[OPLINTECH] Library of Things

[Tyson Horton]

These questions will be directed to libraries that are structured similar
to us where we have a Main library and several branches.

Issue #1: Currently, the way we have things set up is, we only have a
"Library of Things" set up at our main branch. We want those items to only
be available for pickup/checkout at that branch. We aren't wanting them to
be sent through cargo or to be able to be picked up at any of our branches.
We are just starting to offer a library of things and want to use our main
branch as our testing location.

Issue #2: We are also circulating Mobile Hotspots and our original plan was
to have a set of hotspots at each of our locations to serve that particular
community. We have been circulating those for a couple years now, and when
we started that program, we found out that we were not able to fully tie
the designated hotspots to a branch. For example, they are currently "tied"
to a branch, but they still circulate through our entire system. We thought
we had possibly had a change made in Workflows to fix this, but we did an
experiment where we placed a hold and selected one of our branches as the
pickup location, but the hotspot that was attached to that hold was from
another branch. What we thought would happen was it would assign one of the
hotspots that are tied to that particular pickup location. This issue isn't
the end of the world, but we are trying to better serve each branch's
community with the items that we are offering.

Issue #3: This question is in regards to LibCal if anyone is using it. We
purchased it last year and spent the majority of the end of the year
getting it set up and getting everyone trained and comfortable with it. The
calendar and the room reservation side of it are fine, but we originally
wanted to use it for our Library of Things as well (the way things are
displayed is a lot nicer than Workflows. We had it all set up in there and
in theory it does work, however, from what we can tell and from what
Springshare/LibCal are telling us, there isn't a direct way to link it to
Workflows so that they communicate with each other when things are checked
out/in. Is anyone out there using LibCal for their library of things and
have you successfully linked it to Workflows or are you using it as a
standalone and don't have your Library of Things in Workflows.

Essentially, what we are trying to decide is, do we want our Library of
Things strictly run through Workflows and try to figure out how to make it
work the way we want it to, try to figure out how to link Workflows to
LibCal, or strictly run it through LibCal. The layout and display of our
Library of Things in LibCal looks so much nicer, but we don't want to lose
the circulation stats that come with Workflows. The main point of all this
is to see if anyone out there is doing something similar because we feel
like we are going in circles and possibly overthinking it
-- 
Tyson Horton
IT Manager
Williams County Public Library
833-633-7323 x282
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