Knowledge Base

Dealing with In-Transit and Transferred Item

Items get lost from time to time during their trips throughout the library systems. They may never be found but best practice is to ensure that these items are indeed missing. If we suspect the items were lost in-transit or when transferred, then we need to clean up those records.

In-Transit vs Transferred Circulation Statuses

An item with the circulation status of “Transferred” is an item that you have sent out of your library.

An item with the circulation status of “In-Transit” is an item that is coming back to you from another library (or is being sent to the next requesting library). For example, all items in the system are processed at NLLS HQ. Once processed, the items change to “In-Transit” when sent on to the borrowing library.

Reports

You can run an In-Transit and Transferred Materials report in Power BI, the SRSS Canned Reports, or in Simply Reports (where you will be able to export the list as a record set). Depending on preference and access.

You will only be concerned with items that have been in-transit or transferred for a period of two months or older.

PowerBI
Go to Member Libraries Dashboard à Collection Maintenance Report à In-Transit and Transferred - Missing Items. Work down the list, copying and pasting the barcode into LEAP when updating an item. Alternately, you could export the list from PowerBI and import it into a record set in LEAP.

SRSS Canned Reports

Go to Utilities à Reports and Notices à Custom folder à In-Transit and Transferred Items report. Leave the date as is, select your library, and hit Submit. Set the date parameter to two months prior today’s date.

SimplyReports

In Item list reports, under the Items tab select the following for categories for output:

• Item barcode
• MARC title
• MARC author
• Item home branch name
• Item sending branch name
• Item receiving branch name
• Item last in transit date
• Item last circ status change date
• Item circ status

Sort:

• Item last in transit date
• Item last circ status change date

General Filters:

• Select your library
• Select Circ Stats: Transferred, In-Transit (use CTRL to select both options)

Item relative date filters:

• Select In-transit sent date more than: 2 Months

Click submit. Download as an Excel file or export the results as a record set, depending on your workflow preferences. If exporting as a record set, name the record set by your library code, intransit_transferred, and the month/year, i.e. AA_intransit_transferred_aug2022. You can also save the report parameters to either manually or automatically run every month.

Best Practice

Attempt to physically locate any items that you identify as being in transit/transferred for 2 months or longer. If the item has been in transit/transferred for years, you may decide to simply change those items to withdrawn rather than attempting to track them down. Follow the process below to ensure that patron holds are reactivated (DO NOT delete item records).

A shelf check will need to be done at three libraries. The owning library, the receiving library, and at the sending library. Contact both the receiving and the sending library requesting a shelf check. Include the barcode, call number, title, and author of the item in your request.

In Leap, search for the item and open Circulation to view these details.

If the item is found, and returned, check it in. Click ACTIONS > Check In.

If none of the three libraries can locate the item, then the owning library will need to declare this item as missing in Polaris and delete the item record to prevent patrons from placing holds on the item.

Setting In-Transit or Transferred Items to Missing in Polaris

If you do not have a physical item to check in, you can pretend to check the item in through the item workform.

If this is an item from another library, then Polaris will prompt you to send it back to the owning library. If there is a hold on the item for a patron, a pop up will ask if you would like to hold or transfer the item to another library. Click No. A new pop up will appear asking if you would like to reactivate the hold. Click Yes. This will send the patron’s hold onto another library’s available item to fill the request rather than deleting the request. If your item is the only item in TRAC, then say “no” to reinstating the hold.

If there is an item from another library, then LEAP will prompt you to send it back to the owning library. If the item is missing, click no.

Once the item is checked-in, you will need to open the item record and switch the status to missing or withdrawn. If the item has only been missing for a little over two months and you hope that it might still be found, then you can change the status to missing, so that no holds can be placed on the item. If the item has been missing for a long time (a year or longer), change the status to withdrawn.