Home → Administration Manual for Libraries → Bookmobile or Outreach Vehicle → New Branch Needed for Bookmobile?
Last Updated 05/16/2023
A number of NC Cardinal libraries have or are adding traditional ‘walk-on’ bookmobiles, while others have or are adding SUVs, vans, etc. for the delivery of outreach materials, and there are different considerations for these different needs and use cases in terms of Evergreen functionality.
For a library that has an outreach vehicle (not a ‘walk-on’ bookmobile) that would be used solely to deliver materials selected by staff (with or without patron input) and already checked out to patron accounts (to daycares, nursing homes, or home-bound patrons) and the bookmobile will not be assigned a permanent (or rotating) collection of materials separate from the main system collection, a separate org unit in Evergreen is not necessary. In this use case, bookmobile users would be limited to Institution/Outreach permission groups and patrons would not be placing holds for themselves. Cardinal staff would build circulation policies for those patron permission groups - Institution (for daycares, nursing homes, and other non-individual entities) and Outreach (for homebound individuals) - with different criteria for the circulation duration and fines (often ‘no fine’) than for patron groups that visit library branches in person. If no materials are owned by the bookmobile, but instead are requested by staff and not directly by patrons, then no org unit is needed. Staff would request the materials for pickup at the physical branch they are working from and can place the holds on their own Institution or Staff account (not their login access account) or place the holds directly on the patron account with a simple, consistent means for desk staff to identify those patrons as bookmobile patrons (perhaps a Name Keyword or an Alert on the account).
A more traditional bookmobile that needs an assigned collection (permanent or changing) and makes routine stops where any library patron (not just Institution/Outreach patrons) may browse and check out materials and/or may place a hold for pickup from the bookmobile on its stops would require a separate org unit as an owning/circulating library for materials and/or as a pickup location for patron holds. The bookmobile would use the standard consortium shelving locations. The org unit name would be the distinguishing factor, so there would be no need for Outreach to be part of the shelving location. Bookmobiles don’t meet the criteria for which organizational units share costs, so there would be no additional cost to add a bookmobile branch, if needed.
| No Branch Org Unit Needed | New Branch Org Unit Required |
| Staff will check out materials to patron accounts before delivery | Patrons may browse bookmobile collection and/or place holds to select their own material |
| Checkouts limited to certain patron permission groups (Institution and/or Outreach patrons) | Any patron permission group may checkout from the bookmobile |
| Bookmobile does not have an assigned collection of materials | Bookmobile is assigned a permanent or rotating collection of materials for circulation |
Please submit a support ticket if your library expects to add a new bookmobile vehicle in the near future, so that we can assist you with any questions and decisions about adding new circulation and hold policies and/or a new branch org unit for the bookmobile and the patrons it will serve.