Reserves System Update

Here’s a screen shot of the new reserves system I’ve been working on.

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As you can see, the pulldown where a librarian used to choose a reserve’s priority is gone. Instead priorities are altered with the arrows on the left-hand side.

The ‘lock’ icon on the right hand side allows one to ‘lock’ the priority of the reserve. If the reserve at priority 3 is locked, then the next person in line checks out the reserved book, the person at priority 4 will become priority 2 and priority 3 will remain the same. In this way reserves ‘flow’ around locked priorities. This features was requested by our librarians so that someone with a reserve can go on a long vacation without losing their place in line, and without holding up other people who could have read and returned the reserved item in the meantime.

The down arrow to the right of the lock is the ‘lowest priority’ switch. When enabled, this switched keeps the reserve at the bottom of the list. If a new reserve is added, that reserve will get a higher priority then the ‘lowest priority’ reserves. This feature was added because our library loans books to people in group homes. These people get to keep books for periods of months. Because of this, they only get reserved books if no one else has said item on reserve.

The ‘X’ icons to the right of this ‘lowest priority’ icons are ‘cancel reserve’ buttons. This replaces the ‘del’ option that was in the priority number pulldown menu.

Another new feature is the ‘not needed by’ date. If a date is put in here, and the reserve is not fulfilled by the given date, the reserve is automatically canceled. This is useful for students who are doing research for a paper, and don’t need a reserve if they have not received the item by the time the paper must be turned in, and other situations of the like.