First Available Copy Requests and Multi-Part Titles

When the Allow requests on multi-part sets in PAC and Staff Client option is selected, for monographic titles like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the request option will be available at the title level only. But the request icon will be available at the item level if you have multiple copies of each season of The Sopranos linked to one bibliographic record. Selecting the item-level request icon for Season One will automatically link the request to all copies of Season One. In the staff client, this option does not prevent a staff member from placing an item-specific request for a monographic title, and the staff member can place a first-available-copy request for Season One of The Sopranos.

If the item record is linked to a bibliographic record with a Bibliographic level entry other than S, and has data in the Vol field of the call number, the request is treated as a first available copy request. If there are other items with matching Vol data linked to the same bibliographic record, these will also be eligible to fill the request. (If the Bibliographic level entry is any value other than S and no linked items have data in the Vol field, the option to place a request at the item level is not available. In this case, only bib-level requests are allowed.)

Since manually-input Vol data may be inconsistent in your database, you may want to use item bulk change to help ensure uniformity of your existing data before implementing the first available copy option for multi-part sets. The multi-part option is separate so that libraries who may have inconsistent item data can implement serial requests and multi-part requests separately while suppressing item requests on plain monographs.

Tips:
If you plan to make the Vol data consistent before implementing this feature, keep in mind that request processing uses exact, character-for-character matches as follows:

Internal spaces and all punctuation affect a match:
Vol 1 and Vol1 do not match.
Vol.1 and Vol1 do not match.

Case does not matter:
Vol.1 and vol.1 match.

Beginning and trailing spaces are ignored:
[space] v.1 and [no space] v.1 match
v.1 [space] and v.1 [no space] match

Note:
A request on an item with blank Vol data is placed as a single, item-level request.