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3.4. Holds, transits, and resource sharing

Last Updated 06/05/2023

Holds Fulfillment

See Hold Fulfillment in Evergreen for an explanation of the ways that Evergreen targets items to fill patron holds.

What criteria does Evergreen check to determine eligibility to fill a hold?

• Does an item exist on the bib/call number/item/meta/part record where the hold was placed?
• Is the item marked as holdable? Based on the is holdable flag in the item record
• Is the item in a holdable copy status? (e.g. not in a status of Checked out, In process, Lost, Missing, etc.) See Item Status page
• Is the shelving location for that item marked holdable? See Shelving Locations page
• Is the item age protected, and if so, would it have to transit too far? (see Age Hold Protection below)
• Does the item's circulating library have the Library Setting ‘Skip for Hold Targeting’ set to True? This is not normally the case unless a library is closed for construction/repairs or in situations like the recent pandemic.

Age hold protection

Age hold protection prevents new items from filling holds requested for pickup at a library other than the owning library for a specified period of time. The age hold protection period when applied to an item record for newly published and newly purchased (older) items can start with the item record create date (default) or active date. NC Cardinal uses the item’s active date, the date the item first has a status of Available. The active date will display in the staff client OPAC view and in the Item Status details.

Age Hold Protection Options

Age hold protection only applies to individual item records and cannot be configured in hold policies.

There are two age hold protection options in Evergreen:

• 6-month
• 3-month

NC Cardinal libraries generally only use 6-month age hold protection, where holds will only be filled where the pickup library is within the owning library system from the Active Date to 6 months after the Active Date. When the item is more than 6 months past the Active Date, it is available to fill holds for the entire consortium.

There is also a 3-month age hold protection option, in which holds will only be filled where pickup branch = owning branch from the Active Date to 3 months after the Active Date. If applied, the 3-month age hold protection does not convert to 6-month age hold protection. When the item is more than 3 months past the Active Date, it is available to fill holds for the entire consortium unless a staff member takes action to change the item attributes for the item to the 6-month age hold protection.

For incoming libraries, actual protection time for migrated items may vary based on the information gathered from the previous ILS. If there is no distinction in the old ILS between the create date and the active date, whatever date is available will be applied, leaving the item with a potentially shorter period of protection.

Parallel Hold Fulfillment Processes

Evergreen fulfills holds using two separate but parallel processes, each having its own individual structural influences. While only one copy will be targeted to fill any given hold, these processes will independently try to find a target copy to fulfill an outstanding hold.

Method 1: Hold Targeter

The first process is the Hold Targeter, which is the way Evergreen causes items needed for holds to appear on a library's pull list. The pull list is a responsive representation of the currently targeted copies for any given library branch and is only entirely accurate at the moment the list is generated. In a busy consortium, such as NC Cardinal, the targeted items could change almost every time the pull list is refreshed. Libraries should always generate a fresh version of the pull list immediately before going out to pull items from the shelves. Printing a list in the morning and waiting an hour or two before pulling items will mean the list is already outdated.

The Hold Targeter is based primarily on organizational unit proximity and is what helps determine which copy is preferred to fill any given hold. The Hold Targeter reevaluates each active, unfilled hold request every 24 hours (default setting) to see if the targeted item has been captured or if there is another eligible copy. Soft stalling has no impact on the Hold Targeter. 

Method 2: Opportunistic Capture

The second process is Opportunistic Capture, which allows Evergreen to evaluate whether items could fill an eligible hold whenever an item is checked in. The structural influences on opportunistic capture are:

• best hold selection
• sort order
• soft stalling