The Status of the Withdrawn Status

We’ve had some problems recently with patrons being sent to other campuses to get items that turned out to be withdrawn, so I wanted to take a second to go over that status and how it currently displays.

When items are withdrawn from the collection, they are given the item status of “Withdrawn”, which allows me to run a report and pull them out for Sonya, who removes/suppresses the records in the catalog and takes our holdings off of the WorldCat record, if necessary.

Now, unfortunately, this item status doesn’t display in GIL Classic. That’s why people withdrawing items have to add the temporary location of “WITHDRAWN,” in addition to the item status. This temporary location does display in GIL Classic. We’ve put it in all caps to make it as noticeable as possible, and it's pretty large, but that’s the best we can do given the limitations of the software.



Now, GIL-Find is a little more flexible about statuses than GIL Classic, and I’ve been working with the server site to get statuses to display in a more meaningful way. When the new code rolls out soon, we may even start seeing “Withdrawn” in GIL-Find. Here’s a screenshot from the testing code.



Whether they’re using GIL-Find or GIL Classic, please look for this temporary location and/or status in the holdings record before telling someone an item is available and remind your part-time staff to do so. Patrons have gotten understandably upset after driving to another campus for a book that wasn’t there.

Thanks everyone! Please let me know if you have any questions.