No requesting when available items in institution
We would very much like there to be an option in Alma fulfillment units (On Shelf Request Policy): "No requesting when available items in institution".
The meaning of which would be that if there is at least one (requestable) item available at any holding, the user will not be able to make a title request. The system will consider all items in the institution, not just one holding at a time.
Currently we use the "No Requesting from available holding" option which means that when all (requestable) items on one holding are checked out, then the user can make a title request. There are however often items available in other holdings (often in other libraries) and the user will not understand that the request only will apply to the items on holdings where all items are checked out. The worst-case scenario would be when a user waits for weeks for a requested book he or she could have fetched from another library the very same day. Our libraries are not far from each other.
Another complication is when items are being recalled even though there are available items in other libraries. This is also hard to understand for our users.
A third complication is when an item, belonging to a holding not involved in the request, is checked in, the request will not apply to that item. We want a request to be valid for all requestable items.
We do not want to use “PickUp Anywhere Regardless of Availability” because that would mean too many book transports. We need to stop the users from requesting available material on open shelves.
Bodil Wik
shared this idea
-
Is the On Shelf Policy 'No requesting' not a good fit ? It is defined -
If a title has a physical holding at a physical location that is associated with a fulfillment unit for which On shelf request policy is set to No requesting, then any physical holding of that title, regardless of the On shelf request policy setting of the fulfillment unit at its location, is not requestable. This means that other holdings of the title that belong to any fulfillment unit cannot be requested (for instance, by patrons through Primo). To avoid this scenario, On shelf request policy should instead be set to No requesting from available holdings
(https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/030Fulfillment/080Configuring_Fulfillment/020Fulfillment_Infrastructure/Configuring_Physical_Fulfillment)
