Local Holds Test (December 1 2006 through January 30 2007)
At the LINC Policy Council meeting on October 26, the following Local Holds Test was approved:
The Lincoln Trail Libraries are strongly committed to sharing our resources; thus we are open to sharing most of our materials freely and widely through interlibrary loan. However, we are mindful of the fact that both our public and school libraries are almost solely funded through local property taxes; our libraries also have to be responsible to and for our local communities.
In an effort to serve our communities better, while still attempting to act in the best interest of resource sharing to the wider Lincoln Trail community, a new test of Local Holds will be implemented.
Local Holds shall be defined as: certain materials will be reserved for only the owning library's patrons for a defined period of time. Only the owning library's patrons may place requests for the item. Public library reciprocal borrowing rules will still be followed; should a patron from another public library be physically present to check out the item on the shelf, they will be permitted to do so.
Local Holds will have the following restrictions:
- No more than 5% of the library's total collection may be placed in the Local Holds itype.
- The Local Holds itype will be limited in time; libraries will be asked to leave materials in the itype for no more than 6 months. Items that have a copyright date of more than a year ago are not appropriate for local holds.
- Acquisitions records (on order records) are not eligible for local hold itypes.
Testing Parameters:
We are cognizant of the fact that creating new itypes or re-ordering the queue may have unintended consequences in the Horizon database. We do understand that the test of this method of local holds may have to be abandoned, or may not work in future versions of Horizon.
With this understanding, the test will occur in this fashion:
- Any library that chooses to participate in the Local Holds test will be permitted to do so. However, no library will be forced to participate in the test, if the board and director have philosophical difficulties with the concept of local holds.
- The test will run for a period of 2 months, beginning December 1. Prior to a final policy decision, a special meeting will be held to solicit input and comment from the LINC Directors Group.
- Any area of the collection may be put into the local holds itype, if it conforms to the Local Holds restrictions.
What does this mean for my library and patrons?
- The test is optional. Directors decide if they want to participate or not. However, library staff need to educate patrons that some LINC libraries are testing this and more items may be unrequestable because of this test.
- Local holds will be configured so that only borrowers from the library that owns the item will be able to request the local hold item. However, a library’s borrowers are not required to pick the item up at the library that owns it.
- Once the local hold itype is set up for each library, that library’s staff is responsible for changing items to the local hold itype.
- If only one library owns an item and that item is set to a local hold itype, patrons will not be able to place a request on that title.
- As long as at least one item, attached to a title, is not set to a local hold or other nonrequestable itype, patrons will be able to place requests on that title. Only requestable items will be selected by Horizon to fill requests.
- Because acquisitions records are excluded from local holds, patrons will be able to place holds on titles that are on order. Once an item is actually received, if that item is then changed to a local hold itype, that particular item will not be used by Horizon to fill requests. If no other item is ever added to that title by other libraries or that item is not changed to allow systemwide holds, the existing patron requests will age and eventually expire; also, no other library’s patron will be able to request that item.
- LTLS will publish which libraries are testing Local Holds on the LINC Update blog so everyone is aware of this.
- LINC Policy Council will solicit input from the LINC Directors Group members on the impact of local holds during January.
- LINC Policy Council will consider the impact of the test and continuation of Local Holds at its February 14 meeting.