ILL fixes and enhancements Thu 7/10 10pm

Several fixes and enhancements are coming to the NHAIS ILL System tonight (Thursday, July 10). The system will be offline briefly starting at 10 p.m. to install software updates.

-When a potential lender configured to share item availability status had more than one holding for a title, the program was only checking the first holding for availability. If that copy was not available, the lender was skipped even if other copies at the same location were available. The code has been updated so that all holdings at the potential lender will be checked for availability and that location will get the request if at least one copy is available for ILL.

-Some potential lenders have not been added to a lender list because of minor discrepancies in how titles are cataloged. This particularly applied to video materials with part number information in MARC subfield 245n. For example, the ILL software was reading and displaying "$a Roseanne $n The Complete First Season" as "RoseanneThe Complete First Season" so titles did not match. The title will now display correctly on the request and title matching (used when there's no standard number match) should be improved.

-The lender list build process failed if a request was created with a NHU-PAC (union catalog) record lacking standard numbers (ISBN, ISSN, etc.). This has been corrected and a title/author check (or just title check if no author) will be done if the union catalog source record doesn't have numeric identifiers.

-When a lender wants to change the due date on a request and clicks the calendar icon, the calendar will now open to the month of the due date rather than the current month. The date will appear in blue on the calendar. (See the blog post Much Ado about Due Dates for more about changing due dates.)

-Lending library staff will now be able to edit their Current Lender’s Note as long as they are the current lender. Until now, a Current Lender’s Note would immediately move to the Lender’s Notes field and could not be edited or deleted. With tonight's release, a Current Lender’s Note will remain in the Current Lender’s Note field for the lender as long as the library is the current lender. The borrowing library will see the note in the Lender’s Notes field. If the lending library edits the note, the edited note will be displayed to the borrower. If the lending library deletes the note, it will no longer display for the lender or borrower. If a lender does not fill the request, their Current Lender’s Note will move to Lenders’ Notes and will no longer be editable. If the request is retried and goes back to the same lender, that location will be able to add/edit/delete a new Current Lender’s Note but will not be able to edit the previous note.

-Non-Returnable requests filled with PDFs will now be automatically updated to Received and immediately moved to Complete status as soon as the attached document has been downloaded by either the patron or staff. (See the 18-minute video Placing ILL Requests: Copies from Magazines if you're unfamiliar with non-returnables.)