Consortium Management Extensions

If your library has acquired the Consortium Management Extensions product, you can assign agency values to items and to patrons in order to perform agency-specific functions such as running agency-specific statistics and storing agency-specific information in records. The Consortium Management Extensions product consists of the following features:

Libraries with the Consortium Management Extensions can also do the following:

AGENCY Fields

The new, library-defined AGENCY fixed-length field stores agency affiliation in item records. When Innovative installs the Consortium Management Extensions product, the system automatically inserts the AGENCY field in all item records.

For more information, see:

Automated Transfer of Paged Items

You can run the Transfer Paged Items function automatically overnight instead of interactively transferring paged items. All paged items that have an available item will be transferred. If your library is using Regional Holds, you may choose to apply the regional holds logic to rerandomize the alternate items before moving the page to a new item.

For more information, see:

Consortium Call Number Statistics

Using the AGENCY field, you can create call number reports based on the first attached items that have the specified agency rather than on just the first item record attached to the bibliographic record. These statistics are available in the Collection Development Report and Age of Collection Report.

For more information, see:

Consortium Circulation Statistics

Your library can generate Consortium Circulation Statistics reports. These reports include information on Reciprocal Borrowing, Total Circulation; Reciprocal Borrowing, Net Circulation; and Circulation by Non-Owning Library.

For more information, see:

PAT AGENCY Fields

The new PAT AGENCY fixed-length field stores agency affiliation in patron records. When Innovative installs the Consortium Management Extensions product, the system automatically inserts the PAT AGENCY field in all patron records. You can assign a patron record to an agency by inserting an agency value from the AGENCY fixed-length field of an item record into the PAT AGENCY field of the patron record. You can then use the PAT AGENCY field to block patrons from checking out, renewing, or placing holds on items related by agency.

For more information, see:

PCODE4 Fields

The new PCODE4 fixed-length field is a customizable, numeric field where you can store locally determined patron information. When Innovative installs the Consortium Management Extensions product, the system automatically inserts a PCODE4 field in all patron records.

Editing PCODE4 Values

To define or edit the labels of the PCODE4 values, see Pcode 4 Table.

Assigning PCODE4 Values to Patron Records

To assign a value to a PCODE4 field in patron's record, retrieve and edit the patron record.

Regional Holds

Patron and item records are coded to indicate the region to which they belong (in a PCODE field and an ICODE field of the library's choice). When a title-level hold is placed on a title with more than one available item, the system will page one of the available items. Preference is given to the highest priority available item in the patron's region. If there are no available items in the patron's region, the system will page the available item with the highest priority from one of the other regions. If there are multiple items of the same priority, the system will randomly choose one. This feature is designed to minimize the time and distance traveled when holds are filled. For more information, see Regional Holds.