- Materials Booking must be “turned on” for your library, which means it must be added to staff accounts.
- Authorizations must be given for the Various features
- Loan rules must be added to your library profile
All of this begins with the director opening a ticket.
What should be booked?
Setting up records to be booked:
Bookable item records
An item that will be booked is created very much like an item that will be circulated. You need a Bibliographic record and an Item record. What sets these items apart is the loan rule that is applied. Most Bookable items will likely not circulate. MHLS staff will work with you to create bookable items. Initially, this will be done by sending a ticket to techsupport@midhudson.org to get started, but once your rules are in place you can create brief bibs, attach items, and use an Itype that has been defined as a bookable. The item record will be much like items you create for circulation, except that the itype will be unique.
Bookable Itypes
Anew set of Itypes have been created and you can see that they are less about the item description and more about the way the item will be booked. Each of these Itypes will have generic rules set up in the Loan Rule Determiner table.
For example: Any item that books for 7 days will be booked for that span. When the patron picks up the item they must return it on or before the booking period elapses. If they do not, they will be billed for the cost of the item price (the item must reflect this). The generic loan rules will apply to all ptypes and all locations. We do not have the resources to set up unique definitions for individual libraries at this time.
