We at the Libraries of Malmö would like to suggest that Innovative and Lyngsoe develop an interaction between Sierra and IMMS to help clear hold shelves.

The issue: Currently, we have hold shelves at our libraries that are numbered between, for example 100 and 120. Each day we clear the holds that have expired the previous day. When we first implemented IMMS, we noted the shelf to clear down on a paper almanac and then wrote them off a week later.

However, we have since then coded a very simple application to keep track of this for us. The application takes the holds that have expired the previous seven days (this is due to varying opening hours at our libraries), grabs the related barcodes from Sierra, and sends them to IMMS to retrieve the hold shelf. It then reports to the user, for example, “clear the shelves 101 and 103”.

The application can also report the shelves used on a specific date, to help staff keep track of which shelf to use for new holds.

Due to its simplicity, the app is prone to human error and not entirely reliable. For example, clearing the holds in Sierra will make it impossible to retrieve the shelves from IMMS, because the application uses the status ! in the item, which is cleared when the clear expired holds and hold shelves function is used. We feel that a better solution would be for Innovative and Lyngsoe to develop this functionality within the Sierra Library Management System.