[Koha-devel] Ponderings on locations

[Wagner, Alexander]

Hi!

> Forgive me if I add to your confusion a bit instead of clearing it up.
> There are actually three locations in Koha: Permanent location, current
> location, and shelving location.  The first two only matter if you have
> more than one site; if you only have one site you can set them to the same
> value and effectively ignore them.

Indeed I did not dive into "more than one site". I do have that also, but I understood that this is modelled on the `branch` concept.

> These are home branch and holding branch internally.
> It seems like most of what you are talking about here is the Shelving
> Location.

Yes. My question is mainly: how do I tell, also to patrons in the OPAC but also me if I explain the OPAC to a new patron, where to go for an item. E.g. if it has been requested and is prepared for some patron another one will not find it in the shelves, so IMHO it is a good idea to show in OPAC that it is in a different location. (Currently, we add a temporary location like `Library Desk Hamburg` or `Library Desk Zeuthen` in this case.) 

> I'll also mention that Koha can have pseudo patrons also, these can be one
> of many types.  For example I have an Organizational type patron category
> called 'Library', and I may have a 'On Display', or 'Repair room' patron in
> that category.  This doesn't help with automatically changing the Shelving
> Location though.

I saw those and noticed that I can check out items. I was pondering those for items we temporarily remove from the collection. In our situation this doesn't help too much for items on some shelve though. We are open 24/7, so everyone with an access card can enter the library and take whatever is in the open shelves and even if _we_ checkout items we use the SIP-machine... IOW, even if _we_ think, that e.g. new items should be on display for a week or so you could take them. That's why I'd prefer to check items out even if this is not intended. IOW anything making things in the reading room unable to be checked out at all doesn't really work well for us.

> There is also an 'after_circ_action' plugin hook.  Perhaps there is, or you
> could have created, a Koha plugin to mangle the Shelving Location based on
> who an item is checked out to / returned from.

This sounds like an option to re-implement my special patrons. Thanks for the pointer. :)
 
-- 
Kind regards,

Alexander Wagner

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
Library and Documentation

Building 01d Room OG1.444
Notkestr. 85
22607 Hamburg

phone:  +49-40-8998-1758
e-mail: alexander.wagner at desy.de