Lending Request Expiration: Lending requests are currently configured to expire after 4 days. Requests do not expire the minute they become 4 days old. They are expired by the Expired Resource Sharing Requests job, which runs every night at 2:00am, so you will have requests for 4 days plus the amount of time until the Expired Resource Sharing Requests job is scheduled to run again.
Note: Do not fill/ship expired lending requests. If the request is expired it has moved on to the next institution in the rota.
Turning Off Lending: If your library is unable to process lending requests in a timely manner because of a closure or staffing issues, please temporarily turn off your lending. Send a message to the FLVC HelpDesk at help@flvc.org
Lending Loan Periods: Loan periods are determined by the Resource Sharing Standing Committee, with approval from the Member's Council for Library Services. Alma is currently configured to automatically assign a lending due date of 130 days to accommodate this policy and avoid the lending and borrowing institutions from receiving erroneous overdue notifications. The actual patron due date of 90 days with a maximum renewal period of up to additional 30 days. Please refrain from manually creating lending due dates in Alma as this can adversely affect the borrowing institution's ability to generate the appropriate due date. All renewal are handled automatically by the system so there should be no need for the lending institution to manually approve renewals.
The Lending workflow consists of the following steps which are detailed below:
UBorrow Lending Library staff should check the Pick From Shelf for each participating library at their institution at least once per day.
Go to Pick From Shelf in each library to check for any "Ship Physically" Requests.
There are options to either print a slip for each title, select a group of titles and print slips for each, or Click Slip Report to email or download a spreadsheet of the requests. Each should include pertinent information including as the Scannable External ID, Location to send the request, call #, item barcode, etc.
Use the slips to pull requests that can be filled from the shelf.
Cancel requests that cannot be filled by clicking on Cancel Request, see below. You will be given a list of reasons to choose from. Cancelling the request will either advance it to the next Lender, or cancel the request and send a cancellation message to the patron if there are no others.
Note: There is also an option to mark items as Missing, however, please use this with caution. It should only be used if a check has been done to ensure that the item is indeed missing. If there are multiple items attached to the holding, they will all become missing. This will change the process type of the item to Missing.
Once the item has been physically received at the Resource Sharing Library it should be
If you accidentally scan in the item rather than ship it directly you will receive this message:
Click the Cancel button and go to the Shipping Items screen to ship the item. Clicking confirm will ship the item but may result in issues scanning in the item at the Borrowing institution.
Note: Clicking Confirm and then scanning the item in again will send the item back to the owning location and may cancel the Lending Request.
To ship requests, make sure you are in the UBorrow desk location and click Shipping Items. The UBorrow desk location might be the Library Circ desk (if the Circ and UBorrow Desk is combined), you might need to switch to the UBorrow desk to ship, or if another department does the shipping, deliver the item to the UBorrow desk to be Shipped.
If you need to send a message to the Borrowing library before you ship the item Send a Conditional Message.
If you need to reject a request rather than ship the item see Rejecting Requests.
Note: Do not use the "Ship Item" next to the title of the request in the Resource Sharing Lending Requests Task List. This prevents the Borrowing library from being able to easily scan in multiple items at once - this is crucial for institutions that process large numbers of requests at once. It also prevents the Borrowing Library from being to use the Item barcode when loaning the item to the patron.
You should scan in the item barcode here. Select, Automatically print slip to print the Shipping Slip to send with the book. The External Identifier on this slip is necessary for items to be received efficiently at the borrowing institution.
Note: Do not enter any other information aside from the barcode. Everything else including Due Date is automatically filled in by the system when submitted.
The status of the request should automatically be changed to 'Shipped Physically'.
If you need to send a message regarding a request once an item is shipped you can Send a General Message.
Note: If you return a lending request that was never received by the borrowing library, you will complete the request on both ends, and the borrowing library's user will not receive the item they requested. The Scan In function will produce a warning if you are returning an item that was never received by the borrowing library, but the Return Items function will complete the request without any warning. For this reason, you should always use the Scan In function to process lending returns.
1. To complete a request/discharge UBorrowed items returned from the Borrowing library, go to Fulfillment | Checkout/Checkin | Scan In Items.
2. Enter the barcode of the item that was returned by the borrower into the Scan Item Barcode field and then click the OK button. This will complete the request.
Note: If you need to send a message to the borrowing library before you have updated a lending request to shipped, please be sure to use the Conditional function. In general, if there is any reason the item should not go out, whether it is damaged or needed back before the patron's due date etc, go ahead and reject the request to move it to the next lender. This will ensure that the patron gets a good copy quickly for the usual amount of time. If you need to send a message to the borrowing library after you update a request to shipped, you can use the General Message function.
1. Locate the request you wish to conditional in your Resource Sharing Lending Requests Task List, click the ellipsis next to the request, and then click the Conditional link. The Conditional window will open.
2. Select a conditional reason from the Reason dropdown, enter a date by which you would like a response in the Date for reply field, enter an explanation for the conditional into the Note field, and then click the Send button. The status of the lending request will then change to Conditional.
3. If the borrowing library says yes to the conditional, the status of the lending request will change to Lending Request Created and an active note containing their response will be added to the request. If the borrowing library says no, the request's status will change to Rejected the borrower request, and it will disappear from your list of active lending requests.
1. Go to Fulfillment | Resource Requests | Lending Requests
2. Locate the request you wish to reject in your Resource Sharing Lending Requests Task List list, click the ellipsis next to the request, and then select Reject from the dropdown that appears. A new window will open.
3. In the new window that opens, select the reason you cannot fill the request from the Reject reason dropdown and then click the Ok button.
Note: If you need to send a message to the borrowing library after you have updated a lending request to shipped, you can use the General Message function. If you need to send a message to the borrowing library before you update a request to shipped, please use the Conditional function.
1. Locate the request needing a general message in your Resource Sharing Lending Requests Task List, click the ellipsis next to the request, and then click the General Message link. The General Message window will open.
2. Enter the message you wish to send to the borrowing library into the Message field and then click the Save button. The message will appear as an active General Message on the borrower's request.
3. When the borrowing library responds, an active General Message will be added to your lending request. You can check for lending requests with active General Messages by either using the Tasks widget on the main Alma page or the facets in your Lending Requests list. To view a General Message, click the Request with active general message link. This will open the request's General messages tab.
4. Once you have read the message, click the ellipsis next to the message and then click the Dismiss button. The message will remain in the request record, but it will no longer be active. If their message requires a response, you can send a new General Message by repeating steps 1 and 2.
Alma is configured to automatically approve all renewal requests received from borrowing libraries, so lending libraries do not need to manually process lending renewal requests. Look here for more information : https://flvc.libguides.com/AlmaResourceSharingGuide/Renew