COVID-19 and item quarantine

As the global community continues to monitor the impact of COVID-19, many libraries are planning how to safely handle collections as they begin to reopen. You may want to quarantine returned items for a period of time prior to returning them to your circulating collection. WorldCat Discovery and WorldShare provide several ways to quarantine items.

With WorldCat Discovery and WorldShare, you can:

• Create a quarantine patron to which you will check out returned items rather than checking them in WorldShare, or
• Create a temporary quarantine shelving location that will be visible to patrons in WorldCat Discovery, or
• Create a quarantine patron and temporary shelving location using WorldShare and WorldCat Discovery, or
• Extend the reshelving period for quarantined items using WorldShare and OCLC Service Configuration, or
• Use a scheduling policy to quarantine items using WorldShare and OCLC Service Configuration.

 Note: OCLC recommends documenting your current policies prior to making any changes. This will make it easier to revert changes when it is time to remove the quarantine configuration.