Allow holds on bibs when holdable items are on order
We have a non-holdable lucky day collection whose items are on the same bib as our regular, holdable copies of those titles. Sierra allows patrons to place holds on titles that are on order, but sometimes the non-holdable copies are the first to arrive -- at which point, Sierra sees that all items on the record are non-holdable, and stops allowing holds until the first holdable copies come in.
Innovative recommended splitting nonholdable items onto a separate bib record, which seems liable to clutter up the catalog; moreover, some of these items are likely to be moved into our regular holdable collection when the initial demand dies down.
We'd like there to be a way for Sierra to allow holds when there are outstanding orders attached to a bib record, especially when those orders are for holdable copies. Ideally, it would be great if the system could identify whether on-order items were holdable or not. Barring that, perhaps there could be a system option for libraries to choose whether to allow holds if open orders exist, even if all items are currently nonholdable.
Jennifer Moakler
shared this idea
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Kayla Payne
commented
Yes that would be great, especially since some of our vendors arrive earlier than others. We had an instance recently when, for example, the Brodart FASTIPS orders (bestseller/non-holdable) were received and processed before the regular Baker & Taylor items arrived. We typically make sure there are regular copies added before adding the bestseller copies (or that they are being added at the same time), but sometimes this gets missed and patrons are unable to place new holds on hot ticket items.
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Lloyd Chittenden
commented
We are a consortium with a very similar problem. Our members have different requesting policies on things, particularly DVDs. Some of them don't allow holds and others do. If one of the non-holdable libraries gets the first copy, then it will shut down requests on that title for the whole system until another library gets a copy, regardless of the fact that there are order records from libraries that do allow holds, and want people to be able to put on holds.
We have implemented a very clunky work around. This suggestion would be a huge improvement.
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Jeremy Goldstein
commented
We encounter this quite a bit in our system as well and it is a cause of problems for patrons and confusion for staff.