Shelving locations in Koha

Shelving locations in Koha

Shelving locations in Koha tell the user where an item physically lives in the library. There are several options in Koha to control the shelving locations as materials move through cataloging and circulation.

Add a Shelving Location

Administrative librarians with full permissions or at least the manage_auth_values permission can create new shelving locations in Administration -> Authorized values. Authorized values populate most of the areas in Koha where an option is selected from a drop-down. The authorized value category for shelving location is LOC.


From that authorized value category, a new value can be added.

The code is typically brief, often descriptive, and should not have any hyphens in it. The only place staff might interact with a code is in reports. Partner libraries also using Aspen Discovery should ensure that the code is distinct from item type and collection codes. (Descriptions can be the same, but the code should be distinct.)

Description is what will show in the staff client. If nothing appears in the Description (OPAC) field, that same value will appear in the OPAC; otherwise, if a library wants to display something else to patrons, they can add a different public-facing description.

The ability to limit a shelving location can be useful for multi-branch systems and consortia, so if only one branch will be cataloging items in that shelving location, it will only appear to staff logged in at that location while they are cataloging.


In this example, only East Branch and Main Library will have a new books display, so it will only be available for those branches, and it will show a different description in the OPAC. All shelving locations will still appear as options to narrow results in searching, advanced searching, and item searches. Once the new authorized value for the shelving location is created, items can be added to it via batch item modification from with the staff client, typically up to 1000 items at a time.

How Does the PROC Shelving Location Work?

PROC and CART are the two shelving locations where items.location and items.permanent_location can differ, but PROC works really differently from CART.

If you want things to go to location=PROC and later go to their actual shelving location, then you need to set the system preference NewItemsDefaultLocation to PROC. Then, when we catalog new items, we set the shelving location to where this item will ultimately live. When the item is created, PROC goes into items.location and our selection goes into items.permanent_location.

Aside from NewItemsDefaultLocation, there is no way to put PROC into items.location while moving the previous value to items.permanent_location. If you edit an item to PROC, the previous location is lost.

The next step of our process is in the system preference UpdateItemLocationOnCheckin, where we tell Koha what to change PROC to when an item gets checked in. You have two options:
  1. If you don't use the CART location and want the item to go straight to its permanent location, enter "PROC: _PERM_"
  2. If you use the CART location and want items to go from processing to the shelving cart, enter "PROC: CART"
If you use that second option, Koha changes items.location to CART when they are checked in and maintains the items.permanent_location that was set when you created your item. The cart_to_shelf cron then changes the item's location from CART to its permanent location.

The cart_to_shelf cron doesn't do anything with items in PROC, even though the NewItemsDefaultLocation syspref says it requires the cron.

Note that there's nothing that says this process needs to specifically use the location code PROC. Whatever you put in NewItemsDefaultLocation will go into items.location at item creation, while the shelving location you pick in cataloging goes into items.permanent_location. Just be sure to tell UpdateItemLocationOnCheckin to use the same value you used in NewItemsDefaultLocation.

You can also tell Automatic Item Modification by Age to move the item from PROC to CART. That will retain the items.permanent_location value so that the cart_to_shelf cron can take over from there.

*Original Q2A post by Andrew FH

Using Cart-to-Shelf

Sometimes it's helpful to make your catalog show when something has been returned recently, so patrons know it's in the library but don't expect it to be back on the shelf yet. With a little setup and a cronjob, we can make that happen.

Add Shelving Location

First, we need to set up a shelving location with the authorized value CART. The display value for this can be whatever you like ("Shelving cart," "Recently returned," etc.), but the code value needs to be CART because it's hardcoded into the cronjob we'll use later.


System Preference

Next, we need to use the system preference UpdateItemLocationOnCheckin so that whenever we check in an item, its shelving location is automatically set to CART. This system preference takes some special syntax. For what we're doing, we want to enter "_ALL_: CART".



CART is a special shelving location in Koha. Koha knows that whenever it moves an item to CART, it should remember what shelving location it just came from. That way it can switch back to that regular shelving location later.

Cronjob

Finally, we need to enable the cart_to_shelf.pl cronjob. This cron gets set up on your server with a number of hours. That many hours after an item is returned and set to CART, the cron automatically switches it back to its regular shelving location. This requires an estimate based on your library's workflows - on average, how long after an item is returned should you expect it to back on the shelf? That number of hours is what you will want set in the cron. There's nothing in the Koha staff interface that lets you see this cron or how long it's set for, but we're always happy to tell you.

The cart_to_shelf.pl cron is only configurable by hours, so multi-branch libraries who want to use it need to reach a consensus for how long items should be in the temporary reshelving status.

Tutorial Video

Can I Change the Description of the Temporary Shelving Location Applied by the Cart to Shelf Cron Job?

Like many things in Koha, the description of the temporary CART shelving location used by the cart_to_shelf.pl cron job is in an authorized value, which can be modified by staff with the appropriate permissions. CART is simply a stand-in status for items that are still within a few hours of being returned and thus might not, in a busy library system, be back out on the shelf yet. The default description for this location is "Book cart" while an item is in the temporary CART status, but many libraries customize this wording to something more patron-friendly like "Recently returned." And like other authorized values in Koha, libraries may choose to use one description for the staff client and a different one for patrons viewing a record in the OPAC. So the staff client description might be "Reshelving" while the OPAC description is "Recently returned."

Changing this value and saving it instantaneously changes the description for the staff client and the OPAC. Library partners using a discovery layer like Aspen may need to check their translation map to make sure the new description displays to patrons.

Setting Up a Display Location That Clears at Checkin

Libraries may want to have items on display, including a shelving location of Display so that patrons can locate them easily, and have the shelving location automatically update to the permanent shelving location when those items are returned. This workflow will do that.
  1. In Administration > Authorized values > LOC, create a new shelving location for items on display following the instructions above in Add a Shelving Location or in the manual. For this example, we are using the code DISPLAY and the description Display.
  2. In Administration > MARC bibliographic frameworks, navigate to the 952 tag in the framework you want to edit. Most commonly, this will be the Default framework. Instructions for finding your tag and opening it for editing are available in the manual.
  3. In your 952 tag, click on the New tab to create a new subfield.

  4. Set the following for your new subfield:
    1. Subfield code: C (Note: make sure it's capitalized)
    2. Description in staff interface: Permanent shelving location (recommended; you can call it something else if you wish)
    3. Description in OPAC: You only need to fill this in if the OPAC description should differ from the staff description. If it's left blank, Koha will use the staff interface description.
    4. Managed in tab: items (10)
    5. Visibility: Select OPAC, Staff interface, and Editor
    6. Authorized value: LOC (shelving location)
    7. Save your changes.
  5. In Administration > Koha to MARC mapping:
    1. Start typing 'perm' into the search box to find items.permanent_location
    2. Click the Add button and map items.permanent_location to 952$C (capital C). Note that the tag and subfield should be entered as 952,C - see the manual for details on adding mapping.
  6. In Administration > System preferences, find the system preference UpdateItemLocationOnCheckin (manual):
    1. Click Edit to open settings
    2. Enter DISPLAY: _PERM_ (Note: DISPLAY is the example we're using. Use the code you set up for your new shelving location in step 1.)
    3. Save your settings
To test your new settings:
  1. Open an item that is not currently checked out for editing:
    1. Set its shelving location in 952$c (lower case) to Display (or the description you set in step 1 above)
    2. Set its permanent shelving location 952$C (capitalized) to its 'regular' shelving location when not on display
  2. View the item in the Normal tab to confirm that the permanent and temporary locations show

  3. Check the item out to a patron
  4. Check the item back in, and note that the Check in message reflects the shelving location update

I Accidentally Deleted a Shelving Location that was Still in Use - How Do I Find the Items Using it Now?

One way to find items using a location code (or other authorized value) that has since been deleted is certainly using a report. However, there's another powerful tool to identify items using an authorized value that no longer exists: item search.

Once hidden away under a drop-down for the search menu, item search is a dark horse resource of Koha that can do a lot of things a SQL report can do, in a format that is more accessible to a lot of Koha users.

In the case of a shelving location that gets deleted before its items are batch changed to a new location, we can run an item search to find items where the shelving location is not in any of the existing authorized values.


Specifically for a search like that, we want to select all of the provided shelving locations, not the 'all locations' value. This targets your search to only the items that have something in that field with those values not matching current options, not items that don't have any value there (like records where ebook holdings are kept in the catalog and just not given a shelving location, for example).

The item search results can be exported to csv to look at in more detail via spreadsheet software, and then trimmed to just the barcode column for use with the batch editing tool, now located in the cataloging module.

Some parameters in the item search will work better for this sort of maintenance than others - for any of the fields like lost, withdrawn, damaged, or not for loan that have a numeric value, the default value for those fields is 0, so an 'is not' search will return both items that don't have any status in addition to statuses that may since have been removed from the list of authorized values. For a search like that, a report will provide more meaningful results because it can search for a specific value, not just any value outside of the existing options.

If you haven't used item search to generate shelf lists or audit shelving locations or other item data, it's worth trying out and exploring.

    • Related Articles

    • How to use the OPAC cart in Koha

      In the Koha OPAC, patrons can download lists of items to use for homework and research papers, to populate bibliographic management tools like Zotero and Endnote, or just to help track their personal reading goals. For instance: a patron wants to ...

    • Koha Glossary of Terms

      Find the basics of Koha's vocabulary here This glossary is in alphabetical order. Use control+F to quickly search this page for specific terms. Authority Record: allows your library to control and search fields in your MARC records such as subject ...

    • Cataloging Concerns

      This feature can be set up for either staff or OPAC (or both!) and will allow staff and/or patrons to report issues with catalog records. The reported concerns will be visible in the dashboard on the main page of the staff interface and available ...

    • Monograph Cataloging

      Monograph cataloging is used to catalog a non-serial publication contained in one volume (book) that may be part of a set. Harry Potter could be cataloged as a monograph set with volumes, though monographs are typically academic titles containing ...

    • Fast Add Cataloging

      Within the Cataloging module, an option to utilize the Fast Add option appears. Fast Add cataloging is useful in a few ways. Many libraries use Fast Add for their ILL process. Academic Libraries may use Fast Add when adding in faculty-owned material ...