Returning items with Green Flag

Alliance member institutions return items to each other, regardless of circulation or lending process used - including InterLibrary Loan and Visiting Patron. For more information, see Reciprocal Borrowing Agreement.

ILL and Visiting Patron. Use a green flag to identify these non-Summit Borrowing items and signal the staff to process the item outside the Summit routines.

Why? When staff at an Owning Site receive an item returned in an Alliance (Orbis or Cascade or Summit) courier bag, they would generally attempt to check it in as if it were a Summit Borrowing--INN-Reach-- transaction. In the INN-Reach module they would scan the barcode and the system would fail to find the item. ILL is outside of INN-Reach, and Visiting Patron uses INN-Reach to validate the patron but local circ for the remainder of the checkout and checkin.

SB-PUA. Receive an SB-PUA and system won't let you check it in? Send it to Owning Site and use a green flag.

Why? When the Owning Site receives it, since it has the SB bookband/label they can check it in using INN-Reach. However: If the item was returned to some other library where the system wouldn't allow it to be checked in (such as a Pickup Anywhere returned to non-PUA library), even though it may have been returned by the Due Date, the Owning Site would not know that. To let the Owning Site know when the patron returned it to an Alliance library, use a green flag.

To distinguish Summit Borrowing items from all others in the courier bag, or to mark PUA items not yet checked in, insert a flag in the item to identify it. Make sure the flag is visible; it should extend above the top of the book's pages.  

The green flag is printed on 8 1/2 x 14" paper, lime green color . To make the flags:

Copy the form and cut in half to make two long flags per sheet.

Date: Patrons are responsible for returning items to the home library or any other Alliance member library by the due date. So the owning library can determine when the item was returned, the receiving library notes the date returned.

updated: October 23, 2006