Improvement of the Calculate queue button on request forms
In July 2020 a new button for calculating the patron’s place in queue when requesting a physical title was introduced. The function was a welcome attempt to make it clearer to the patron how long he/she might have to wait to get the book, but with the current design we find it more confusing than helpful. The function does not take into account if any items are available in the library or if all items are on loan to other patrons.
When a user places a request on a title that is available in the library the current message is “Place in queue is 0”. This is ambiguous and could make the patron uncertain if he/she will get the book at all. The actual meaning is “The book is available and there is no request before me”.
We suggest that there should be two different labels depending on the loan status: one label if any item for the title is available in the library, and one if all items are on loan to other patrons.
We also suggest that the label is not visible until the patron clicks on the button “Calculate queue”.
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Alison Davis commented
I'd like to request that this not be a button at all, but rather have the queue information displayed by default. Why should the patron have to click a button (which doesn't even display as a button, but rather just capitalized text) to show how many people are ahead of them on a request? Primo (not VE) has the ability to automatically show this information AFTER the request is submitted, but this message isn't available in VE. We consider this a great loss in functionality.