Re: Offline Circulation

[Karen Perone <peroneka at oplin dot org>]

We have two versions of offline circ. The first is for our Bookmobile, 
the second for in the library.

In the bookmobile's case, they use two PCs and use one for checkout and 
one for checkin. When they return to the library, they process the 
checkins first and then the checkouts. This avoids errors that can occur 
when someone returns something and then it is checked out by another 
person - a likely occurence with school children.

In house, we only check things out offline. This avoids checkin errors 
such as holds and items to be put in transit. Since we are usually only 
down for a short time, it is easiest to do all checkins after the system 
comes back up.
--Karen Perone, Rodman Public Library

Karen Bracken wrote:

> I am in the process of creating a procedure for Offline Circulation and
> have a question for the group.  Thankfully we have only needed to go on
> offline a few times, and then only for a short amount of time.  Even
> though the amount of time has been minimal, we have had several errors
> after processing the transactions. One was a result of checking
> out/checking in multiple times during the offline session (public PC's)
> These error our as checkout uses date/time and checkin uses date, and
> implies a 12:00am time.  We solved this by hand counting PC's during
> downtime.  The other issue is whether to just checkout during offline,
> and checkin in all items once we come backup, but before we upload. 
> This way we can catch holds, and eliminate some items erroring out
> because the customer has a block of some sort.  Currently we checkout
> and check in.  Any thought would be appreciated.