From time to time an item from the Hold shelf ends up in the hands of the requester without being checked out. The title eventually shows up in the Expired Holds report but cannot be found on the Hold shelf. A discreet phone call to the requestor usually reveals that they do in fact have the item.

From observation in training new staff, I have found one possible scenario which, if the staff member is not paying attention, can lead to an item on Hold being handed over. When you open the borrower’s record, the Current Blocks screen appears.

This is NOT a screen in which the barcode should be entered and normally if you do scan a barcode it will appear in the ‘Selection box’ and trigger the error message ‘Improper selection’ to let you know of your mistake.

However, sometimes the cursor is not active in the Selection box and instead of the error message, there is a ‘beep’ as if the item has been checked out. What has actually happened is that the scanning of the barcode has simply closed the Current Block screen and the item has not been checked out.

The screen that is now open gives you no clues, unless you click on ‘All items out’ and they you can see that your Held item is not there.
This is a plea to pay extra attention to the Current Block screen when dealing with an item on Hold – it will save so much work later.

Helen D