Koha How-To
ByWater Question of the Week: What is the Difference Between Withdrawing and Deleting an Item?
by Hebah Amin-Headley on Jan 31, 2025
Each Friday, we will bring you a new ByWater Question of the Week. We will select real questions that we receive and share the answers with you!
Question: What is the Difference Between Withdrawing and Deleting an Item?
Answer: Libraries vary in how they choose to remove items from circulation in Koha.
Withdrawing an item leaves the item in the Koha database; this is often an interim step for libraries that are still deciding what to do with things like damaged or billed-and-paid-for items and want to leave them in the catalog while they decide whether to replace or remove the item (especially if it was a last item on a record). Some system preferences interact with this status to do things like block return of paid-for items for libraries that do not issue refunds; while still in the catalog, these items are often also hidden from the public OPAC so that only staff are seeing them.
Deleting an item removes it from the items table in Koha - it will no longer appear in search results, and the deleted item will not show on a bibliographic record's detailed circulation history via the items view. However, the deleted information goes to the deleteditems table, so it is still accessible via report, and statistics retain the itemnumber of the deleted item, so no statistical circulation data is lost.
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