Re: [Koha-devel] reserves behaviour

[Rachel Hamilton-Williams]

> But now, i've some questions on reserves behaviour :
> Let me explain (& ask katipo & others some questions) :

> user A places a reserve on a book.
> * possibility 1 => the book is being issued to user B.
> When returned, the librarian is warned "Reserve found, change status to 
> waiting and print slip + print button". This message is buggy : there is 
> no slip printing at all, the button should be "YES" instead of "Print".

SO user B had the book and is bringing it back? this is a message you 
should get on *Return* of the book.

The message will come from us (Katipo/hlt), we DO print slips I think. 
So you get the book, and you print a slip saying who's reserved it, and 
then they put it on a special  shelf to wait for the person to pick it up.

And then let the person know it's come in. If you're actually doing 
reserves, slips of paper in the book are pretty handy - but anyway 
that's an individual library thing I guess.


If that's the message the librariane gets when B is getting *issued* the 
book - causing A to miss out on it, then you need the options to

- Continue issue to B, no change to A's reserve - DEFAULT

- Continue issue to B, cancel A's reserve - UNUSUAL I think as there is 
no reason to assume that just because B has the item, A doesn't want it 
anymore.

- Stop the issue to B, Change status of Item to Waiting, (print or not 
the slip), let A know the book is waiting for them -



> I've changed this for 2.2.2
> There should also be an option to say "NO, cancel reserve". We should 
> also see the reserve date.

As in when the reserve was placed? Sounds fair, so you can judge wether 
it seems current?

You can however have mulitple reserves on an item (a popular new fiction 
book for example), and so you'd need to be careful that you think 
through what to do then. If there are multiple reserves you'll have to 
cancel each one individually, you really don't want a librarian  to 
cancel all reserves accidentally.

At a library like Horowhenua people pay for reserves, so you need to be 
pretty careful here.


> We could also have a system preference to change status without querying 
> the librarian.

I personally think that's a bad idea - the librarian I think has to 
actually do something with the book - put it on a special shelf, or in a 
box or whatever, so interupting the flow of returns seems pretty 
important else it'll just go back on the shelf won't it?


When it's issued again, and it's to person C - and person A is still 
waiting for it, I don't think you want to encourage the library staff to 
be cancelling people's reserves.   And that this happens is why you need 
Koha to make a big song and dance when items are returned, so they don't 
go back on the shelf to get into this mess.

> * possibility 2 => the book is NOT being issued for instance.
> In this case, the reserve will stay pending until :
>
> - user A issues it. In this case, the reserve is cancelled & the book is 
> issued.
>
> - user B tries to issue it. In this case, the librarian is warned "book 
> reserved by A, do you want to cancel issue to B or not, do you want to 
> cancel reserve from A or not ?". works fine now that i've fixed bug 965

Yep - I would think in most cases the person with the book in their hand 
will get priority - but you'll want to confirm the issue to B, and 
probably the librarian would tell them that they will need to bring it 
back in good time because others want it, and then decide wether the 
reserve is still "good".


> - nobody tries to issue the book. In this case, the book never becomes 
> "waiting" in opac-user A screen. I think we need a way to say "the book 
> is waiting for you". It could be automatic (=book in the library when 
> the reserve is placed means the book is directly set to "waiting" and 
> can't be issued anymore).

I can't see how that would work in the actual library (Rather than in 
the code :-).  Waiting should mean it really is waiting - it's fair for 
a customer to assume that if a book is on a shelf they can borrow it.

> We also need a screen for the librarian that could show all requests, to 
> enable them to get the book and manually change it's status.

YES - so you need to know which books are on request, and *should* be in 
the library, so you can go look for them (and shoot whoever let them 
through returns :-), and put them on the waiting shelf, and change them 
to waiting.

A list of all reserves is probably good as well - but that may just need 
to be a report.

> Am I missing something here ? does this last feature exist or not ?
> Does this sound a good idea for everybody ?

Hope it helps

Cheers
R


--
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Rachel Hamilton-Williams
General Manager
Katipo Communications Ltd

Phone:  +64-4-934 1285
Mobile: 021 389 128
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Web:    www.katipo.co.nz