Hi all
As many of you know (!), we use Materials Bookings heavily for our
5-hour loan collection. And currently the presence of a future booking
on an item means it can't be checked out using self-issue. This may
(hopefully!) change in the future, but I need to think about and start
planning what will happen if it still hasn't been resolved, very soon...
At the moment our 5-hour loan collection is behind a desk, circulated by
staff, but we are looking to move to open access self-issue. But what
will we do about Bookings? Obviously we are looking to address the
resourcing of the collection (current scarcity of resources is a major
reason behind the hig demand for individual items) but this will not be
resolved overnight. So I'm extremely interested to know from an
operational point of view what people are doing with this type of
high-demand collection in terms of advanced bookings, and fair and
effective circulation.
A summary of our current situation for our 5-hour collection is:
People can place advance Bookings via the webOPAC, and they do in droves
(several hundred a week at this time of year). We subsequently allow the
items borrowed from the collection to be renewed via webOPAC, with the
only thing preventing a renewal being the presence of a conflicting
booking. So they only *have* to physically bring the item back in if
someone else has definitely said they need it right now (by placing a
booking). Self-booking and self-renewal are *very* popular and highly used.
I can see the complete removal of a booking facility being very
unpopular ("I have lectures all day, how can I get hold of this
particular book without being able to place a booking for a specific
time?", "I'm a part-time student, how can I be sure the book I need will
be here for me when I come in?"), so I'm interested in whatever
solutions other people have come up with to facilitate self-issue for
their high-demand collections, but also to allow students to be sure of
obtaining what they need at a particular time. I can also see the
removal of renewals being unpopular ("I had to bring the item I still
wanted back, and it's now just sat there on the shelf when I could have
still been using it"). So,....I need inspiration! Ideas, experiences and
feedback :-)
What loan period does your most in demand material have?
Is the collection self-service?
Do you use Materials Bookings for this collection? If you do, how do you
make this "work" with self-service? What staff intervention is required
to make it work (e.g. staff have to check out items with future bookings
on; staff pick booked items off the shelves at set intervals?) How far
in advance can people place bookings? Do you allow renewals on the
collection's items?
If you don't use Materials Bookings, how do you facilitate access to
these materials, i.e. do people have any way of ensuring availability of
an item at a specific time, or is it purely 1st come 1st served? Do you
allow renewals? Or use some other bookings system?
Thanks in advance for any assistance you can give me in this vexing
matter :-)
Lesha
--
Lesha Fossey MA MCLIP
Assistant Librarian, Circulation Services
University of Exeter
Stocker Road TEL: 01392 263878
Exeter FAX: 01392 263871
EX4 4PT E-MAIL: [log in to unmask]
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