Title hold with multiple available copies prevents renewal

[Holly Brennan]

We're running 2.9.0.

Title-level hold on bib record (with multiple available copies) prevents renewal of the only copy currently checked out, citing it’s needed for a hold.

THE DISCOVERY:

A patron asked staff to renew an item. The renewal failed, with the typical message saying the copy was needed for a hold. Not unusual. Staff told them it couldn’t be renewed.

THE SLEUTHING:

My extremely observant coworker later realized that we own 5 copies of this book under the same title (rare for us, but this is an old, local history book). One copy is in Reference, not holdable, but that still left 3 available copies. In addition, the hold request was already fulfilled by another copy and was waiting on the holds shelf.

I placed two more title-level holds on this record, which both showed up in the pull list with the other available copies as the Current Copy.

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Current Copy Status Title Type
000115784 Waiting for Capture Kachemak Bay commu… T
000092639 Waiting for Capture Kachemak Bay commu… T
000081292 Ready for Pickup Kachemak Bay commu… T
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Still, when I tried to renew the only copy checked out, it failed.

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COPY_NEEDED_FOR_HOLD Barcode: 000115781
Copy is needed to fulfill a hold
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I have reproduced this issue with additional records, checking out one copy, placing a title hold (which targets a different copy), then renewal failure citing the checked out copy’s barcode rather than the targeted copy’s barcode (which would make sense to stop a renewal).

[Kathy Lussier (klussier)]

Adding a link to a brief IRC chat with Holly in which I described using hold ratios in circ policies to prevent renewals so that this problem won't happen.

http://irc.evergreen-ils.org/evergreen/2016-08-12#i_261261

[Terran McCanna (tmccanna)]

We experimented with setting up the copy-hold ratio (and disabling the COPY_NEEDED_FOR_HOLD setting) and it worked great with normal items, but we ran into problems with age-protected items and A/V items (which we don't allow holds on outside of a system in our consortium).

Problem Scenario: Patron Jane Doe in library system X has a copy of a new book checked out that is age-protected. 20 other library systems have copies of the same book, and patrons at those other system have 30 outstanding holds, but there aren't any other patrons in System X that have outstanding holds. None of the outstanding holds are able to target Jane Doe's copy, but the copy-hold ratio setting only looks at the total copies and total holds, so it doesn't allow her to renew. (If COPY_NEEDED_FOR_HOLD is in use instead of the copy-hold ratio, then it DOES allow her to renew.)

(This is pretty much the same for our A/V materials - even if they aren't age restricted, they still only allow holds within a system.)

We ended up having to switch back to using the COPY_NEEDED_FOR_HOLD setting because staff were reporting so many problems with patrons not being able to renew their new books & DVDs when there weren't any outstanding holds that could target them.

If there were a way for the copy-hold ratio to look at the number of "permitted" holds rather than the total number of holds, then it would work perfectly. Or, if there were a way to use the copy-hold ratio circulation policy system-wide only on non-AV materials and non-age protected materials and then fall back to using an in-system copy-hold ratio policy for AV materials and age protected materials, then that would work. I haven't been able to figure out a way to make that work in the circulation policy interface, though.