Sometimes staff may mistakenly mark an item as Shipped (non returnable) instead of just Shipped. The non returnable option is meant for photocopied articles, which are not supported in the Commonwealth Catalog. This option eliminates the return process for the item, since it assumes the item only needs to travel one-way.
Once a non returnable item has been marked Received at the borrowing library, it will Complete the request in the ComCat system without building a patron hold or temporary item record in your local system. In order to circulate the item to your patron, you will need to manually Receive the request.
To manually Receive an item:
-manually build a temporary item record for the request in your local library system
-alert the patron that their request has arrived
-if needed, place a hold for this item on the patron's account
When the patron is done using the items, the staff will not see the option in ComCat to mark the items Returned, because they were never Received. Staff can follow the instructions here to mark the items returned. Alternative, they can send the item back without updating ComCat, but they will need to contact the Lending Library to let them know the items have been returned.
