RE: Holds / Available Items / Reordering Decisions

["John Kenny" <jkenny@xxxxxxxxxx>]

We here at San Francisco are having lots of holds problems as well.
Some time ago when we attempted to print the VIEW HOLDS file it took
over 3 reams of paper before we finally killed the job.   We went live
on Millennium  8/27/03 and migrated 30,000 holds from DRA.  We get
approximately 10-15,000 holds per month. 

However, Innovative sent us a trainer that added a HOLDs field to our
list of searchable fields  in CREATE LISTS.  Now we can search for items
on HOLD and use the export feature in Phase III to do custom item paging
lists. 

We've also had problems getting our Purchase alerts.  We currently have
our number of holds set to 3 as well.   

John Kenny
Millennium Implementation Team Coordinator
Assistant Chief of the Main Library 
San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street 
San Francisco, CA 94102-4733
(415) 557-4210 fax (415) 557-4205 
email Jkenny@xxxxxxxxxx

 



 


-----Original Message-----
From: Eeva Stierwalt [mailto:eeva.stierwalt@xxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 9:06 AM
To: A.Seden@xxxxxxxxxx; INNOPAC@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Holds / Available Items / Reordering Decisions

Hello:  We here at London Public Library have investigated all options
in Millennium/Innopac of getting the same data and we jump through
pretty much the same hoops as you do, except that our View Outstading
Holds file is so huge we can't even get into it!  I propose that those
of us who are interested each submit an enhancement request outlining
the details you've provided and our own requirements if additional or
different.  This is definitely a function that could be enhanced in
Millennium!  Thanks for your detailed report!  Kind regards, Eeva

Eeva Stierwalt
Information Systems Specialist
Automated Collection Management
London Public Library
251 Dundas St.
London, ON  Canada  N6A 6H9
t 519.661.5156
f 519.663.9013
e eeva.stierwalt@xxxxxxxxxx

>>> A.Seden@xxxxxxxxxx 11/12/03 01:41PM >>>

We are interested in hearing from large public libraries with a high
number
of holds on the ways they make reordering decisions:

We look at the Purchase Alerts, Items w Holds, View Outstanding Holds,
and
title requests made by OPAC users lists.  Neither list is adequate for
our
needs.

Our Purchase Alerts threshold is set to 3.   For reasons unknown to us,
alerts are generated even for items w one hold on them.  We have a call
open
w III Help Desk, but have no fix, yet.   

Once an item gets listed on the Purchase Alerts list, it remains there
even
if the holds on it are subsequently cancelled.  By the time we get
around to
printing it, a high number of items on the list turn out to have no
holds on
them.

Purchase Alerts list does not seem to take into account the ratio of
AVAILABLE items to the number of hold requests.  It seems to be looking
at
the total number of items attached to a bib record, even if a fairly
large
number of those items are Missing, On Search, etc.

We check the Items with Holds list once a week.  In many cases, we find
that
items have multiple holds on them when, in fact, there are other
AVAILABLE
items attached to the same bib record.

The Outstanding Holds list can be useful.  On an average day, we have
over
5000 outstanding holds.   Yet, we have difficulty in manipulating this
list
on Excel.  

We use the OPAC accepted title requests list generated in INNOPAC
Circulation Statistics > Requests Made by OPAC Users.  This list ignores
all
holds placed from within Millennium, some 40% of all requests.  And, it
does
not show the number of available items per bib record / title.

On and off, we also create review lists of bib records with no items
attached with holds on them; and, also lists of holds on items whose
status
show that they're not available.

All of this is very labor intensive and time consuming.  How can we
facilitate our decision making process?

Thanks for any guidance you can provide.

Ali Seden
Systems Analyst
Access Services
Brooklyn Public Library
a.seden@xxxxxxxxxx
718-230-2445

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