When an ILL request is closed (I mean the document has been returned to the supplying library) the item and biblio record created for it should be deleted, either in real time (better I suppose) or with a script in cron They were only created to enable the document to be checked out to the patron. If we don't remove them, they will pollute the catalog.
We have implemented this in our backend. For sending notices we need the articles to stay around a little longer and delete them with a cron script (the nightly plugin one actually). I think libraries might want to handle this differently, so a cron with a configurable duration might be the most flexible solution.
I see you have implemented a lot of good ideas in your backend. the second in 2 days ;-)
I was thinking of a windows like we have when we delete the last item of a record ("This request is closed, the record and item are now useless, do you want to delete them?"). But clearly in my library we will want to delete it automatically without bothering to answer to that...
A lot of "nice" information for the notices is in the record, so we want to delete after we are sure there will be no more letters to create :) We are quite happy with the backend indeed :D
What notices are you thinking of?
(In reply to Mathieu Saby from comment #5) > What notices are you thinking of? I am trying to remember. I think it was re-printing some kind of slip for the article requests. The article requests get checked out and then immediately returned again, so the system knows they have been picked up/handed out. I'll try to remember the exact issue.
As there are some use cases to keep the records around (especially if they were pimped up using some SRU imports so you have decent data) an option could be to move them into some "shadow catalogue" instead of deleting them entirely. Then they don't pollute the main OPAC, but would still be around for some time and the clean up could be more lazy. (I am also imagining situations where we might learn that some subject is on higher demand e.g.)