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WorldShare Circulation release notes, February 2023

Release Date: February 26, 2023

Introduction

This release of WorldShare Circulation provides new features and enhancements:

  • Choose which user search index is selected by default in Assist Patrons
  • View a list of loaned items that were claimed lost, never had, or already returned by a patron
  • Choose if item statistics should retain information about the last patron to loan the material
  • Choose to allow renewals when the loan conflicts with your usual loan limits
  • Choose if items can fulfill holds when processed by the WMS Circulation API
  • Bug fixes and performance improvements

Many of these enhancements are the direct result of your feedback.

 

Recommended actions

For this release, we recommend that you review the following checklists and complete the relevant tasks so that you can adjust your policies and workflows and train your staff. These checklists identify updates that we have determined as significant for most institutions. We encourage you to review all of the items in the release notes to determine whether there are other items that might require additional action or follow up by your institution.

Administrative actions

These items require immediate action or decisions.

Action

This release makes changes to the deletion of item and user records that you may wish to communicate to library staff that are responsible for deleting item or user records. Specifically, you may no longer delete users and items linked to a loan that was claimed lost, already returned, or never had. See below for details.

A withdrawn item will only be purged from WorldShare Circulation and stop appearing in your weekly FTP inventory report, etc. at the end of your deleted items retention period if the item's current status is:

  • Withdrawn (Available)
  • Withdrawn (Unavailable)
  • Withdrawn (Missing)

A user record cannot be deleted if the user has:

  • Items on loan
  • Claimed loans (if the related item record still exists in WMS)
  • Unpaid bills

Check in the claimed item(s) to free the user and item record for deletion. If you only wish to delete the user record, you may choose to subsequently withdraw the claimed item or update the item to Missing status.

Determine if your library should not retain patron information in your item statistics. See below for details.

Your library now has the option to disable the retention of the Last Issued To patron information in your item statistics. This field captures the identity of the last patron that checked out an item after that loan has ended. The information can be viewed in WorldShare's item Statistics screen and in WorldShare Report Designer's Circulation Item Status universe. While this data can be useful for troubleshooting, you may need to disable retention to ensure user privacy and comply with local policies, regulations, or laws.

If your library participates in a circulation group, the Item Statistics: Last Issued To retention policy will be controlled by the patron's home institution to ensure that your library remains in control of retention of data about your users.

As of this release, WMS will continue to retain Last Issued To patron information indefinitely by default. You do not need to make changes to your configuration if your library would like to continue to use the system's current behavior.

 Note: In an upcoming release of WorldShare Circulation, you will be given the option to specify a retention period for Last Issued To user information. You may wish to delay making configuration changes until this capability is available.

Determine if your library should allow renewal of loans that conflict with your loan limits. See below for details.

Your library can now choose if the following loan limits should be applied at checkout and subsequently ignored during renewals:

If your library participates in a circulation group, please be advised that Loan Limit Policy is controlled by the item's institution while Patron Type Policy is controlled by the patron's home institution.

As of this release, WMS will continue to apply your limits at checkout and renewal by default. You do not need to make changes to your configuration if your library would like to continue to use the system's current behavior.

 

New features and enhancements

Choose which user search index is selected by default in Assist Patrons

As of this release, WorldShare Circulation makes it easier to find a patron's account without knowing their circulation barcode. The user interface will now remember the option you last selected for the secondary patron lookup option in Assist Patrons.

For example, if you select the Name index, then Circulation will automatically select Name the next time you log in, regardless of which browser or machine you use:

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If your library participates in a circulation group, Circulation will also remember what you last selected for the Search patrons of all libraries option:

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View a list of loaned items that were claimed lost, never had, or already returned by a patron

You can now review a list of loans that a patron has claimed lost, never had, or already returned using the new Claims tab in the patron account view. Use this list to understand a patron's claim counts and any associated blocks on their account imposed by Patron Type Policy.

The new Claims tab in Circulation will include the date and time that the claim was processed by library staff, the reason for the claim, and core bibliographic and item data:

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At this time, this feature does not extend to My Account: your patrons will not be able to view their claimed loans.

 

Staff experience

The Claims tab will appear the next time you log into WorldShare after the release. There is nothing to enable or configure.

As of this release, any library staff member with the following staff roles will be able to view the Claims tab:

  • Circulation Admin
  • Circulation Desk
  • Student Worker
  • Student Worker Circulation

 Note: In a future release, permission will also be granted to library staff with the Circulation Desk Privacy or Student Worker Restricted roles.

The list provides information about claimed loans that are currently contributing to a patron's claim counts. The list is not historical: A loan will no longer appear on the Claims tab after the item is checked in and the claim has been cleared from the patron's account. To explore historical claims, you must enable Staff Transaction History or find the related events in the Circulation Events Detail Report.

The list of claims will only include items that have not been withdrawn and purged from WMS. See below for more details about workflow changes to how users and items are deleted.

Proxy patrons and circulation groups

The Claims tab will not appear for proxy patrons: all claims can be viewed on the primary user's account, regardless of which proxy was responsible for the checkout, etc.

If your library participates in a circulation group, the Claims tab will include items from any institution in the group that were claimed by this patron. Also, you will be able to view the complete list of claims for any patron in your group.

 

Workflow changes: Deletion of item and user records linked to claimed loans

Prior to this release, WMS would allow your library to 1) delete a user account with claimed loans and 2) withdraw and purge items in a claim status. Unfortunately, withdrawing a claimed item would not reduce the patron's claim count, potentially creating a permanent block on the patron's account (see Patron Type Policy). Similarly, deleting a user with a claim would make it difficult for you to determine why an item was claimed.

To prevent the loss of vital information about claimed loans, WMS has adjusted the validation rules when your library attempts to delete a user or item record from the system. These changes ensure the system can tell you which patron and item were involved in a claimed loan.

First, Circulation will no longer purge a withdrawn item's record from the system if the item's status is Withdrawn (Lost), Withdrawn (Claimed Returned), or Withdrawn (Claimed Never Had). As of this release, a withdrawn item will only be purged from Circulation and stop appearing in your weekly FTP inventory report, etc. at the end of your deleted items retention period if the item's current status is Withdrawn (Available), Withdrawn (Unavailable), or Withdrawn (Missing). This change ensures that claimed items continue to appear on the patron's Claims tab until the item record is checked in.

Second, your institution will no longer be able to delete a user with claimed loans. Please note that you will be allowed to delete a user record if a claimed loan's item record has already been withdrawn and purged from WMS. Otherwise, a user record can no longer be deleted if the user has active loans, claimed loans (where the item record still exists in WMS), or unpaid bills. To clear a user's claims, you must check in the items and then, optionally, withdraw or mark the items as missing.

Unfortunately, loaned item information will not appear on the Claims tab if the item has already been withdrawn and purged from WMS. Therefore, the user's claim count may be higher than the number of items displayed in the Claims tab. You are also able to adjust the patron's claim count. We hope to make improvements in this area in future versions of WorldShare Circulation.

 

Choose if item statistics should retain information about the last patron to loan the material

Your library now has the option to disable the retention of the Last Issued To patron information in your item statistics. This field captures the identity of the last patron that checked out an item after that loan has ended. The information can be viewed in WorldShare's item Statistics screen and in WorldShare Report Designer's Circulation Item Status universe. While this data can be useful for troubleshooting, you may need to disable retention to ensure user privacy and comply with local policies, regulations, or laws.

 Note: In an upcoming release of WorldShare Circulation, you will be given the option to retain Last Issued To data for a specified period of time.

Library staff experience

By default, WMS will continue to retain all existing data stored in the Last Issued To field. If the user account still exists, then the patron's name and the name of any proxy user involved in the checkout will appear in item Statistics:

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If retention is disabled or the patron record no longer exists, you will see the name of the institution that last borrowed the material in the Last Issued To field. Institution information is most useful for circulation groups:

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You should expect the Last Issued To to be blank when the Last Issued date is not set. If your library loaded item statistics from your previous ILS during your WMS implementation, you may also find that last-issued item statistics are only partially available.

 

Configuration

You can choose to disable retention in OCLC Service Configuration > WMS Circulation > Admin/General > History > Item Statistics: Last Issued To.

By default, WMS will continue to indefinitely retain the Last Issued To patron information. The Retain forever option will be selected:

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To disable retention, select the Never retain option. Selecting Never retain will prevent WMS from storing the identity of the Last Issued To user and from providing that information to WorldShare Reports and Report Designer.

 Caution: If you select the Never retain option, then all data in your existing item records will also be deleted within 7 days of your configuration change. The deletion process will run weekly on Saturdays at 22:00 (10:00 PM) in your WMS data center's timezone. After deletion, your data cannot be recovered by OCLC. You will be asked to confirm the deletion when saving this change to your History configuration:

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Circulation groups

If your library participates in a circulation group, the Item Statistics: Last Issued To retention policy will be controlled by the patron's home institution. For example, if a patron of Library A checked out an item from Library B's collection, then the retention policy of Library A will be used to determine if the patron's information is stored in the item statistics for Library B's item.

This ensures that your library remains in control of the retention of data about your users.

 

Choose to allow renewals when the loan conflicts with your usual loan limits

Your library can now choose if your loan limits should be applied only at checkout and subsequently ignored during renewals. Even if a loan limit has been exceeded, this new option allows renewals to continue as long as the renewal limit has not been reached, the item is not needed to fulfill a pending hold, and the patron's account is in good standing.

The following limits can now be configured to apply only at the initial checkout:

Prior to this release, loan limits were always applied at checkout and renewal. As a result, renewals would fail for all items on loan if any item exceeded a limit even if library staff provided an override for the initial checkout. Impacted patrons may have been confused by rejected renewals, unexpected overdue notifications, and overdue penalties.

 Note: As of this release, WMS will continue to apply your loan limits at checkout and renewal by default. You do not need to make changes to your configuration if your library would like to continue to use the system's current behavior.

Configuration

You can choose to block renewal when limits are exceeded in OCLC Service Configuration for Loan Limit Policy and Patron Type Policy.

By default, all limits will prevent checkout and renewal, and the Block renewal when limit is exceeded setting will be enabled for all existing policies.

Disable the Block renewal when limit is exceeded setting to only check this limit when an item is initially checked out to a patron:

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The user interface has been updated for Loan Limit Policy to make it easier to understand your options. Specifically, the No Limit checkbox has been replaced by the Enable limit radio buttons: If you previously selected the No limit option, then you will see the Enable limit selector set to No

If you choose to enable a limit (Enable limit is set to Yes), you will be asked to set the limit value, e.g., Maximum number of items on loan = 50. Where applicable, you will be given the option to Block renewal when limit is exceeded?

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 Note: You may notice that the Loan Limit Policy settings for unverified users have been removed. These options were never implemented in WMS; your limits for verified user accounts were being applied to all patrons. No functional changes have occurred as a result of the removal of the unverified user loan limit fields.

Circulation groups

If your library participates in a circulation group, please be aware that Patron Type Policy is controlled by the patron's home institution while Loan Limit Policy is controlled by the item's institution. Your group may wish to discuss your preferred approach prior to making configuration changes to avoid confusion for your patrons and library staff.

 

Choose if items can fulfill holds when processed by the WMS Circulation API

Clients using the WMS Circulation API can now choose if an item should be used to fulfill holds when using the item management functions: inventory, usage (non-loan return), or pull. A new, optional parameter (willFulfillHolds) can be included in the body of the API request. For example:

{
  "location": "https://00000.share.worldcat.org/circ/branches/11111",
  "willFulfillHolds": false
  }
}

When the parameter is not provided, WMS will check if the item can fulfill a hold request. This matches the API's current behavior and ensures backward compatibility for current API clients.

The willFulfillHolds option improves support for workflows where it's not possible or reasonable to physically reserve items during processing. For example, you may want to use the API to update WMS's item statistics after scanning items your collection via a third-party inventory tool. In this case, the API should update inventory statistics without putting a requested item in On Hold status; the item should continue to appear on the pull list so that library staff know to retrieve it from the collection.

 

Bug fixes

Incorrect French translations for configuring SIP2 messages

French translations were incorrect for the dropdown menu in SIP2 Configuration when enabling messages. The Enabled option in English was translated to Désactivé in French (and vice versa).

The translations have been corrected with this release. 

Unable to create new override credentials

The Create New option did not appear in OCLC Service Configuration when managing your library's override credentials. This function has been enabled for all circulation administrators as of this release.

Loan Policy column does not sort as expected for a patron's Checkout list

The Loan Policy column on the patron Checkout tab was sorting the patron's loan list by check out date. As of this release, the Loan Policy column sort has been corrected to use loan policy names.

Interlibrary loan due date not honored when borrowed item is checked out by a proxy patron

Due dates provided by an interlibrary loan system were not applied at checkout if a proxy patron retrieved the item on behalf of a faculty member, etc.

As of this release, a checkout by a proxy will always result in the same due date that would be calculated if the item was checked out directly against the primary account.

Expired holds continue to appear in WorldShare Reports and Report Designer

Unfulfilled holds were not removed from WorldShare Report Designer's Circulation Hold Request universe as expected after a pending hold expires.

As of this release of WorldShare Circulation, holds in Pending status will no longer appear in reports (based on Circulation Hold Request universe data) the day after the hold's needed-before date has passed and, if configured, a Hold Request Expiry Notification is sent to the requesting patron. Your library will no longer be required to check in a related item to clear expired holds from the system.

 Note: It may take up to 48 hours for expired, pending holds to be removed from WorldShare Reports and Report Designer. For most libraries, Hold Request Expiry notifications are delivered once per day at 07:00 local time the day after a pending hold's needed-before date. WorldShare Reports will see the change when the Circulation Hold Request universe data is next refreshed for your WMS data center, per the Circulation Data Last Refreshed report

 

Known issues

See the Known Issues page.

Important links

Support website(s)

Support information for this product and related products can be found at: