Library Priority Table question

["Steve Washko" <swashko@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Hello:
> Our Chester County Library System currently includes seventeen public libraries, a Bookmobile, and the County Health Department. 
> In February, we plan to turn on the patrons automatically placing their own REQUESTS feature for the first time in our WebPAC.
> 
> We chose the "localavailelseany"  behavior, submitted the Request Worksheet to the helpdesk, and they set it up for us by login. 
> We are currently testing it in our TEST  WebPAC (port 2080) before going live.  We will allow patrons to place requests on available items.  
> 
> During the testing we have done to date, if a patron places a REQUEST from home (that login is setup as a catch-all named "webother" with stat group 999 as opposed to WebPAC activity from within a library, which gets a library-specific login based on IP address range) and several system libraries all have a copy available, 
> the system always pages the copy available at the first library alphabetically in the list.   (We were told the system would probably always page alphabetically in this case, although they were not sure if it would be done alphabetically, or reverse alphabetically. It was suggested that we setup a Library Priority table ( for the first time) to balance the load. )
> 
> Question: How do libraries in this situation setup their Library Priority Table? (Ex: Did you set it up so the libraries with largest collections get called upon first?
>                 And do you list just one library per line in the table, or do you group several libraries of like size together?)
> 
> NOTE:
> We have not purchased the Regional Holds product which is part of the Consortium Management Extentions Package.
> We are currently in Release 2002, Phase 1.
> 
> Thank you, and Happy New Year!
> Sue Ricedorf
> Chester County Library
> Computer Services Dept.
> Phone: 610-280-2661
> email:sricedorf@xxxxxxxxxx