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You know, with Jonathan's rephrasing (if it's accurate), it crossed my mind that most ILSes that support course reserves should be able to handle this. It's extremely common for course reserves to belong to the instructor that is putting them on reserve and the ILS would need to keep track of that to return said materials back to the lending instructor. Now, I have no idea if most reserves departments do this via notes in the record or whatnot, but it might at least be a model for how this could work with a traditional ILS. Since I neither work for a library nor work for a vendor whose ILS supports course reserves (since that model doesn't really exist in the UK, apparently), I can't actually confirm how this works in practice. But I'm guessing somebody on this list can. -Ross. On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> Are any currently existing open source ILSs flexible enough to support >> this >> model? > > I kind of doubt it. What are you are doing sounds neat, but is not typical > library workflow. Tell me if I'm re-describing what you're talking about > correctly: Every book in the library essentially belongs to one of the > patrons. Patrons can both borrow books, and loan books to other patrons. The > "library" is basically just a facilitator of patron-to-patron lending. So > you need to know what books are out that are "owned" by a certain patron, as > well as what books are being borrowed by a certain patron. You need to know > what books are over-due that are owned by a certain patron, etc. > Creating a "location", "branch" or "collection" code for each patron is > going to be un-manageable with more than a few dozen patrons. > I don't think most existing ILS systems -- open source or not -- are going > to be set up to handle that system. On the other hand, many existing ILS > systems are going to have all sorts of stuff you _don't_ need, like > acquisitions, and serials tracking, and such. > I wonder if you are better served looking for software that is NOT library > software to handle the actual "circulation". Maybe there is some > non-library software that is designed for "a network of people lending stuff > to each other"? And then you could always put a Solr-based discovery > system on top of that for actual _finding_ of books available to be > borrowed, perhaps using VuFind or Blacklight or rolling your own. But the > underlying tracking of "circulation" is actually the tricky part -- perhaps > write your own custom software for that, if nothing open source can be > found, but then export all items to a seperate Solr-based component for the > actual search engine. > Jonathan > > > > ... wrote: >> >> Reading my original post, perhaps I should have made the important point >> more clear. >> >> My question is about an ILS suitable for a library that does not own its >> books, but is borrowing those books from patrons. The books all have >> lease >> end dates associated with them. Book lenders are very similar to book >> borrowers, and they require end of day processing to see if any of the >> library's books are due back to them, in the same way borrower's books are >> due back to the library. >> >> So, in the last two posts which mentioned "simple borrowing", that is what >> I >> am wanting, but for the library to be simply borrowing the books AND for >> patron to simply borrow those same books out of the library. >> >> Book lenders and book borrowers are essentially the same, except lenders >> first check a book in, and the due date is when the book leaves the >> library, >> and book borrowers check books out and then back in again. Of course, >> many >> book borrowers are also lenders. >> >> Are any currently existing open source ILSs flexible enough to support >> this >> model? >> >> Sorry for the confusion, >> Elliot >> >> >