Best Practices Recommendation: Hold Shelf Life Setting

It has come to our attention that many libraries are experiencing the problem, during the processing of incoming UB materials, of items routing right back to their home libraries upon discharge to the Hold Shelf. This occurs more frequently during holiday periods when delivery and processing might be delayed. It has also been observed in libraries regionally where ILDS delivery is not stable.

In the I-SHARE environment, when a call slip is processed it immediately goes to the “In Transit On Hold to xxxlibrary…” status. At that point the Hold Shelf Life setting in System Administration-->Circulation-->Policy Definitions-->Matrix-->Intervals tab kicks in. However, when delivery is slow or when libraries close and don’t process ILL for periods of time, the routing problems increase. When we came up on Voyager in 2002 the consortial recommendation for the Hold Shelf Life setting was 14 days For some libraries who encounter higher numbers of UB processing problems, it may be prudent for you to consider increasing the Hold Shelf Life setting to a higher number. Experiment with higher settings than 14 to see what works most effectively for your library.