Kia ora koutou

Over the last few weeks we have identified some issues with the new catalogue around requesting and renewing actions – it wasn’t quite performing how the old catalogue/Horizon PAC was in relation to enforcing some requesting rules (e.g. maximum requests on particular itypes, preventing requests from ineligible borrowers, e.g. external borrowers and high demand items) and borrowers were unable to renew overdue items.  In addition, if borrowers cancelled holds/requests Horizon wasn’t doing all the right things so we had a few stuck hold blocks and some blank request deleted notices go out.  It was also allowing borrowers with expired library accounts to log in and request/renew items.
Margaret has done a lot of work on these over the past few weeks and we have done a lot of testing so have now made the changes live.

Key new things:

• borrowers can now renew overdue items – if eligible for fines they will get a fine block with the previous overdue accrued amount.
• borrowers should now only be able to only request items that are eligible for requests and at the pick-up locations that are allowed for those items/borrowers.
• Expired borrower accounts:
  we cannot stop borrowers with expired library accounts that are still able to log in to UC systems (alas can be quite common) from accessing their accounts (as the old catalogue did) but they are now unable to request items or renew items if their account has expired.  There is only one “request failed” error message we can present to users, currently set to “Item cannot be requested” so they will not get an account expired message for those, but the renewals are more flexible so they will get “This item could not be renewed: Account has expired – please contact library staff”.
• Cancelling requests/holds should now happen cleanly – with blocks moving where they are supposed to and request deleted notices will have item details (if a copy/item-level request).

If you spot anything not quite working as you would expect, please let us know.

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of library systems)