Call Slip Item Required: Preventing Requests for Titles that Have No Items Attached

Background

The Call Slip Item Required setting in the OPAC Configuration-Miscellaneous screen in Voyager System Administration can be used to control the specificity of requesting in the OPAC. This option is intended to allow a library to determine whether call slip requests may or may not be placed on records that do not have items attached.

Leaving this option unchecked COULD allow call slip requests to be placed on materials that are configured to be “non-callslippable”—e.g. patron group/item type combinations that have the Call Slip or UB boxes unchecked in the matrix; items that are LOST or MISSING or in some other non-requestable item status. In effect, if you leave the Call Slip Item Required parameter unchecked almost any item could be requested from the local OPAC, because it makes the request active at the title level—it doesn’t require an item record to be attached to the title in order for the request to be placed.

Other Issues

Does your library want your “On Order” records to display in the OPAC, but not want to have them requested? Do you receive requests for titles that you can’t fill because there are no items attached to the bibliographic record? Then checking the Call Slip Item Required option is probably right for your library. If checked, Call Slip Item Required will prevent requests from falling on materials with no item records attached to them.
When Call Slip Item Required is checked, the call slip form that users see in WebVoyage is simplified: the extra row that allows users to "specify an item not listed above" disappears.
If you have serial titles in your database that don’t have associated item records, the Call Slip Item Required setting would affect requests on those titles. If Call Slip Item Required is checked, requests would not land on serial titles without item records. This could be either a good or a bad thing for your library, depending on your record-creation workflow and circulation policies.

Recommendation

Unless you really need to support call slip requests on "itemless" titles like serials, check the box for the Call Slip Item Required option found in System Administration-->OPAC Configuration-->Miscellaneous.