Why holds matter - getting ready for SILS

When all of our branches are automated and everyone is on SILS, anyone in the province will be able to request our new books, and trust me, they will!

When Saskatoon came onto the system, they brought along over 33,000 holds!  Saskatoon patrons love, love, love their library and they borrow an average of 19 books per capita, one of the highest circulation rates in the country.  They are doing a great job up there, and we've already been learning a lot from partnering with them on SILS.

One of the things we've really got to start doing is training our patrons to place holds on books they want.  Otherwise, those great new books are going to just walk out the door and go to another region and our browsers won't be seeing them until the provincial demand dies down.

So, over the next few months, you'll see some promotional materials aimed at getting them thinking ahead and placing holds.  If every staff member could assist even three people per month to place holds on the Horizon catalogue for the first time, it would make a difference.

To place a hold, you search for the book on Horizon, and keep clicking on the title of the one you want until you get to a screen that looks like this:

From here, it's a snap - the person just clicks on the button marked "place a hold" (circled in green), and then it will ask them for their library card number and PIN number (the default is the last four digits of their phone number).

Et voila!