Best Practices for Cataloging On Order Items

Re-posting, because it’s useful information…

So, you have the new Best Seller, but you can’t put it on the shelf until next month.
How do you catalog it so that patrons can start placing holds on the title before it hits library shelves?

The OLD cataloging specs were:

Item Subfield 7: Not for loan: Ordered
Collection: On order
Shelving Location: Cataloging
Item type: On order*

*We suspect that Koha gets confused when assigning holds on materials cataloged this way when/if the item type designation on the items are changed from On Order, which is completely unrestricted, to Local Hold.**

**I created an elaborate test video to recreate this scenario, but of course Koha worked just like it was suppose to!  Figures, eh?

However, the Best Practice is this:

• Go find a Bibliographic record from the ether
• Catalog your items as you would normally (Local Hold as Local Hold, Walk in as Walk in, Book as Book)
• Set the Not For Loan status in Item Subfield 7 to “Ordered”
• When you are ready to start circulating these items, edit and change the Not For Loan status back to ‘blank’

An Example: