Hold Thresholds Table

The Hold Thresholds table specifies the conditions under which a title appears on a High-Demand Holds report. When you generate the report, the system consults this table to determine whether the number of holds on a title meets the threshold for inclusion in the report, based on the title's hold pickup location and material type. Note that the system uses the ratio of holds to requestable items to determine a title's eligibility for the High-Demand Holds report, and not the sum of all holds on a title.

You can access the Hold Thresholds table via the following menu path:

For information on modifying this table, see Maintaining System Parameter Tables and Maintaining Circulation Parameters.

For more information, see Functionality Information and Data Elements.

Functionality Information

When viewing and modifying the Hold Thresholds table, note the following:

Maximum Number of Entries

The Hold Thresholds table can contain a maximum of 16,000 entries.

Table Read Bottom to Top

The system reads the Hold Thresholds table from bottom to top. Entries that contain wildcards should appear higher in the table than more specific entries.

Customizing Material Types

If your library uses a fixed-length field in the bibliographic record for MAT TYPE other than field number 30, contact Innovative to use this field instead of the MAT TYPE field when generating a High-Demand Holds report.

How the System Applies Thresholds to Titles

The system includes a title in the High-Demand Holds report when all of the following are true:

• The hold's pickup location matches the Pickup Location element, if you are preparing a Selected Pickup Locations Report.
• The title's MAT TYPE fixed-length field matches the Material Type element.
• The number of holds on the title and its attached records is greater than the number of holds specified in the Thresholds element. The system determines whether the number of holds meets this threshold as follows:
  • If there are no volume records attached to the title, the sum of title and item holds is divided by the number of items attached to the bibliographic record.
  • If there are volume records attached, the sum of volume and item holds is divided by the number of items attached to the volume record.

Data Elements

Entries in the Hold Thresholds table contain the following data elements:

Element	Description
Pickup Location	A drop-down list of your library's hold pickup locations from the Display Name element of the Hold Pickup Locations table. This list also includes two wildcards: <SYS> System-Wide Threshold and ????? <wildcard>. The <SYS> System-Wide Threshold wildcard indicates that the entry applies not to any specific pickup location, but to your library system as a whole. The system only applies <SYS> threshold values when you run a System-Wide Thresholds report, and it calculates the System-Wide Thresholds report using only the threshold values specified for <SYS> entries. If you want to generate System-Wide Threshold reports, the table must contain at least one <SYS> entry. The ????? <wildcard> value indicates that the entry applies to any specific pickup location not listed elsewhere in the table. The system applies this value when you run a Selected Pickup Location report.
Material Type	A drop-down list of your library's material types defined in the Material Types table (Sierra 4.0 and later) or the Fixed-length Codes file (Sierra 3.4 and earlier). This list also includes a * All MAT TYPEs wildcard entry, which represents all material types.
Threshold	The number of concurrent holds that must be present on a title for the title to appear in the High-Demand Holds report. The number to associate with the combination of hold pickup location and material type selected for the entry you are currently editing. The threshold value indicates the number of holds on each item or volume of the associated material type at the associated pickup location that is considered acceptable and therefore does not require scrutiny. When the number of holds reaches or exceeds its associated threshold, the system includes the title and its number of holds in the appropriate High-Demands Holds report(s).