Recently, there was some discussion on a list serv about a new way to streamline requesting books in our catalog from the Summon results page. The workflow for requesting a book in Summon is a little click heavy, where the user clicks on the book result and is presented with the Summon book detail page, then they click on the “Request” button, where they are taken to the catalog page (and no request is placed), and finally, they request the book in the catalog. The new workflow promised to actually execute the hold from the Summon request button.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work for us, and will likely linger in the support queue for a while. In the meantime, however, I discovered that Summon allows you to turn off the book detail page! So, instead of clicking on the result to get to the detail page, which duplicates the catalog record, and then clicking to the catalog record before you can do anything, clicking on a book result in Summon now takes you directly to the catalog. This gives us the same reduced number of clicks as the hold script without worrying about how either Ex Libris or Innovative will break the connection the next time there is a software update.
As a bonus, I have heard from many of you how much you hate the Summon book detail page! (The detail page for A&I content remains.)
I also rerouted the “Feedback” link to our custom Problem Form, to streamline our support tickets (and I will customize the label soon).
As always, let me know if you have any questions or concerns.