Wednesday Hint 11/19/08

What is Recall?

At times it is necessary for library staff to place holds on items, rather than titles, in order to replace parts or sort out mixed up pieces, not often but it does happen.

When you place an item hold, Millennium may ask you if you wish to RECALL the item. The answer to this question should always be no.

The RECALL function in Millennium was meant for academic libraries that may need to retrieve items for professors or staff working on projects. In our system nobody should get preference over the next person, so the recall is not needed and, because it is not part of out normal procedures, using it creates confusion in other system libraries that have no idea what the intentions were.

While we are talking about equal access for all patrons and staff, it should also be mentioned that we should never be altering the hold queue for items except in very limited circumstances. The main circumstance would be if you need to get the item back in order to make it usable to the next patron.