This is broken!
MPOW is renovating the third floor of the big campus library this summer. Books on that floor are unavailable until renovation ends. So an email went out today reminding us to be ready for a lot of interlibrary-loan requests.
Get this. We’re supposed to remember to remind patrons to initiate such a request from the consortial catalogue (rather than MPOW’s), and if that’s not enough, from a record at an institution other than MPOW! Because, forsooth, “although the MPOW copy is clearly unavailable because it has the location message “MPOW item not available due to renovations, Summer 2006″, the system will reject a patron’s request if they place their request from the MPOW copy.”
Let’s be perfectly clear here. Crystal clear. The patron is not broken in this scenario. The system is broken. MPOW’s catalogue is too dumb to talk to the consortial catalogue, which in turn is too dumb to realize when a MPOW record is congruent with a record at another institution (FRBR, where are you?). Despite having been told that an item is unavailable, the system is not smart enough to hunt for the next-best copy. Despite having been told that an item is unavailable, the system is not even smart enough to accept a request for it!
Maybe putting availability information in the location field is bad practice. No, no, there’s no maybe about it—it’s bad practice. Even so. The system ought to be flexible enough to bloody well suck it up and deal.
You know, every single time I think I’ve seen the last remotest jaw-droppingest depth of the badness of library computer systems, somebody shows me something worse. I wish they’d stop; I really do.