Deflecting Requests for Specific Materials or Collections
Every lending operation has material it cannot supply: reference volumes, special collections, textbooks on reserve, the copy that never leaves the building. Without deflection, requests for those items arrive in your lending queues and staff cancel them one at a time.
Deflection lets OCLC decline on your behalf. Your symbol is skipped in the lender string and the request moves to the next potential lender, so it is never created for you and never imports into ILLiad.
All of it is configured in OCLC rather than in ILLiad. This article covers what the options are, which ones reach individual titles, and where the limits sit.
Deflection Is Not Filtering​
The two are easy to confuse and work at different points.
Filtering chooses which lenders go into the lender string in the first place, based on holdings data — including the volume and year data in local holdings records — and happens before the request is produced. Custom holdings paths and groups drive it, and the Policies Directory is not involved.
Deflection applies to the lender string after it exists. A deflected symbol is skipped rather than left with a pending request nobody answers.
The Order OCLC Evaluates​
When a request reaches your symbol, OCLC works through these in order:
- Supplier status
- The lending and reproduction policies in the local holdings record (008/20-21)
- On-order status, for libraries using WMS Acquisitions
- Deflection policies in the Policies Directory, in this order: service type, format, profiled group, e-license terms, custom holdings group, maximum cost, age of material
Setting your library to non-supplier status is the broadest of these and is evaluated first.
Policies Directory Deflection​
Deflection policies are created on the Policies tab of the OCLC Policies Directory. Each policy needs a name and a request type — Copy, Loan, or Copy or Loan — and one of three deflection types: real-time deflection, real-time deflection except when you are last in the lender string, or disabled.
From there a policy can be narrowed by:
- Borrower maximum cost
- OCLC profiled group or custom holdings group
- Format
- E-license terms
- Material age in years
Includes and excludes let a policy target a short list or everything but a short list. Deflecting everything except books, for instance, is one exclusion rather than a long list of formats.
When a policy deflects a request, the borrower's request history records the reason — for example Auto-Deflection: Format Type, Auto Deflection: Maximum Cost, or Auto Deflection: Age of Material.
Shelving location is not a deflection criterion in the Policies Directory. Neither is your local collection code. OCLC requesting works from the WorldCat bibliographic record, and your collection, location, call number, and circulation policy live in your local catalog record, where the requesting process never sees them.
Title-Level Deflection with a Local Holdings Record​
To deflect requests for particular material, code the lending and reproduction policies in its local holdings record (LHR) in WorldShare Record Manager.
This is title-level, not item-level. OCLC checks every LHR attached to the title's OCLC number. If any one of them is coded to lend, the request is not deflected — so a title with two LHRs, one coded to lend and one not, still comes through. The method also does not work for a single item within a multi-part LHR.
- Open the record in WorldShare Record Manager.
- In the 008 field, confirm the Encoding Level is 2 or higher.
- Expand the 008 field and set character position 20 (Lending Policy) and character position 21 (Reproduction Policy).
- Click Done and Save, or choose Add record from the Action menu.
The two combinations that matter for deflection:
| 008/20 Lending Policy | 008/21 Reproduction Policy | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| b, Will not lend | b, Will not reproduce | Both loan and copy requests for the title are deflected |
| b, Will not lend | a, Will reproduce | Loan requests are deflected; copy requests still reach you |
These are only the values that drive deflection. An LHR needs other values as well to be valid.
Covering a Whole Shelving Location or Collection​
Because location is not a deflection criterion, covering a collection means coding the LHRs for everything in it. OCLC documents bulk approaches for this — see its "Bulk actions for LHRs: Update the lending policy" documentation and its record work lists training — which is more practical than editing records one at a time. The title-level caveat above still applies to each record.
Where to Get Help​
OCLC documents this in Deflections and in Deflect ILL lending requests using local holdings records. Local holdings records themselves, including local holdings constant data for storing your defaults, are covered under Local Holdings Maintenance; their format follows the Z39.71 Holdings Format and the MARC 21 Format for Holdings Data.
Local Holdings Maintenance is part of the OCLC Metadata Services program, so Atlas cannot provide support for Record Manager or for creating and validating local holdings records. Direct those questions to OCLC.
Related Options in ILLiad​
Deflection stops a request before it is created. For requests that do arrive, Auto-Canceling Lending Requests cancels imported requests from borrowers you have blocked, based on the borrowing institution's symbol.