Hold request link not always appearing in OPAC when it should

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

Description:
The Hold request link does not always appear in OPAC when it should.  sys number 134930 has many items. For those that are on loan, the hold request link should appear in all cases, but it does not.

There are other cases where the item is available and the link, correctly, does not appear. And item 7 is on loan and the link, correctly, *does* appear. But:
Item 4 is on loan and the link (incorrectly) does not appear.
Item 5 is on loan and has a request already, but the link (incorrectly) does not appear.

Resolution:
The appearance of the Request option in the Items List in the OPAC depends on the xxx50 tab_hold_request "PRE" (and "INFO") values.   You have these:
PRE        check_hold_request_a
PRE        check_hold_request_b
PRE        check_hold_request_d
PRE        check_hold_request_c
PRE        check_hold_request_g
PRE        check_hold_request_l
PRE        check_hold_request_n

...

INFO       check_hold_request_k
INFO       check_hold_request_o

NOTE: In the case of Primo OvP it's the "HL-GRP-PRE" lines which are relevant.

Most of these are straightforward and clearly are not what is preventing the display of the "Request".   The role of item availability is more complicated.  The logic:

 * if check_hold_request_a is not specified, "Request" will appear

 * if  check_hold_request_a is specified and tab15 col. 8 = N, "Request" will not appear

 * if tab15 col. 8 = Y (or R), the patron has z305_hold_on_shelf 'Y', and the item is available, the "Request" option will appear.

 * if check_hold_request_a is specified, tab15 col. 8 = Y (or R), the patron has z305_hold_on_shelf 'N', and the item is available, the "Request" option will not appear.

{Note that the patron Z305-HOLD-ON-SHELF comes into play only when the TAB15-SHELF-TYPE (tab15, col. 8) = "Y" or "R".}

In addition, "like items" can come into play It's not simply a matter of whether this specific item is available but whether there's a "like item" available. Since you have specified "N" in tab15.eng, column 11 ("if this column is set to Y, the request will be for the specific item, not another like copy"), then the programs look for like items which are available and, if found, they do not display the "Request" option.

To demonstrate this, I changed my z305_hold_on_shelf to "Y":
SQL> update z305 set z305_hold_on_shelf = 'Y' where z305_rec_key like 'ID651345%';
so I would be able to request "available" items. With this setting, I now see Request for almost all the items.
The solution, of course, is not to change everyone's z305_hold_on_shelf to 'Y'.

It may be that you would want to change col. 11 in tab15.eng to "Y" for certain item statuses. You can think about that or experiment with it, but, more likely, the better solution will be to differentiate the items for this title so that they are not considered to be like items. This is the issue we have been discussing in Article 000033201 (" Hold requests for multivolume monographs") (link below).

As a test, you should populate the z30_enumeration_a as described there and see if that resolves this problem.