• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 20

Description:
Where can I find a description of "consortial borrowing" functions in Aleph?

Resolution:
The following is from the "What's New in Version 18" document:

Consortial Borrowing. PDQ functions are an integral part of the Circulation module and use standard circulation workflows. The following functions make up the PDQ suite of capabilities:

1. Patron registration at the consortium level.
Patrons may be granted consortium level privileges when being registered by one of the consortium’s members. This registration defines the circulation privileges that the patron will have at other libraries in the consortium where he is not registered. This registration may be either manual or automatic, and is subject to consortium defined policies.

2. Title requests.
Patrons may place hold requests at the title level. This may be done from the OPAC full view or from the Circulation module. The system will manage a queue of potential suppliers that hold requestable items which belong to the requested title, and try to fulfill the request using an item of one of the potential suppliers, according to a preset roster. The request fulfillment attempts will go on until the request is fulfilled or expired. Note that a potential supplier may be any consortium member from which the patron is allowed to request, and the requested pickup location may be anywhere within the consortium, subject to library defined criteria. The system will automatically manage moving the item from place to place, until it reaches the requested pickup location.

3. Loan and return anywhere.
An item may be loaned and returned anywhere within the consortium. If an item is returned outside of its owning library the system will automatically manage transferring the item back to its owning library.

4. Cross library activity reports
The system can report statistics of cross library activities such as how many times items were exchanges between libraries and how long it took for requests to get fulfilled.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013