[Koha-devel] Ponderings on locations

[Lamancusa, Emily]

Hi Alexander,

Welcome to the Koha community! ??

Many of the things you're trying to do can be done in Koha through some other mechanism.

> 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.

In Koha we would do this by placing a hold on the item for that patron, and then check the item in - then Koha will display it as "On hold" in the OPAC and "Waiting hold for such-and-such patron" on the Staff Intranet.

> Unfortunately, the strict `not for loan` doesn't work well for us. We
> are open 24/7, but not staffed 24/7. IOW whatever hits the shelf can
> be taken. If someone checks out an item that is in principle not for
> loan, I'd really like to check it out, just to know who has it ;) I did not
> yet find a way to soften `not for loan` to something like `2 days and
> immediately send a recall letter`. (Current procedure.)

One way you could do this would be to define a NOTFORLOAN item type, and then edit the Circulation and Fines Rules to give that item type a loan period of 2 days with no renewals. If you want Koha to automatically send a recall letter for those that is different than the standard due/overdue notice, that would take a bit of doing when adjusting the notice template, but off the top of my head I believe it would be possible.

That being said, it certainly would be nice to have more flexibility in defining temporary locations for items (such as displays or mending) - there is (at least one) bug for that in Bugzilla if you want to follow and/or comment: https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=14962 Our library system is currently in the process of working with ByWater to sponsor/co-sponsor a feature like that.

Finally, I just want to clarify that Shelving Location does indeed consist of both a "location" and "permanent location" (separate from homebranch and holdingbranch), though that's not necessarily obvious depending on where you're looking, and you're right that the distinction mostly exists for the benefit of the "magic" values of CART and PROC. I point this out partly because it can be a stumbling block in custom SQL reports...I learned this the hard way when an enterprising librarian contacted me asking why the "items list per shelving location" reports for her branch were showing so few items. It turned out that everything that had recently been checked in, and thus had a "location" of CART, was being left off the reports - which was very noticeable because she was using the reports in the first place for some inventory work, and checking in large numbers of books in the process!

Emily Lamancusa (she/her)
IT Specialist III
Montgomery County Public Libraries
(240) 777-0052

________________________________
From: Wagner, Alexander <alexander.wagner at desy.de>
Sent: Wednesday, March 6, 2024 3:11 AM
To: Michael Hafen <michael.hafen at washk12.org>
Cc: Koha Devel <koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] Ponderings on locations

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


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