There has been some discussion about the amount of time items from the open shelves are kept on our Hold shelves before the hold status expires.
Currently open shelf items are held for 6 full days beyond the date that the item achieved the status ‘Item held’ i.e. up to 7 full days. The expiry kicks in at 5 minutes past midnight of the date given, so the item is actually only available until closing of the day before the ‘expiry date’ shown on Horizon.
Things to consider:
• Items on hold are not available to other borrowers during this period
• Notification has increased – more emails, texts, My Account
• Borrowers do not always cancel their hold (online or in person) when they don’t require the item anymore.
• IBDS has hugely increased the number of items able to be requested and put on hold – strain on Hold shelf capacity
• IBDS transit requests may spend a couple of days reaching the chosen pick up library which increases the time the item is unavailable to other borrowers.
• Expired items cleared from the Hold shelf without a following request are reshelved. IBDS makes it very easy for the same person to re-request the item and have it collected again and put back, adding to the IBDS workload.
Stats provided by Philip:
From 2000 to 2005, up to 28% of holds were not being picked up from all hold shelves throughout the library.
In 2006, the number of notices to users was increased (up 63% on 2005) – holds not picked up dropped to 26%; to 24% in 2007 and to 18% in 2008. This was the year that e-text notification was introduced, plus the additional customised emails throughout the day. To date in 2009, only 16% of total holds placed are not being picked up.
It has always been intended that IBDS was not a quick service, and to avoid any problems or delays with hold shelves, users have the option of getting the items themselves.
Should the Hold shelf period be increased, reduced or stay the same?
If changed, what would be a reasonable number of days to allow notification and time to collect the item before the item moves to the next requestor, or is reshelved?
Please share your thoughts as a Comment.
Helen
The only policy to be aware of in this discussion is 3.6(a) in the Library Regulations. "…Reguested books shall, after their return, be held for not less than 24 hours."
Philip
Seven days does seem to be a long time to have an item on the hold shelf, particularly when the item has come from another Library via the IBDS process, which adds to the time the item is out of circulation. I notice that the current email notification to borrowers states that items (other than 3 day and 1 day loan items)are held for five days. So, if we reduced the time an item is held to only five days, would it actually make a lot of difference to a patron’s perception of the service? (At the moment patrons think items are only held for five days anyway). I think five days is probably a fair time to hold an item in view of the fact that we now send daily emails to borrowers who have items on hold. It might inconvenience some borrowers, for example, those who live out of town, though. Caroline Anderson.
A small point: would it be a good idea to have something put on our Web site to clarify that holds expire at the close of business on the day before the expiry date? Not everyone would read it, but it might help avoid misunderstandings. Caroline Anderson
I would like to see the Hold shelf period reduced to 4 days (or 5 at the most).This would assist in moving items along which have multiple Holds.Students now receive a number of notifications and those that are expecting items do come in fairly promptly. Jan Scandlyn.
Interloans pose a different set of challenges and a shorter hold period would not suit us – actually we would prefer a longer one as Interloan Holds often expire.
Interloans received for users may have been requested months ago and being an item in high demand had taken a long tie to arrive, or maybe it was a very recent request and the user, not expecting a prompt arrival, heads off overseas. There are many different scenarios as you can imagine. It is also more difficult for a user to predict when an Interloan will arrive than when requesting a University of Canterbury item from Storage or via the IBDS.
However we do not return an Interloan to the supplying library unless the user notifies us that they no longer require it (their fee still stands of course).
So, Interloans staff run a daily expired holds report for all libraries. Requesters of expired holds are contacted and reminded that they have an Interloan to collect. In most cases we will remove the Interloan from the Central Library Hold Shelf and the user has to collect it from our workroom. With Branch libraries we request staff leave the item on their Hold Shelf and then we will communicate that information to the user.
The user, or their department, will have paid money to the Library for acquiring the Interloan for them, and the library paid at least twice that amount to the supplying library. In addition to the loan fee there has been the cost to our Library of staff searching/processing time and there will be the cost of the return postage. Costs that we do not wish to repeat by returning an Interloan before the user has consulted it.
Managing expired Interloan Holds does create work for Interloans staff. Reducing the Hold Shelf period would only increase the number of holds that expire. Janice
3 days is more than enough and we should add a text message notification that lets them know when it goes on the hold shelf. Recall process should move faster also. When I ask people if they want to put a request on an item out they invariably say "no" as it takes too long. Interloans could be treated differently with a different item type just as 1 day loans are already.
There are lots of issues here. I think 4 days is a good as you need to think about weekends. In practice this means that Horizon will say 6 days.
I agree with Adam that we should make significant changes to the way we recall items as the current system is unfair. We should only guarantee a loan for a week as we do when there are other requests. We should recall from undergraduates and we should charge recall rates when the item is not returned. Currently items are not recalled and standard fines apply. It may be possible to automate the recall and send a txt message. The current system does discourage users requesting things that they want.
Maybe we should also be looking at increasing the categories of etxts that we send.
As for Interloans, for simplicity we tried to leave this as the standard period, but we could have a different period as 4 days would be too short. Perhaps for 10 days then if it is not picked up return it to the lending library. Horizon should be left to manage the process of contacting users rather than all this additional work, but we could look at sending an etxt. We should not keep the interloan for the full loan period when no-one is using it as someone else may need it. Anne
We are too slow. We should have weekend deliveries between branches. To many students no lectures in the weekends means more opportunity to go to the library. It seems weird we offer them a lesser service at time they could make more use of it.