September 11, 2020

System Accomodations for Quarantine


To accommodate the quarantine time required for ILL materials we have adjusted the number of days that the NHAIS ILL System allows for various parts of the ILL process. These numbers are based on our best guesses about how the 72-hour quarantine will intersect with specific van routes and procedures. 

When ILL requests resume on Tuesday due dates will be calculated as 60 days from the date shipped. This means if an item is not "checked in" by the owning library within 60 days of being marked "shipped" it will move into "overdue" status (which won't stop you from doing whatever you need to do with the transaction). If you check ILL materials out to borrowing libraries in your local circulation system you will want to adjust your settings there so that the due dates match the NHAIS ILL System due dates.

Similarly, the "need by date" on a request will be set 45 days from when it is placed.

The days to supply value (counting from "shipped" by lender to "received" by borrower) is now 28.

The days to respond (how long a request will sit in a library's request manager unanswered before moving on to the next potential lender) remains 3 days (the system setting is 4 because of how the system counts time for this value, but it is functionally 3 days). This is why it is essential that you mark items "shipped" BEFORE they go into quarantine if you are going to fill a request.

For those libraries that had specified Lending Policy Exceptions some adjustments were needed as well. Most of the libraries who had these exceptions set up (check out Seeing Your Lending Policy Exceptions to figure out if you are one of them) were using the default setting (previously 42) for calculating due dates but had specified some formats of material that they would not lend. We changed these to 60, and kept the non-loaned formats as non-loaned. 

Some libraries have more complicated exceptions with different amounts of time allowed for different formats. These libraries will be contacted directly by email next week and will need to revise their lending policy exceptions to allow for quarantine time.

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