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Circulation COI

Community of Interest

Purpose

Statement of Purpose

The OPAL Circulation COI is comprised of individuals who perform circulation related duties in their libraries within the consortium. Its mission is to create circulation related policies that are beneficial to both circulation staff and library users, to provide a valuable resource pool for system related questions and best practices, and to serve as a forum for networking within the consortium. This mission is achieved through regular meetings with open discussions of pertinent and relevant topics, with guidance from the OPAL staff members and the OPAL Directors’ Council.

Circulation COI Updates - Fall 2025

Summary of the latest updates, best practice suggestions and decisions from the Circulation COI meetings and discussions:Circulation COI Updates

  • Currently, Otterbein, Bluffton, JCU, and Malone are live with RapidILL. There is agreement that they have had an uptick in the number of requests (up to 15-30 per day), especially for out-of-state and international requests. On the lending side the most commonly seen issue is requests for multiple chapters and entire books. When download limits with publishers are reached libraries are either rejecting the request or working around the issue by assigning the request to another staff user.

  • Our current focus as a group is on formalizing best practices and operational standards that make sense for small institutions given the many possible options available in Alma/Primo. The Circulation COI will begin by reviewing a user management process to inactivate and eventually purge expired users. Once completed, the proposed workflow will be send to the OPAL Director's Council for formal approval as a policy

  • Other areas to explore around best practices include:

    • User management for graduating seniors, students who withdraw, or others separating from the institution.

    • Anonymization 

    • Letter configuration and activation

    • Scheduled fulfillment jobs 

  • There's interest in course reserve analytics reports and possibly a shared OPAL folder in the Alma Analytics shared Community section.

  • Let OpalHelp know if you receive a Resource Sharing request for a specific volume but the paging slip prints the incorrect call number and barcode information on the slip. There's a ticket open with ProQuest about this and they are looking for additional examples to add to the case. 
     

  • Next meeting: April 8, 2026 at 10:30am - Virtual. 
     

The full meeting minutes can be found under the Meeting Documents tab.

Circulation COI Coordinator

 

Scribe:
Gabby Alspaugh (Otterbein)

Previous Coordinator: Becky Gale (Otterbein)

Previous Scribe: Kayla Morrell (MTSM)