Talis Forums

[NRROBERT]

We've taken on a new site this summer and its hoped that we would have some level of reciprocal borrowing; its an FE college and we are a University. The new site has been added to Alto and the stock added to Alto as Standard Loans, etc.

What we've been asked is whether its possible to restrict loans from the new site to 5 items, whilst allowing the borrowers an allocation of 10 items in total (so the users can borrow items from the other sites). To clarify, they would like all borrowers at all sites to be able to loan 10 items, but of those 10 only 5 can be loaned from the new site. As i understood it you cannot define loan limits by borrower or site.

Any ideas would be gratefully received.
Cheers,
Nick

Nick Roberts
Assistant Librarian - ESS
University of Glamorgan

[Katharine Spellman]

Hi Nick,

Overall loan limits are set via the borrower rules so you would control the maximum number of loans for the borrower type in question via this mechanism.

The other way to limit the amount of material a borrower can have is via the Loan Type rules which are picked up via the Loan rules (both in Parameter Management | Rules | Circulation). The Loan rules are limited by the site profile, borrower type and item type combination. This means you should be able to set up a new loan type rule for the new site which limits the amount of material which can be borrowed to 5 items. Then use this Loan type in the Loan rules. You could try setting this up on the mis server first to check it out.

Best wishes,
Katharine
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Katharine Spellman
Business Specialist
Talis Information Ltd
Email: katharine.spellman@talis.com

[Andy Bussey]

Nick,

I haven't any experience of restricting the number of loans from a site, but at Sheffield we used to have different loan periods for items from different sites (I don't recommend this to anyone!)

In theory, the loan rules can provide different rules (due dates or number of items) for material for different sites. In practice, however, we wanted OPAC renewals to all happen at site TWOC and Talis Message Renewals to happen at site REN. Also, we wanted people to be able renew items at the counter or a self-service machine at every site. The only way to achieve this was to have different item types for the material at different sites (eg 'Short Loan' and 'Short Loan (Health Library)'.) This involves creating double the number of loan rules and borrower rules, but it works.
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Andy Bussey, University of Sheffield

[Steve Campbell]

I am trying to set up the same thing as the originator of this thread at Glamorgan. We want people to be limited to 5 loans from the Short Loan Collection (which is already defined as a separate site) although they can borrow 20 or more overall. I have set a value of 5 in Rules, Circ, Borrower, Borrower type for the combination of borrower type and site, but then if a borrower already has more than 5 items from other sites it doesn't let them borrow any at all from Short Loan.

[Tim Hodson]

hi Steve,

You will need to use a loan type in this case.
let me outline a hypothetical example which should demonstrate the sums involved...

Borrower type max loans provides the ceiling - lets say it's 20.

loantype "normal loan" has a maximum of 10 items
loantype "dvd loan" has a maximum of 5 items
loantype "cd loan" has a maximum of 5 items
loantype "short loan" has a maximum of 5 items

borrower A could have 10 normal 5 dvd and 5 CD
borrower B could have 5 normal 5 dvd 5 cd and 5 short loan,
borrower C could have 8 normal 3 dvd 5 cd and 4 short loan
and so on for any combination of loans that is firstly within the loan limit and secondly totals no more than 20.

you may have several item types within a short loan collection, but they must all have the same loan type.

does that clarify how it works?
_________________
Cheers,
Tim
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Tim Hodson
Consultant
Talis Information
www.talis.com
www.timhodson.com
informationtakesover.co.uk (blog)

[Steve Campbell]

Thanks Tim, but this isn't working and I suspect a bug or even a defect.

Incidentally I can't find anywhere in Alto Config to set what you call "Borrower type max loans" - it is a maximum defined by a COMBINATION of borrower type and site. As we want to restict loans at short loan I have set the max loans for borrower type UG at site ZSL2 to 5. At other sites it is set to 20.

Suppose a borrower already has 10 loans from the Main Library but none from ZSL2. If I now try to issue one at ZSL2 I get the message; "Total loans limit 5 Count 11". In other words it is counting ALL current loans regardless of site and as they are above the limit for this site it won't allow any at this site.

Also the exception message can be overriden by staff in Alto issue, but not at a self issue machine which is what we use in short loan.