Locked records are a bit of a bind, and I'm not sure that I have a 
great deal to contribute about that, except to ask whether the bibtemp 
file at Exeter is being cleared fast enough.  At Leeds we have  had a 
lot of problems on that score e.g. when printing overdues or loading 
records, because SUN hardware is slower than some to write to disk.

But in terms of permissions, we reckoned that we needed to give all 
evening seniors permission to free records, so it made sense to extend 
that to our permanent cataloguers, in order to cope with the 
occasional network hiccup etc.  To date, no great problems: if you try 
to free a record which is sitting in the bibtemp file, it doesn't seem to 
have a detrimental effect.

Hope that info. helps: I'm sure others will contribute more at a 
technical level.

Michael

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Send reply to:  	Lesha Fossey <[log in to unmask]>
Date sent:      	Wed, 6 Oct 1999 14:12:46 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time)
Priority:       	NORMAL
Subject:        	"record in use" query
From:           	Lesha Fossey <[log in to unmask]>
To:             	[log in to unmask]

The Innopac manual (14720) gives all sorts of dire warnings about freeing record 
in use by the system, but it quite often happens here that a patron record is 
stuck in this way (certainly several times a day).

At the moment only a coupl of my staff are authorised to "free" these records. 
They try to get into the patron record a couple of times, and if it's still "in 
use" they free it. We have asked the students concerned if they've just been 
viewing their own record on the catalogue, or whether they've just 
borrowed/returned something from the other end of the desk, but the answer is 
usually "no". Has anyone any suggestions as to WHY records might be stuck in 
this way? Has anyone consistently written all the details of each and every 
incidence as suggested in the manual? If so, did you report it to III and 
what was done? And is it REALLY that bad to have a larger number of people able 
to free such records? Have there been any undesirable effects elsewhere?

Lesha

--
----------------------
Lesha Fossey        
Assistant Librarian, Circulation Services
University of Exeter
Stocker Road            TEL: 01392 263867
Exeter                  FAX: 01392 263871
EX4 4PT         E-MAIL: [log in to unmask]





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Michael Emly,  Edw.Boyle Library, University of Leeds, Leeds  LS2 9JT
Email: [log in to unmask]    Phone: 0113 2335565    Fax: 0113 2335539


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