Patron has already a like item on loan"

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Article Type: General
Product: Aleph
Product Version: 20, 21, 22, 23

Description:
Since we've been on v20, when circulation checks out multiple items on the same record to a patron that are considered 'like copies' (ie. record #2092602), they get the following message on the check-out screen "Patron has already a like item on loan". You can override the message but staff are not always hitting the override button and many items are not being checked out. Is there anything that can be done so that this message does not appear? I'm told this message did not appear in v19. Did something change between the 2 versions?
We have the following line in our ADM tab_check_circ that appears to be related to checking like items: LOAN check_circ_14_a. Do we just need to remove this?

Resolution:
This message *is* produced by the check_circ_14_a program and commenting out that check will, as you suggest, prevent it from being produced, but there are a couple issues to consider here....
The following SQL shows that this is a multi-volume monograph:
SQL> select z30_material, Z30_DESCRIPTION, Z30_ENUMERATION_A, Z30_CHRONOLOGICAL_I from z30 where z30_rec_key like '002092602%';
Ideally, you do not want these multiple volumes to be considered like items -- not just so that you can use this check_circ_14_a --, but in order to make holds be processed properly and make the items for multi-volume monographs be sorted properly.
To demonstrate this, please have a staff member go to the Serial Levels tab of each of these items and put the volume number in the "Enumeration.Level.1(A)" box -- without the "v." -- just the number "1", "2", "3", etc. You will then see that they are not considered like items and the message does not appear.

The Z30_ENUMERATION_x and Z30_CHRONOLOGICAL_x fields are used to distinguish like items in placing holds (see article "Hold requests for multivolume monographs") and in the sorting of items (tab_z30_sort, tab_z36_sort). See also article "ISSUE vs. NON-ISSUE sorting". In the latter case, you can see that some sorts have been introduced which use z30_description in addition to z30_enumeration_a, _b, etc.

The article "Populating z30_enumeration_a with the Z30-ITEM-SEQUENCE for multi-volume sets " (KB 16384-20355) talks about batch populating the z30_enumeration_a. This may or may not be desirable/feasible in your case.

Article last edited: 20-Apr-2016