[Koha] Separate hold queues?

[Andreas Hedström Mace]

Hi all!

We are at Stockholm University Library experiencing some difficulties with how Koha is currently handling hold queues, and are considering development in this area. Are there any other libraries who are experiencing similar issues (see below), and would be interested in the development of separate hold queues? Or have an opinion on whether this would be a good/bad idea?

In Koha today it is possible to limit the fulfilment of holds per branch (same pick-up location as home/holding library) and item type. For us, it makes most sense to view this as several hold queues for one bibliographic record. For example: a person queuing for a book from the textbook collection (item type = ”TC”) isn’t actually queuing for books for the general collection (item type = ”GC”). But Koha handles this as one big queue. This isn’t a problem for the holds per se, as Koha only fetches the book that has the right criteria to fill the hold (i.e. the correct item type or home/holding library) but it has proven to be an issue for our patrons.

As Koha displays it as one big queue, it might seem that the queue is much bigger that it actually is. This has confused a number of patrons, and have discouraged others from placing holds. Continuing our example: a book has three patrons on hold for item type GC, when a new patron adds a hold for TC. This makes this person number four in the queue in Koha today, making the patrons believe that they will have to wait weeks or months for the book (in our library TC is 7 days, GC 28 days) when in reality it is only one week.

For us, this would better be described as two queues:
One with 3 patrons on hold (General collection)
One with 1 patron of hold (Textbook collection)

The same is true for hold fulfilment that require pick-up location to be the same as home/holding library (i.e. hold fulfilment per branch). Say a public library also have a school library in it’s organization, that is a special case where books from the other libraries should not be sent to the fulfil holds, or vice versa. As in our example above it would be better to display queues separately so 5 holds at the main library won’t discourage a student from placing a hold on that same book at the school library.

So my question is basically, is there are other libraries out there who are using any of these hold fulfilment features (or would like to), and would want to see a new feature to separate/split hold queues? Or who could see the benefit of such a feature.

Please note that separate hold queues would of course only come in effect if any system preference that limits hold fulfilment is set to allow. Also, this would not effect holds to pull.

I look forwards to hearing people’s opinion about this!

Best regards,
Andreas

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Andreas Hedström Mace
Librarian
Stockholm University Library
Stockholm University
106 91 Stockholm
Tel: +46 (0) 8 16 49 17
su.se/english/library<http://su.se/english/library>
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