Re: [IUG] Permanent checkout query...

[Beth Chamberlain <BethC at tourolaw dot edu>]

We're doing this by assigning a specific Itype to the volumes, "Law Faculty
Office Copy". They go our under their own loan rule. The loan rule is the one
glitch, we want them to be due Dec 31 five years into the future but the loan
rule field will only accept 3 digits. I've set it to 0, forcing an override.
There is a very limited number of people handing these checkouts so we
haven't had a problem with the dates being off. Maybe we need to make an
enhancement request for a loan period in years. We also suppress the display
of these items. That way students can't say "but why can't I have that copy?"

Beth

Beth Chamberlain
Head of Technical Services
Gould Law Library
Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center
255 Eastview Drive
Central Islip, NY 11722
631-761-7161

-----Original Message-----
From: innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org
[mailto:innopac-bounces at innopacusers dot org] On Behalf Of bszalkowski at stcl dot edu
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 12:24 PM
To: Innovative User Group
Subject: [IUG] Permanent checkout query...

We currently have a category of checkouts called "permanent loans" which are
items purchased out of professor and department budgets and housed in those
offices but are still cataloged in the library collection and are technically
available for use (usually copying a few pages kind of thing).
When we implemented Innopac Circulation back in 1997, we decided that we
wanted these perm loans checked out "indefinitely" rather than located by a
location or other code, so that the library staff, a professor or department
could call up these perm loan checkouts along with any other regular
checkouts from the patron record. One stop shopping if you will.
At first, we set the due date for all of these perm loans as 12/31/2020. As
time went on, by trial and error, I determined that the date farthest in the
future that I could get Innopac to take was 12/31/2037.
We have been checking out these perm loans in character-based and changing
the due date to 12/31/2037 ever since, even after we implemented Millennium
in 2004. MilCirc will only allow checkouts for as far as the calendar will
go, about 2 years or so.
Now I have received an email from III saying that Circ menu items will be
removed that are covered by Millennium functions starting this summer and
after a library goes to Release 2007. Although there is no list available
yet, I'm assuming that checkout will be one of those items.
Questions:
Is there any other way in Millennium to extend the due date to some future
time beyond the calendar? Ideally, I'd love a way to have something checked
out "indefinitely", that is, with no particular due date.
Would this long due date functionality qualify as one of those "we can do it
in character-base, but not in Millennium" fast track enhancement requests?
Does anyone else have any ideas how to have something show as "checked out"
on a patron record without having to automatically renew it every couple of
years?
Or, is there a way I can code these items and somehow automatically renew
them every couple of years? (From the recent automatic renewal thread, I
think I remember that it was an all or nothing sort of thing, not something I
could do on a review file created from a code).
Any thoughts or suggestions would be most appreciated, and thanks in advance.

Regardsz,
--Barbara Sz. 

Barbara Szalkowski
Senior Catalog Librarian
The Fred Parks Law Library
South Texas College of Law
1303 San Jacinto
Houston, TX 77002-7000
(713) 646-1724
Fax: (713) 659-2217
bszalkowski at stcl dot edu


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