New Build Available
The latest and greatest iBorrow build is now available on a computer near you. Here are a few of its improvements. (I’m quoting from the SirsiDynix ‘Delta Document’. I have not yet had a chance to verify every one of these.)
1. URSA/iBorrow will no longer send the same request to OCLC multiple times, even if OCLC is slow to respond. I’m not sure what this will mean for your request, if it’s OCLC that drops the ball. I hope you expert OCLC users will keep me up to date on that.
2. In Receive Loan in the URSA client, “Local Barcode” has become the default window. (You can tell by the blue ‘radio button’) This has always been the right window to use, but it was not the default, so you had to remember to select it every single time. And, in case we’ve never mentioned this, “Local Barcode” doesn’t mean one of “your” barcodes. It means the barcode you want your local server to associate with the item you are receiving. Almost always it will be the barcode that is on the item.
3. In Fill Loan, if the item whose barcode you scan has a different ISBN than URSA/iBorrow is expecting, it will still let you use that item to complete the Fill Loan. This gets a little tricky, so take a big gulp of coffee and stay with me here. First off, URSA loves ISBN’s. To URSA, the requested title is the ISBN. Keeping track of a requested title that does not have an ISBN brings a sheen of sweat to its silicon forehead. Unfortunately for URSA, many libraries put multiple ISBN’s into the same bibliographic record. For example, the paperback and the hardcover editions will both be attached to the same bib record, and there will be two ISBN fields in it. URSA hates that. But now, when you scan a barcode in Fill Loan and URSA does its barcode lookup on your local server, it will bring back ALL of the ISBN’s in the Bib record and see if ANY of them match the ISBN of the request. If any one does, URSA will be happy and give you the Success message.
Now, let’s make it harder. Some libraries do NOT put all the editions of a title in the same bib record. But a good ILL person will often know that “The item I have in my hand is what the patron actually wants”, even if none of the ISBN’s in its bib record match the ISBN in the original request. URSA will now ask you whether you are sure you want to fill THIS request with THAT item. If you say, ‘yes’, it will proceed and give you a Success message. (It started doing this in the previous build, but I don’t think it was consistent about it.)
4. User friendly messages—which missed the bus on their way to the previous build—will now appear in the Portal in My Account. I haven’t seen these yet, so I don’t know how user friendly they actually are. If you spot one that is misleading (or rude), please tell me.
5. And speaking of My Account, here’s a nice addition. If you do a proxy request for a patron over the phone, the request you put in for him will hook up with the requests he has made on his own, and they will all show up in My Account in the portal. (This assumes he already has an URSA portal identity when you do the proxy. Doing a proxy request does not create an account for the patron. It just looks for an existing account and, if it finds one, adds the proxy to it.)
6. SirsiDynix also worked on the Availability Rules. Those are the rules that tell URSA/iBorrow which of your materials it can use to fill a loan from some other system and which it can’t. URSA’s grasp of Circulation Status has been a little weak up till now, and it has sometimes put requests in your Fill Loan work space, even when the only copy you own was really Out or Missing or in Mending. It should be much, much better at dealing with Circulation Status now, whether it is requesting one of your titles for some other system or turning an iBorrow request into a Local Hold. Gulp some more coffee here. Local Holds can be a little confusing. Here’s the short version.
If a patron is using your local online catalog, he can place a request on a title, even if all the copies are checked out. In fact, that is one the best reasons to place a request.
But URSA is not designed to patiently wait for a book to return. Its job is to find one—somewhere—right now. So, it is not allowed to place requests on local systems when all the copies are Out. (See Number 6 above) Now, you know that when a patron does a portal search in iBorrow and clicks on Request Item, URSA looks all over for available copies. If it finds an available copy on the same server that the patron is registered on (i.e. It is a Lee County patron and Lee County has an available copy), it will create a Local Hold. That is, it will hand the request off to the local server and let it fill the request. But—and this is big time—it will follow the same Availability Rules it follows when it is working for a ‘foreign’ borrower. If all of the copies are Out or otherwise unavailable, it will NOT place a local hold. It will try to find an available copy at one of the other participating libraries. So, there will be times when one of your patrons will get the item he wants faster through iBorrow than he would through your local system. (A murmur ran through the crowd.)
There’s more, but those are the highlights. And if I make you read any more, your lips will get tired.
Test these new features out. Tell me if any of them fail or if you find any new bugs. (There are bound to be some)