When receiving a multivolume set on a single Rapido request, each volume gets its own individual temporary barcode. However, when printing hold slips (“Resource Request Slip Letter”), each volume’s hold slip prints with the barcode of the first volume that’s scanned into the request. This is a problem because libraries place their barcodes in different places on the book, so inevitably our circulation student staff will use the barcode on the hold slip to check out the book that they just took off the hold shelf instead of hunting for the barcode on the book. Why wouldn’t they? The slip should match the book! If the barcode on the slip doesn’t match the book, only one volume gets checked out when really the entire set should have been checked out. If our ILL student workers also use the hold slip when putting the book on the hold shelf, the remaining volumes can’t even be checked out at the circulation desk because they’re still in transit, not on the hold shelf proper.

The temporary barcodes given to each individual barcode in Rapido already exist in Alma. We know this because if one searches Requests for the barcode in Alma, it is possible to print the correct barcode on the hold slip for each volume. This workaround takes additional staff time to search for each volume, and involves either changing one’s “automatically print slip” settings when processing multivolume sets or deleting hold slips with duplicate barcodes that one does not actually want to print. There is no reason why we should have to do this; the system should be able to just print the correct barcode on each hold slip to begin with.