Care and maintenance of hold requests

Owned by Julie Petzold
Last updated: Feb 10, 2023 by Kara Young
6 min read
About this page

FUWG Project Name: Care and maintenance of hold requests

Page content contributors:

Kara Young, Julie Petzold, Jackson Childs

Contents:

 Brief description of project

Brief description of project

Review all workflow steps in Resource Request Monitoring. Determine what problems may exist and what actions might be recommended. Develop regular process of review for these workflow steps in future. 

 Information Gathering

Information gathering

Answer the following for each workflow step:

  • Can this be dealt with remotely, or do we need stacks access?
  • How often does this need to be reviewed?
  • Can a regular process be built?

Workflow Steps:

  • Request communicated to remote storage
  • Pickup from shelf
  • On hold shelf
  • Transit item
  • Undefined
  • Waiting for Remote Storage
  • In process

4/2/20 Updates

  • About half In Process–seem to be cataloging
  • About half In Transit–a large portion originated in Technical Services

4/17/20 Updates

  • 18,000 items in transit to off-site storage
  • 12,000 items in transit to RD
  • Collection management workflows from the last 6 months
    • Is this stuff sitting somewhere that hasn’t been sent and/or processed
  • What is the end product of this work?
    • Jackson Childs Recommendation of how each category should be reviewed going forward.
  • ReCAP data is now in Cognos
  • Send the list as a ticket and cross-compare to Cognos data
  • Is there stuff at Iron Mountain? Believe everything has been sent. But Amy can confirmed.
  • ReCAP is not staffed, so they aren’t accessioning
  • Patron physical item hold requests that were really old. Do they need review? Jackson: doesn’t seem to be a large number.  
  • 20,000 transit to reshelving seems to be originating from Tech Services. Is this part of their workflow? They could be on the shelves… are there outstanding work orders.

4/30/20 Updates

  • List of items in transit to offsite storage (18K items) sent 4/20/20 to LTS so they can run a batch check of items at depository. Awaiting response.
  • List of items in transit to Resource Sharing, Borrow Direct, and ILL (~10K items) given to Resource Sharing for review. Possibly most or all of these items can be deleted. Awaiting response to see is RS can batch check items that have been removed from their system.
  • Spreadsheet of workflow steps updated.
  • Undefined requests are being reviewed individually. 
  • Approximately 20K in transit requests appeared to have originated in Technical services unit. Many of these appear to have internal or temporary barcodes, suggesting the items were not in hand. We need to develop a communication strategy for collaborating with these units to reduce or move these requests. We should also consider creating a best practices document going forward that would exclude creating an "in transit" request before the item is actually in transit to the permanent location.

4/30/20 FuWG Meeting notes:

  • Jackson set some lists to LTS, made updates to the page, emailed a list to Jason for items in transit to RS
  • "Undefined requests" with 3,000 requests
    • Some are to pseudopatrons, some aren't
    • Most are on loan
    • Some of these items were lost in Aleph, but the status was different, and then they were no longer lost in Alma
    • Not much ExLibris documentation on these types of request, hoping to learn more
  • Option for resolution: if they are really old requests, we could probably delete them; apply the Absent Items workflow to these items
  • In Transit from Tech Services
    • Many have temporary barcodes
    • Suspect that the request status was being used in "not the best way" given that these requests haven't been cleared
    • From Jaime: The transit to reshelving charges would need to be reviewed, but many are probably on red trucks in Widener waiting to be checked in, in bins/pallets of bins at HD waiting to be accessioned, and/or in boxes at ReCAP from DTD workflows waiting to be scanned in.
  • Priorities for now:
    • End Goal: How often do these queues need to be reviewed for cleanup? What is the process for future cleanup?
    • Old patron requests
    • Waiting for Remote Storage

5/14/20 FuWG Meeting notes:

12/14/20 FWG Meeting action items:

  • Put copy fo Jackson's report onto the project page's wiki
  • Amy Boucher brings recommendations to ELT – particularly regular maintenance of "old" requests
  • Jason Clarke , or surrogate, should look at some of these "in transit RS" requests to make sure NCIP is working as expected
  • KY to cancel stale LOST requests; waiting on list
  • KY to cancel all requests older than 1 year (question) if possible? Waiting on list

4/8/21 FWG Meeting review

 Cleanup tasks

Cleanup tasks

Type of RequestProposed cleanup measureWhoDate AssignedDate CompletedNotes
Requests
General Hold request
  • Close




Move Perm
  • Determine date cut-off
    • 6 months
  • HD/RD items: check LAS status
    • If not found, mark item as missing
    • Follow standard missing item processing
  • Stacks items: mark as missing
    • search process


  • 4/22/21 decision: mark items missing

KY




Move Temp - does not include RS items
  • Determine date cut-off
    • 6 months
  • HD/RD items: check LAS status
    • If not found, mark as missing and move to stacks search process
  • Stacks items: mark as missing and proceed with search process


  • 4/22/21 decision: mark items missing

MoveTempRequests_20210422.xlsx

HD temp move items NOS 20210415.xlsx

No RD items

Resolved 3 on shelf @HD items




Patron Phys item

Excludes hold shelves

  • Expired patron physical item requests: close out
    • Excludes on-hold shelf status items
  • For non-expired requests:
    • Determine date cut-off
      • 6 months
    • Cancel requests
      • Turn off cancel notifications when missing job is run
      • Check with Amy Spruill Harder
    • HD/RD items: check LAS status
      • If not found, move to stacks search process
    • Stacks items: mark missing, search process


  • 4/22/21 update: Spruill asks Amy about date cut off and cancellation notices
  • 5/20/21 decision: turn off cancellation notice, 6-month cut-off, mark items as missing
    • Review what is left: with so few people processing these reports, can we quickly mark things missing from picklists if they are not pulled as part of the request fulfillment process
    • Items out from HD/RD: if they are "in," no problem; if they are "out," mark as missing in Alma

Patron physical requests

Patron physical requests- RS (over 400)

On shelf status of HD items in Request Status

RD items not on shelf:

32044067184218
32044069528396
32044112945142
32044121932875




Restore

(usually result from a temp move request)

  • Determine date cut-off
  • HD/RD items: check LAS status
    • If not found, move to stacks search process
  • Stacks items: search process


  • 5/20/21 decision:
    • most items are likely an acquisitions backlog of Widener items, do nothing for now
      • Can we remove/change the due back date
    • Jason Clarke , clean up item with Request ID 42096208610003941

HD restore items on shelf status

RD restore items on shelf status





Transit for reshelving

(not for workorder items)

NOTE: what about items in transit from Tech Services? these items might, in fact, not be missing.

  • Determine date cut-off
  • HD/RD items: check LAS status
    • If not found, move to stacks search process
  • Stacks items: search process


  • 5/20/21 decision: anything prior to January 2020, mark items as missing
    • Kara processes WID first
      • takes list
      • checks HD/RD inventory sytem
        • if items are marked "in" in those systems, she updates Alma status
        • if items are marked "out" in those systems, see next
      • marks remaining items missing
      • items enter regular missing search process (or, more likely, special project for pandemic times search cleanup)
      • missing search process concludes - found items are marked in place (and returned to HD/RD as appropriate), missing items go to next steps (collections librarians)
        • HD/RD are told of missing items to update their inventory system
        • RD items committed to retain are replaced
For RS items- examine what is outstanding and design a process for periodic review going forward


In Process items (work orders)
ILL workorders (1100+ items)
  • Review any open work orders
  • Compare to ILLiad/BD status
  • Close any completed work orders

Jason Clarke

4/8/21
6/10/21: should be mostly gone
Reserves Scanning
  • Review any open work orders
  • Close any completed work orders

Spruill Harder

4/8/21
6/10/21: only a few items






Recommended practice or policy

Recommend cleaning these up once a year (early summer/June). Reports can be generated from the "Monitor Requests & Item Processes" queue in Alma or reports can be created in Analytics.


Type of RequestSteps for Cleanup
Request Communicated to Storage
  1. Cross-check list with HD staff
Pickup from Shelf
  1. Determine cutoff date (6 months)

Patron Phys item

(excluding hold shelf)

  1. Determine cutoff date (6 months)
  2. Cancel requests on lost items
Transit Items
  1. Determine cutoff date (6 months)
  2. Exclude work orders
  3. Exclude items coming from tech service units
  4. Check LAS status for HD/RD items
    1. if items are marked "in" in those systems, update Alma status
    2. if items are marked "out" in those systems, mark missing in Alma
  5. Mark missing in Alma non-HD/RD items

ILL workorders (BD/ILL)

(lower priority)

  1. Review any open work orders
  2. Compare to ILLiad/BD status
  3. Close any completed work orders
Restore requestsAre these needed any longer?

Reserves Scanning workorder

(lower priority)

  1. Determine cutoff date (6 months)
  2. Close any completed work orders

Communication plan

Discuss recommendations at June 16, 2022 FWG meeting.

Communicate to collection owners in advance that this process will begin. The initial batch will be large. 

Communicate to ITS/Langdell