Polaris as the INN-Reach Lending Library

A Polaris library acts as an INN-Reach lending library when a patron at another participating library goes to the INN-Reach Central Catalog web interface and places a hold request on an item owned by the Polaris library. This sends an INN-Reach Create Item Hold API to the Polaris library and automatically creates the virtual patron record and a regular (non-ILL) item-level hold request, which is placed on the item and linked to that virtual patron.

The INN-Reach hold request appears in the Request Manager, from which a staff member can print a request-to-fill (paging list) to use in locating the requested item.

Upon check-in of the requested item, the hold's status is updated to Shipped, and item's status is updated to Held in Polaris. In addition, an INN-Reach API message confirming the item's shipment is sent to the library to which the patron belongs.

At receipt of the item at the borrowing library, an INN-Reach API acknowledgment message is sent to the Polaris lending library, which checks the item out to the virtual patron.

When the patron returns the item, the borrowing library ships the physical item back to the Polaris lending library, the item's status is updated to In-Transit, and the hold request is deleted. The item arrives at the Polaris lending library where it is checked in, which deletes the hold request and the virtual patron record. If the item belongs at the branch where it is checked in, the item's status is updated to In. If the item belongs to another branch, the item's status is updated to In-transit.

In either case, a Final Item Checkin INN-Reach API message is sent to the borrowing library indicating the ILL circulation is complete, and the virtual patron record is marked for deletion if there are no other outstanding INN-Reach requests associated with the virtual patron. A Final Item Checkin message is also sent if the item arrived back at the lending library but was not properly checked in and another patron checked it out.

Note:
To ensure that INN-Reach item holds are created when the Polaris library is the INN-Reach lending library, the Holds Routing Sequence Primary policy table must be set up for the shipping/receiving branch. See Edit Holds Routing Tables.

See also: