This would save SO much staff time, Lynn's description sounds magical. It would mean we don't have to keep separate files of requests or sort through forms outside the ILS to track down who wanted what. We also tend to get a lot of purchase requests that should have been ILLs, and vice versa, so having this sort of form built in where multiple staff could check it routinely would be amazing. We have also had MANY patrons over the years who want an automated response letting them know what happened to their request, and currently we don't have the bandwidth to respond to each and every one. We encourage frontline staff to tell them if we are able to get it we'll place it on hold for them; but this is obviously not ideal.

Hi Samantha: Ideally, we'd like it to work in a similar fashion to how Sierra did it or even how Horizon did it (we used to be on both at various points). Customers could submit purchase requests through a form that fed into a selection list on the acquisitions side. "Selectors" would determine whether the items would be purchased (our default - but this was toggleable), sent to ILL, or refused.

Selectors were a specific set of permissions and those permissions let you a) see the lists, b) move requests into POs with the appropriate information (vendor, branch, copies, material type, collection) or c) move them to ILL, or d) delete requests (each letter was a different permission). Once moved the appropriate staff in acquisitions or ILL were notified and carried the request forward.

As far as customers went, we were good with customers seeing an "In Processing" while the request was pending or out for ILL. We'd like customers to see how many requests for purchase they have left in the month (because we limit them and would prefer the system to control that - which both Sierra and Horizon let us do).

If we deny a request, we'd expect the customer to get some sort of notification and an alert in their account.

Thanks for considering!

Could those in favor of this idea please share some comments with how you would envision this working end to end? Should requests be added to something like a section list? Do patrons get to track the status of the request? Or do they submit the request and then see when the hold is created for them?

We'd also like: a) The ability to convert such requests to ILL if we decide not to purchase them; and b) The ability to apply blocks / limits to such requests as a separate category from holds.