Blocking Conditions for Item Barcodes
The ability to block item barcodes that begin with specific digits, such as 978, would be a tremendous benefit for libraries. During item record creation, staff may accidentally scan the ISBN or UPC printed on the item instead of the library-assigned barcode intended for circulation use.
Providing the ability to restrict or block specific barcode patterns would help prevent incorrect barcodes from being saved to item records. For example, preventing an item record from being saved when the barcode begins with 978, the standard prefix for traditional ISBNs, would significantly reduce these types of errors and improve data accuracy.
DENA A PORTER
shared this idea
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Phil Agnew
commented
I haven't found good documentation for this and I can't test it myself right now, but I think there MIGHT already be some config to support this. There are settings named "Barcodes: Item format definition" and "Barcodes: Patron format definition" that allow you to set prefixes and controlled lengths for your barcode formats. Now, I'm not sure if it's prescriptive or restrictive config, so it's possible it just defines formats for barcode generation and doesn't block barcodes that don't match the criteria, but it might be worth looking into.
There's also config named "Web app: Item barcode REGEX" and "Web app: Patron barcode REGEX" that might handle the same concept, only with the flexibility of Regular Expressions. You do need to know just a little bit of RegEx to make use of this, but I'd argue that basic RegEx is worthwhile skill for anyone working in libraries. As an example, I would configure ^0119[0-9]{9} for our own Item Barcodes, which translates to "Start of line, 0, 1, 1, 9, any value from 0 to 9 for 9 places" which totals to 13 characters. I think that's probably enough of an explanation for anyone to get started here... but again, I'm not entirely sure what the intent is for this config.
If all you're really trying to do is keep staff from accidentally scanning UPCs at checkout, then you have one other option that is honestly more reliable than configuring anything in the ILS. Your library barcodes are probably using either Codabar or Code39 symbologies (they're more or less the standard for libraries), so all you need to do is configure your barcode readers to not read the EAN/UPC symbology. This is much easier than you might think but will take a little bit of research for your specific barcode readers. You'll want to find the FULL manual for your barcode reader online (not that "Quick Start" guide they package with it) and search or navigate to the symbologies section of the document. There you should find configuration barcodes to enable or disable every symbology supported by your barcode reader. Find the barcode to disable EAN/UPC and print out the full page (trying to PRINT SCREEN just the barcode can mess with the scale and make it unreadable when printed, so save yourself the headache and just print the whole page) then scan that barcode with each of the barcode readers at your front desks where you don't want UPCs to be read. Note that one major advantage to doing things this way is that you can effectively control which workstations read UPCs and which ones don't. This is important because you probably don't want to disable UPC reading for your cataloging staff, who are likely searching for bibliographic records using UPCs. Again, it requires a little research, but once you find the configuration barcode you need, you can just pass/distribute it around to each of your workstations, provided they're using the same barcode readers... if not, you'll have a little more research to do for each manufacturer/model in use at your libraries.