Circulation

Automatic Renewals

It is now possible to configure OLIB so that it automatically renews loans on the due back date, rather than setting them to overdue.

A Max. Auto Renewals field has been added to the OLIB Defaults layout on the Users / Circ sheet.

This attribute can be added to the Copies, Users, Loan Terms and User Categories layouts if required using Layout Manager.

It is a 3-digit numeric field, so the maximum value that it can be set to is 999.

In addition, a new Auto. Renewal Count field is available in Copies, to maintain a count of automatic renewals separately from seen and unseen renewals.

You will need to use Layout Manager to add this attribute to your Copies layouts if required.

A new auto-renew process is run in daystart, immediately prior to the process that generates overdue notices.

For each item that is due back “today”, the auto-renew process checks whether it can be renewed automatically. It does this by first checking the copy’s Max. Auto Renewals field. If this is set to 0, the item will not be automatically renewed, and the process will move on to the next item.

If the copy’s Max. Auto Renewals field is set to a number and the item has not already been auto-renewed this number of times, the item will be auto-renewed.

If the copy’s Max. Auto Renewals is set to a number and the item has already been auto- renewed this number of times, the item will not be automatically renewed, and the process will move on to the next item.

If the Max. Auto Renewals field on the Copies layout is blank, the process will look at the Max. Auto Renewals field in order on the following layouts and perform the same processing:

• User layout
• Loan terms record
• User category record
• OLIB Defaults record.

Therefore auto-renewals can be enabled system-wide simply by setting Max. Auto Renewals in OLIB Defaults to a number such as 5. This would mean that every on loan item will be automatically renewed 5 times before it finally moves on to overdue. Setting Max. Auto Renewals to a value at a lower level, e.g. in the loan terms records, will override the system- level setting.

Similarly, auto-renewals can be disabled system-wide by setting Max. Auto Renewals in OLIB Defaults to 0 (or leaving it blank, as the default is 0 if this field is left blank), and then setting Max. Auto Renewals at a lower level, e.g. in the Senior Staff user category, will enable it just for users with that user category.)

An item is not eligible for Automatic Renewal if an active reservation exists on the item.

If an item is renewed automatically, an entry is added to the copy and user transaction histories with Automatic Renewal as the transaction type.

When an item is returned, the copy’s Auto. Renewal Count field is re-set to 0.

If you want to include the Auto Renewal count and the Max Auto Renewals value in the Renewal Information message in the Loan Items field on the Issues/Returns/Renewals screen, you will need to edit the Main Renew Trans Message field in OLIB Defaults:

Add the string *9* and *10*, together with accompanying text and punctuation to this field.

Here the string *9* auto (*10* allowed) has been added.

SIP Server Changes

The SIP2 Server has been re-written in Java. This ensures that it will be more likely to operate on more recent Operating Systems and additionally provides a Health Check page viewable in a browser and verifiable programmatically.

The SIP2 Server’s health page is viewable on the port which used to be assigned to the FD Controller, for example: http://olib-server:2240

The page will show various critical pieces of information, as below:

More technical information on this change can be found in the Service Pack 12 Release Notes.

Removal of Renewal Actions from the Loans box

It is now possible to remove the Renew all and Renew selected items options from the Loan Items list box’s Actions list, but keep these options included in the Problem Renewals list box’s Actions list.

From the Admin Client Configuration menu, launch a Method Permissions search:

Change the search option to the Attribute Methods domain search and search for renew

Go to the details screen for the first record.

If the Method ID begins with 888, select the Advanced option on the Permissions drop-down list.

Click on the ALL USERS GROUP's View checkbox

Click on it again to deselect it and remove the check.

Click Save to save the deselection.

Click Next to go to the next record in the hitlist. If this record's Method ID begins with 888, repeat the steps above to deselect the view check box for the All Users Group. Repeat for all attribute methods whose Method ID begins with 888. There should be 4 of them in total.

Once all the 888 attribute methods' ALL USERS GROUP's View options have been deselected, re-build OLIB Web. You will also need to log out and back in again for the changes to take effect.

The Renew options should no longer be included in the Loan Items list box's Action list, but still be available in the Problem Renewals list box's Action list.

Reservations by User Location

Is now configurable whether the requesting user’s location is included in the message that is displayed when a reserved item is returned.

The requesting user’s location is displayed by default in this message.

To remove it from the message, launch a Circulation Messages search from the Circulation Reference Data menu.

Search for circulation message cmc082.

change the Message Text:

From Copy <CBARC> has been held for <BNAME> (<BBARC> - <BLOCLD>) to Copy

<CBARC> has been held for <BNAME> (<BBARC>).

Changes to Circulation Statistics

The following data is now written to a copytrans record so that a record is retained of the data at the time of the transaction:

• User category – bor_cat
• User location – bor_loc
• Copy category – copy_cat
• Copy location – copy_loc

This means that if a circulation statistics report is re-run, say, 12 months after it was first run, the statistics that it delivers will be the same as they were when the report was first run.

Currently, if a user moves to a different location, for example, a ‘circulation statistic by user location’ report that was run before the user moved location will deliver different statistics if it were re-run today.

In addition the user record number is also written to a new field in the copytrans table. The new field is called borrowerno. The PC Location is written to copytrans.loc.

Note that any reports that deliver circulation statistics by user category, user location, etc. will be re-designed after SP12 is released so that they reference these fields rather than the current ones.