Coping with a disconnected catalog

One of the largest library catalogs in the state will be offline Monday through Wednesday (October 21-23). Should that change your routine as an ILL borrower? In most cases, no. Place your request and see what happens, as usual.

But what if you don't find a title you're sure is somewhere in the system or you don't find enough copies available before submitting a multi-copy request? Search again after Wednesday.

And what if your request goes to Retry or Unfilled status? Or, owing to a bug that's expected to be fixed later this month, what if it goes to Awaiting Approval status when it should have become Unfilled? It may be worthwhile to try again after Wednesday by changing the status to Approved - Send. If the request was created while the catalog was offline, it may further be worthwhile to use the Rebuild Lender List function (for individual requests only--never for multi-copy requests) before choosing Approved - Send.

Why? Requests created while the catalog is offline will not include any locations from that catalog on your lender list. Rebuild Lender List does a new search for holding libraries to create a brand new list of potential lenders. Requests created before the catalog goes offline will already include locations in the catalog on the lender list--but those locations will be skipped while they're set to be on vacation Monday through Wednesday.