Online Requesting
Transferring/Cancelling | Marooned
Holds | Transfer Paged Holds | View
Holds | Clear Holdshelf
A hold is a request for an item that is not immediatly and physically
available to the patron for whom it is placed. Holds can be placed
by library staff using Millennium Circulation, in either Search/Holds
mode or Circ Desk mode. They can also be placed by the patron, or by
a staffer acting on behalf of the patron, through the web OPAC.
Holds can be placed for an item owned by the patron's own library
or, if the library has been enabled for online requesting, for an item
owned by another library. This page collects how-to information concerned
with holds. To get a full picture, be sure to also consult the procedure
page:
Transferring
and Cancelling Holds
Since transferring and cancelling of holds is most commonly needed
in conjunction with online requesting, check the information on how to do it on the Intra Minerva Online Requesting page, under Transferring
and Canceling Item Level Holds.
Marooned
Holds
What is a Marooned Hold?
A "marooned hold" is a hold that was first placed at the
bib level and was moved to the item level but not immediately filled.
Frequently this occurs because a patron of the owning library checks
out the item before the library has taken action on a pending paging
slip.
The hold remains at the item level and is only evaluted for possible
fulfillment when that specific item is checked in again. This is not
so bad if the hold is for a patron of the library that owns the item
since the home patron would get first dibs on the item in any case.
However, a hold for a patron of another library, particularly one on
an item in demand, could be marooned for months if only one item could
possible fulfill it.
How Does One Know That a Hold Has Been Marooned?
"Marooned holds" will be shown, sometimes along with other
holds, in the following contexts:
- a. The owning library may have a paging slip in hand that was printed
before the local patron checked the item out.
- b. At checkout time, the circ staff at the owning library may be
alerted that the item being checked out has a hold by a given patron.
This alert requires an Over-ride to complete the checkout.
- c. The patron's library will see the request on the Transfer Paged
Items report after 72 hrs have elapsed.
- d. The requesting library will see holds placed on behalf of its
patrons on the View Holds screen.
- e. Anyone can see holds in Search / Holds mode in the Summary tab.
Be sure the View is set to Holds/Bookings.
What To Do?
- If there are other copies that are shown as Available, follow
the directions for transferring the item level hold to another
item: Transferring
and Canceling Item Level Holds. This can be done by owning or requesting library.
- If the requesting library gets here first, and there are no
Available copies, cancelling the request is the simplest thing
to do and is called for in the procedure cited above.
- If the requesting library gets to the marooned hold first, its
staff should cancel the item level hold without producing a
Hold Cancel Notice, then restart the hold as a bib level hold.
It
makes sense to use the Change Priority function to insert the hold
at the point where it would otherwise have been based on the original
item level hold placement date.
It also makes sense to add a Hold
Note like "Orig 10/15 hold
restarted by ABC/xyz" or something similar. This will explain
to folks at other libraries why what appears to be a brand new hold
appears so high in the priority list of bib level holds.
- John and I will often perform the steps described above if we
encounter marooned holds in working with the system. If the marooned
hold is for a patron of the library that owns the item, however,
we usually will leave it up to that library whether to move holds
back to the bib level.
Transfer Paged
Holds
The Transfer Paged Items mode allows you to review requests/holds
for your patrons that caused a paging slip to be produced, but about
which nothing has been heard for more than 72 hrs. In some cases this
may reflect a lending library that is slow to print paging slips or
to retrieve items and scan them to put them in transit to the borrowing
library. In such cases, unless the delay is way past 72 hrs, it is
probably best to wait a few days.
However, this mode also reveals holds that have gotten "marooned" for
one reason or another.
Most common is the situation where a request or hold is placed and,
before the item can be retrieved from the shelf and shipped to the
borrowing library, it is instead checked out to a local patron. That
this should happen is in keeping with the principal that local patrons
have first dibs on local materials. However, the result is that the
original request must wait at least until this particular item is returned
before it stands a chance of being filled. If more local patrons request
it, the hold may linger on this item indefinitely.
In such instances it is MUCH better to transfer the hold to another
Available item, if there is one. Transfer Paged Items makes this very
easy.
If there are no Available copies right now, indicated by "ineligible" in
the Status column of the Transfer Paged Items display, it a wise move
to cancel the item level hold for your patron and place a new bib level
hold.
This function will also catch holds placed inadvertently for items
on the shelf. Such MilCirc holds do not generate a paging slip, so
can easily get overlooked.
For full info on this feature, consult section 105996 of the online
manual.
If your initials and password do not work to access the function,
ask MSL staff to add permission 401 to your id.
View
Holds
The View Holds mode of Millennium Circulation allows a library to
review items in all Minerva collections for which holds have been placed
on behalf of its patrons. It also shows the items in its collection
on which holds have been placed by other libraries.
In using this feature, please note the following:
- Outstanding Holds are compiled in a process that runs automatically
every night. Holds placed after 2am will not appear until the next
morning.
- To generate your list, change "Limit to holds placed before" as
appropriate to your needs, then click View Outstanding Holds.
- The "Outstanding" count is the sum of item level and
bib level holds for the library's patrons, which are also provided
as separate figures.
- The "On Holdshelf" count will give you an idea of whether
it is time to run the Clear the Holdshelf function.
- Information provided in the table can be sorted by clicking the
column header. It is often useful to sort the listing by date, patron
name or title. Clicking a second time on the same header reverses
the sort order.
- The Hold Info column contains the 3-character location associated
with the home library of the person for whom the hold has been placed.
The five-character shelving location is shown at the end of the info
in the Description column, but only if the hold is at the item level.
- If the hold has not moved to the item level, you will see "No
Call Num" at the end of the Description column entry.
- A good many of the bib level holds that are shown will not ultimately
turn into an item level hold on your copy because some other library's
copy will become available before yours. If you own a copy of a few
bestsellers this fact will greatly inflate the number of bib level
holds you see, not only for your patrons but for the patrons of other
libraries.
- The Hold Status column can be confusing. Here are some examples
that will explain what is meant by various entries:
- "19:14/31" - There are 19 copies of this title
in Minerva and this patron is 14th on a list of 31 patrons
with bib level holds for the title.
- "1/1 DUE: Tues Nov 02 2004" - The item is in circ
and was due on Nov 2. This patron is the one person with an
item level hold on this item and is therefore first in line
to get it.
- "1/1 AVAILABLE" - There is a single item level
request for this item, but apparently it has not been paged
and put In Transit to the requesting library. If more than
2-3 days has passed since the Date Placed something may have
gone awry with this request. The owning library may be behind
in printing Paging Slips, or the system's Request Processing
mechanisms may be somehow at fault.
Clear Holdshelf
Clear Holdshelf is an important and useful "housekeeping" tool.
Innovative recommends running Clear Holdshelf weekly. Clear Holdshelf
does two things at the same time:
- Clears holds whose Not Needed After date has passed
- Changes the status of items that have been on the Hold Shelf longer
than the applicable loan rule specifies. If other holds are pending,
the function moves the item on to the appropriate hold, setting the
item status to IN TRANSIT if appropriate.
To see what Clear Holdshelf has done, and to follow through with reshelving
or shipping items, it is imperative that you print the Clear Holdshelf
report using the Print button in the upper right of the MilCirc screen.
If you forget to do so, you will not later be able to determine what
was done and what actions should follow.
Here is an abbreviated example of the report that you should print
from Clear Holdshelf:
================================
Expired Holds for Books not on the Holdshelf
PATRON: Doe, John
TITLE: One man's wilderness : an Alaskan odyssey / by Sam Keith ; from
the journals and photographs of Richard Proenneke.
CALL NO: 917.98 Kei rplnf
PLACED DATE: 08-11-2004 12:04PM
EXP. DATE: 10-11-2004
PATRON: Smith, Mary
TITLE: Peterson's scholarships, grants & prizes.
CALL NO: 378 Pet 2003 rplnf
BARCODE: 34276001037007
PLACED DATE: 08-24-2004 03:55PM
EXP. DATE: 10-25-2004
...
Items to be Reshelved or Sent IN-TRANSIT to Owning Location --Tuesday
November
09 09:57PM
PATRON: Potter, Harry
TITLE: An imperfect god : George Washington, his slaves, and the
creation of America / Henry Wiencek.
CALL NO: 973.41 Wie rplnf
BARCODE: 34276001021993
PLACED DATE: 02-02-2004 03:47PM
EXP. DATE: 02-02-2004
CUR HOLDSHELF: Rumford Public Library
...
Holds Moved to Next Patron in Queue --Tuesday November 09 09:57PM
FROM PATRON: Jones, John
TO PATRON: Smith, John
PHONE: 369-0037
TITLE: Northern lights / Nora Roberts.
CALL NO: F Rob c.2 rplfi
BARCODE: 34276001546619
PLACED DATE: 11-08-2004 10:37AM
EXP. DATE: 11-08-2004
CUR HOLDSHELF: Rumford Public Library
NEW PICKUP: Rumford Public Library
Items to be Sent IN-TRANSIT to a New Pickup Location --Tuesday November
09
09:57PM
OLD PATRON: Cronkite, Walter
NEW PATRON: Jennings, Peter
TITLE: The purpose driven church : growth without compromising your
message & mission / Rick Warren.
CALL NO: 253 War rplnf
BARCODE: 34276001376264
PLACED DATE: 08-05-2004 07:14PM
EXP. DATE: 08-05-2004
CUR HOLDSHELF: Rumford Public Library
NEW PICKUP: McArthur PL
...
SUMMARY -- Tuesday November 09 09:57PM
Expired holds for books on holdshelf:
23 to be removed from holdshelf entirely
19 to be reshelved or set in-transit
4 moved to next person in hold queue and set in-transit
1 moved to next person in hold queue at same location
Total items on holdshelf:20
