Indicating copy status and the reserve function in the new release of Talis Prism 3
It can be helpful if the catalogue displays information about copies that are not yet ready for use. In the release that’s now on preview, Talis Prism 3 gives specific information about copies where the item status name in Talis Alto is one of: Order pending, Order sent, and Received. Copies at these statuses (and others) can be set to display or not by configuration in Talis Alto. In the latest release of Talis Prism 3 the default display text for these statuses is as follows:
- Order pending – On order
- Order sent – On order
- Received – Awaiting shelving
For copies where the item status in Talis Alto is some other value, apart from In Stock/Loanable, the default display text in Talis Prism 3 is Please Ask.
Another improvement in the latest release of Talis Prism 3 is that the facility to place a reservation is now prominently situated in the availability area. In the preview, the default texts on the buttons before and after logging in are unchanged as ‘Login to request this book’ and ‘Request’, because changes to text take effect immediately in the live service. When this release goes live, those default texts will be changed to ‘Reserve this item’ and ‘Reserve’, to be more concise, more specific about the action and more general about the resource.
Some libraries charge for reservations. This can be indicated in the button text, for example ‘Reserve this item (£0.50 charge)’. To request any text changes, please raise a service request.
April 13th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
I like this style of copy-level detail more than I thought I would, but on the site summary line, the text “available in [shelf location]” looks a bit strange to me. Wouldn’t “available at” (probably as default text for everybody) be better?
April 16th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Thanks for the feedback Rob. I’m glad to hear the copy-level detail is doing the job for you.
Whilst we’ve tried to get the wording right for detailed contexts it is difficult to cater for the variety in the data. I take your point that ‘available at’ followed by a class number might be more normal usage than ‘available in’, but when there is a sequence (as in the example in the original blog post about the improvements, ‘available in’ arguably works better. Where there is a consensus that the default can be improved we’re happy to make changes. You can raise a service request to have a bespoke text change in your catalogue.
April 22nd, 2010 at 10:05 am
Can you tell me what will happen with items “In transit”? One of our bugaboos at the moment is that items display both as “between locations” and also “available”, and users tend to latch on to the “available” rather than the warning.
April 22nd, 2010 at 10:55 am
Heather,
Currently the Local Data Service (LDS) that retrieves availability information dynamically for Talis Prism 3 does not include the item state ‘In Transit’. It was not feasible to amend this in the recent improvements to availability information, so items in that state display as available. We intend to do more work on the LDS in due course, for both technical efficiency and further business issues.
April 27th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
You state ‘When this release goes live, those default texts will be changed to ‘Reserve this item’ and ‘Reserve’, to be more concise, more specific about the action and more general about the resource.’
When will this happen? Our tenancy is still showing the text ‘Login to request this book’
April 28th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Has anyone raised the issue of including years in due dates? The item-level format for overdue loans is “Overdue (was due back 27th April)”. This is nice and friendly and unfussy, except that in this example the loan was actually due back on 27 April 2009. Another copy of the same title (a law textbook!) is due back on 12th January [2007]. OK, our housekeeping may be less than brilliant for overdue loans, but I still think you should write something to add the year for all loans more than, say, 6 months overdue. I can’t imagine that there wouldn’t be complete acceptance of, if not consensus on, the need to do this.
April 28th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Yvonne – I see ‘Login to reserve this item’ on your catalogue. I think this is a local variation which overrides the default text. If you’d like to raise a service request we can remove the local variation for you.
Rob – Yes, the issue of years in due dates was raised and answered in comments on another blog post. We can adjust the format shown on an individual tenancy basis. If you’d like it changed, please raise a service request, specifying the date format required. The year was omitted by default to save space and on the assumption that it would mostly be correctly understood to be either the current year or the preceding year, depending on the month.