Koha Question of the Week: Are Patron Club Holds Limited Based on Number of Items on a Record?

by Hebah Amin-Headley on Feb 9, 2024

Each Friday, we will bring you a new Koha Question of the Week. We will select real questions that we receive and share the answers with you!

Question: Are Patron Club Holds Limited Based on Number of Items on a Record?

Answer: Koha version 19.11 introduced functionality to allow librarians to place holds for all members of a patron club at once, saving a lot of time for library book club facilitators. However, Koha does not check number of enrolled club members vs copies on the record. If you think about it, this generally makes sense for holds - libraries frequently have hold lists longer than available items, by design. Few libraries want to purchase hundreds of copies of the latest best seller or new movie on DVD.

For a book club, however, this means that while everyone could have a library hold placed on the record with fewer items than book club members, not every one of those holds will be fillable by the time the book club meets. This is where book club best practices come into play; library staff will still need to do their own due diligence to ensure that the library has enough copies of a title to fulfill holds for all book club patrons, both checking total number of copies on the record as well as how many of those copies may be lost, damaged, withdrawn, or on hold for other patrons.

Additional Resources

Monday Minutes: Using Patron Clubs

Patron Clubs Hold Feature

American Library Association Book Discussion Group LibGuide