Hi Everyone,

I wasn't at the exchange of experience at Warwick so I might be coming at this
from the wrong angle and apologies if I'm missing the point or contradicting
anything that was said.

With regard to course reserves, as it wasn't written to do what we are asking of it
at Chester, I'm not sure how much leaway we have for change. Amending CR for
us might disadvantage the larger number of libraries who are happy with it. That
said, my understanding is this:

Course reserves is designed for libraries with (mostly) single copies of a title. This
single item is moved into short loan during the semester when it matters for a
particular reading list. Then swapped back to its normal location afterwards, all
carried out by course reserves.

Our problem at Chester is that most of our reading list books have multiple copies,
some with as many as 20 or 30 items. If a reading list has say 15 titles, then this
could lead to 20 x 15 titles being displayed. Totally impractical.

As a result, we put a dummy item on the bib (suppressed from the normal
webopac but does show on course display) and ask the patron to click on its title
link to view the real bib and full item availability. So, my understanding is that we
are happy that dummy items display in CR and are suppressed elsewhere in the
webopac. If this were to change I'm not sure how we would adapt our system to
cope?

Once the patron has clicked on a title in the reading list, they get the real bib but
no option to reserve. And it would be useful to have the option at that point,
perhaps a wwwoptions value to give libraries a choice? However, I'm not sure that
we would want to pay for it, clearly it depends on the amount.

Reading list example:

http://libcat.chester.ac.uk/search~S0/r?SEARCH=education
(and then select one of the courses shown)

(Your email also mentions Media and ICT equipment. Is this Materials Booking? If
so, we display availability of equipment in the webopac but do not allow self-
booking. This allows the Media technicians to police which groups of patrons book
what within quite small subsets of their students (too refined for p-type use). Not
allowing self-booking has been successful for us and means that we have not been
adversely affected, as I know other UK sites have been, with the self-issue clash
and other new functionality introduced in Rel 2005.)

Thanks,

Joan.

University of Chester
Learning Resources
Parkgate Road
Chester
ENGLAND
CH1 4BJ

tel +44 (0) 1244-513324
fax +44 (0) 1244-511325
email [log in to unmask]

Quoting Mandy Phillips <[log in to unmask]>:

> Morning all,
>
> After a very interesting 'exchange of experience' at Warwick yesterday, I've
> come back to my desk with lots of ideas !
>
> Firstly (and only for today), we felt that we had a common understanding with
> Chester regarding some of the 'features' of Course Reserves, which we would
> like to address. We'd like to see if any other EIUG sites have a similar
> issue, in the hope that we could maybe move it forward as a professional
> service? The two items that we'd agreed on were specifically related mainly
> to the use of the module for Media and ICT equipment, and not so much for
> books (although might be useful for either).
>
> 1. Currently, we are both adding dummy items to the lists in order to get
> around the 'changing location' feature, which is working ok - however, the
> dummy items are not suppressing, despite being told to do so. This is odd
> behaviour and only shows up in Course Reserves, as if you search for the item
> in the catalogue, it is suppressed (as we'd like).
>
> 2. Secondly, if a student/user/customer is in the reading list, and all the
> items that they want to borrow are already out, there is no option to reserve
> an item. Having had a recent call open for this, it was determined that the
> functionality is designed to not offer a request option. This, of course,
> would be very useful for both Chester, us and potentially Warwick when they
> start to use Course Reserves shortly.
>
> Can I ask, off list if you'd prefer, if any other sites would like to see
> these two things implemented, and if you would be prepared to share the
> cost?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Mandy
>
>
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