Freeing Records in Use

To free records in use, you must be assigned permission 29 (Free records in use by system). See Permissions Used by Sierra for more information.

Records that are listed as "in use" can be freed automatically at regular intervals (usually every 24 hours at midnight local time). Records that are legitimately in use by the system are not freed by the automatic process. Contact Innovative to enable this feature.

By default, only order and invoice records are marked "in use" in Sierra. If your library uses Program Registration, Innovative can configure Sierra to also mark section records as "in use." For more information about your library's setup, contact Innovative.

When an order, invoice, or section record is retrieved for updating, it is "in use." This prevents the record from being retrieved for updating by another user until the first user is finished. Records are freed for the next user as soon as updates are made permanent. Also, records in use are automatically freed when the system is restarted.

If a record has not been freed by the system, you can free it as follows:

  1. Select Admin | Free Records In Use.
  2. On the Free Records in Use dialog box, locate the in-use record by doing one of the following:
    • Select Record # from the list and enter the record number.
    • Select Barcode from the list and enter the barcode number.
  3. Click Check.
  4. If the record is in use, Sierra asks if you want to clear it. Click Yes to free the record or No to leave the record in use.