RE: [IUG] Missing items - coding for

["Eyler, Carol" <ceyler at carleton dot edu>]

Karen,

A side note to the thread here.  In the past, we used "pseudo patrons" for 
a number of administrative functions, like what you describe for your 
missing items.  However, we realized that using these pseudo patrons was 
adding false checkouts to our items, which we did not want.  So, as much as 
possible, we have switched over to using status codes or other coding 
(rather than checkout) for things we need to track for administrative 
purposes.  This includes "missing" generated through circ activity, missing 
when looked for on shelf, and missing in inventory (by season of inventory 
-- e.g. Sum 2005).

We have not had any trouble creating lists of missing items in any of these 
categories.

~Carol Eyler
=========================================
Carol E. Eyler                                 ceyler at carleton dot edu
Head of Technical Services
Carleton College Library                507-646-4268 voice
One North College St.                    507 646-4087 fax
Northfield, MN 55057
=========================================

--On Sunday, December 11, 2005 4:46 PM -0800 EICHLER Karen 
<karene at multcolib dot org> wrote:

> We are a large, public library system that is relatively new to
> Millennium (we've had it since mid-September and only began pulling
> holds at the end of October).
>
> We are trying to do daily paging lists (these average 900-1000 per day).
> And unfortunately, there are quite a few items that we are unable to
> find and need to change their status to "missing."  However, at this
> point instead of changing the status to missing we have set up "Missing
> Cards" and we check out all of the items we do not find to the "missing
> cards."  At some point, we're going to need to search again for all of
> the items that are on those missing cards but at this point we're not
> doing so.
>
> It would be preferable to be able to directly set the unfound items to
> missing status and then run a report that lists all of those items and
> search from that list.  Our computer staff says that we cannot generate
> a list from Millennium of missing items if the status was changed
> manually.  Is this correct?  And if it is not correct, how else can we
> do this?
>
> Thank you in advance for any help you can give to us!
>
> Karen Eichler
> Central Circulation Services
> Multnomah County Library