Currently, course reserve waiting lists for materials that are checked out, if any exist, seem to be a manual process on most campuses. We would like to see if this process could be automated through Alma.
Some caveats are to be considered before going with such a system:
1. Holds must be placed by reserve staff, not by patrons
2. Notification to patron who asked for hold must be immediate
3. Holds must self-expire after a short time (i.e., 15 minutes) to not keep a book sitting forever on a hold shelf while other students are asking for it.
Issues to be determined by testing:
* When the hold expires, will the notification go automatically to the next patron in the hold queue?
* Should/can we limit the number of holds on any one item preventing it from being tied up for long periods waiting to be picked up, while patrons may be coming to the desk asking for it?
* Can/should we configure this so only staff can place these holds?
We wanted to try in Alma allowing hold requests to be placed on course reserve items with a very short expiration (15 minutes). Since hold available notifications go out as soon as the item is checked in, it seems like this might work. However, when I tried to configure the TOU, I was unable to enter a hold shelf expiration shorter than 1 day. We would need to submit an enhancement request if we wanted to be able to do this.