Since some institutions have buildings with perpetual restricted access, we have some AFN fulfillment network member libraries that are willing to send their materials to another AFN member library for pick-up, but, for all functional purposes, they are closed to the public. They don't want patrons from the other AFN institutions to visit their library in person, and thus, don't want patrons from another AFN institution to select their library as a pick-up location.

This need has been heightened during the pandemic, with more institutions closed to the public.

We know that turning off all circ desk hold shelves will fully remove an institution from the list of pick-up locations visible in Primo VE; however, if an institution is allowing local requesting for their own patrons (including curbside delivery or for USPS mail delivery), then they need to have the hold shelf enabled.

We need a setting that would allow Institution A to lend/renew/borrow/request/fulfill-requests for Institution B, without allowing Institution B's users to select Institution A as a pick-up location.

Also, if Institution A will lend material to a patron from Institution B, we also need a way to prevent a patron from selecting Institution C as a pick-up location, if Institution C is not open to the public.

The functionality would need to be consistent for the patron for both local and AFN requesting, because it is difficult to teach patrons contingencies.

User experience testing that we conducted showed that most users prefer to place resource sharing requests via the resource sharing request form in Primo. Users also expressed frustration with some aspects of the form including the format of the fields. They also expected that the Library could add notices relevant to the resource sharing service to this page.

The current options for configuring this form do not allow us to meet the expectations of our users. We would like to have more options for customising the page the form is on and the form itself. Specifically we would like :
1)The ability to customise the format and appearance of the page (e.g. the width of form fields, the positioning of the radial buttons)
2)The ability to add a notice or message to the form (this is crucial to communicate important information about the service to our users)
3)The ability to add custom fields to the form

A borrowing article request is stopped for local ownership when the library has an electronic database that may have coverage for the journal.

Currently, the borrowing locate local ownership check does not check the year, volume, or issue in the article request to determine if the library has access to this specific year in the database. The borrowing locate does not check for embargo status.

Because the citation year is not checked for local ownership, requests are stopped from being automatically sent to lending libraries that have the article. Library staff must spend time checking if their library has access to the specific year in their electronic databases.

In Alma Configuration> Fulfillment> General>Other Settings the rsuresolverlocate can be used to check a lending library’s electronic coverage.

An additional Customer Parameter should be added to allow a borrowing library to check their own library’s database coverage information. If a request is for an article that is not within the database coverage or is in an embargo the request should be sent to the lending library without staff mediation. Requests that are found in the library’s database should be kept in the Ready to be sent status for staff to review.

This was entered as NERS enhancement request 7052.

Thanks

The borrowing request statuses in Alma are configurable, so that you can change the text that appears for both library staff and the user (in My Library Account).

However, we would like the ability to have a separate field where the status can be configured for the user which affects the display in My Library Account only. This is because we would like to provide detail in these statuses for our staff, that our users do not need to see.

For example, for the borrowing request status 'Request sent to partner' you may want to retain this status for library staff to see in Alma, but for users you may wish simply for 'In process' to display in My Library Account.