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University of Texas University of Texas Libraries

UGS 302: How to Change the World (Padilla)

Item Status Displays

Deciphering status displays for physical items

  • Available:  Items are currently present on the shelf.  Open the Location detail to see the status of individual items. 
    • Loanable - available for checkout
    • Library use only - non-circulating item
  • Not available:  These items are usually checked out to another person. To place a request for it, log in to your library account and click “Pick it Up” under the “Get It” menu. Books that are on order also appear with this status.  Items that are actually missing or lost by patrons are not displayed in the catalog.
  • Check shelf:  This status, which usually appears in context of printed journals/periodicals, is a "ghost" from our retired legacy system and should be ignored.  There should be accompanying listings of other locations that are accurate.  You can ask at the service desk of the owning library for further information, or contact our Ask a Librarian service.

The "Boundwith" Puzzle

Sometimes when you open a record for a physical item in the Library Catalog, under Locations you'll see the message "We couldn't find any items to display".  Below that there's a box of RELATED TITLES and one with the confusing title "Host bibliographic record for boundwith item barcode [number]".  You may often see this when searching for older monographic series and serials/periodicals that have complex cataloging histories.

snap of no item to display message

Just click on the expand button to the right to see the actual item:

snap of expanded boundwith item

This is the actual item in question with the call number, numbering, location, and barcode information.  You can place a Pick It Up request at this point. 

This is how our current system deals with "bound-with" materials, where multiple bibliographic entities, each with its own bibliographic record in the Catalog, are combined together in a single physical item.  Binding multiple items together in this way used to be common practice, so there are many thousands of these in our catalog.  While confusing, this is actually how the software was designed to behave.

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