Circulating uncataloged materials

Introduction

This section discusses settings for circulating items that are not cataloged. Evergreen offers two ways to circulate an item that is not in the catalog:

  • Pre-cataloged items (also known as on-the-fly items) have a barcode, as well as some basic metadata which staff members enter at the time of checkout. These are represented in Evergreen with an item record which has to be manually deleted or transferred when it is no longer needed.

  • Non-cataloged items (also known as ephemeral items) do not have barcodes, have no metadata, and are not represented with an item record. No fines accrue on these materials, but Evergreen does collect statistics on these circulations.

Pre-cataloged item settings

By default, when a pre-cataloged item is created, Evergreen sets the Circ Library field to the library where it was checked out. You may change this so that the circ library is set to a different library. This can be helpful in cases where the cataloger who fixes pre-cataloged items is at another library, and you’d like all pre-cataloged items to be routed to that cataloger’s library when they are returned.

To change this setting:

  1. Go to Administration > Local Administration > Library Settings Editor.

  2. Choose Pre-cat Item Circ Lib.

  3. Click Edit.

  4. Select the appropriate context. For example, if all pre-cataloged items in your system should have the same circ library, you should choose your system as the context.

  5. Type in the shortname of the library that should be in the circ lib field. Make sure to type this correctly, or Evergreen won’t be able to create pre-cataloged items.

Evergreen always sets the owning library of pre-cataloged items to be the consortium.

Non-cataloged item settings

In Evergreen, libraries may elect to create their own local non-cataloged item types. For example, you may choose to circulate non-cataloged paperbacks or magazine back-issues, but not wish to catalog them.

Adding a new non-cataloged type

  1. Go to Administration > Local Administration > Non-Cataloged Types Editor.

  2. Under Create a new non-cataloged type, start filling out the appropriate information.

  3. Choose an appropriate duration. This period of time will be used to calculate a due date that is displayed to the patron on the patron’s receipt and My Account view in the public catalog. The item will be automatically removed from the My Account view the day after the due date.

  4. The Circulate In-House? checkbox is only for your records. This checkbox does not affect how these materials circulate.

  5. Click the Create button when you are done.

noncataloged type add

Deleting a non-cataloged type

  1. Go to Administration > Local Administration > Non-Cataloged Types Editor.

  2. Click the Delete button next to the type you wish to delete. Note that if any non-cataloged items of this type have ever been entered, you will not be able to delete it.