies that is used instead of
"Available", perhaps with a date-mapped table. In this case I would
use a "until date X use status Y as preferred for this copy" model.
Perhaps a null date could be used as the "default" status for
something that should never fall into "Available"?
6 - If making heavy use of preferred statuses you may need to be able
to pull from them on the pull list, so a flag to say "this is a valid
pull list status" may be useful.
I see locations as being better for display purposes, in part because
there is already work completed for keeping track of the location an
item was in at checkout, so you can very easily get statistics on when
your display items are being checked out. Locations are also
Evergreen's collection codes, and thus are well suited for the task.
Thomas Berezansky
Merrimack Valley Library Consortium
Quoting Brian Herzog <[email protected]>:
I'm curious how other Evergreen libraries handle marking books that
are on display. For us, "Display" is a copy location that we
manually mark for books on display, and then manually switch back to
their real copy location when the books come off display.
The problem is that we miss a lot of "Display" books when they get
returned, and so they just go back on the normal shelves instead of
back on display. Pretty soon, the catalog no longer matches our
shelves, which is a problem. We've tried to clean things up a bit
using Copy Buckets, but there are always items that slip through the
cracks and produce inaccuracies.
Our previous ILS (SirsiDynix Horizon) had a Display item status,
instead of copy location. The benefit to that method was that, once
a book marked "Display" was returned, the system automatically
removed the "Display" designation so that it could be shelved and
the catalog would be accurate.
If you have any best practices or a solution to this, I would really
appreciate hearing them. Thanks.
Brian Herzog
Head of Reference
Chelmsford Public Library
Merrimack Valley Library Consortium (MVLC)
