Tiles, Pods, and Behind the Curtain

Now that you know the basics of how a patron places a request it may be helpful to know a bit about what happens behind the scenes. When a patron requests an item it goes through the Rapido Pods your library has joined to see if any of your partners can fill the item. A Rapido Pod This link will take you to an external website in a new tab. is a group of libraries with shared policies who agree to share with all the other libraries in the pod. For example, the CSU Pod will share items with other CSU pod partners and will deliver it within 3 days and patrons can check the item out for 112 days. Pods are also ordered behind the scenes based on priority starting with the CSU Pod, so all requests will go to the CSU Pod first if possible, followed by the Western Pod, then US Pod, etc. 

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Rapido has real time availability, so it knows if a specific book attached to a specific record is available in a pod used by your library. This is why the Rapido Offer Tiles can give an estimate on an item. The estimates listed in OneSearch are the shared pod policies of the highest priority pod that currently has the item available to loan. For example, an item available from another CSU will say it will be delivered within 3 days and can be checked out for 112 days.

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Other pods may have different pod policies and therefore different Offer Tile estimates. The US Pod that can be joined by any library using Rapido in the United States as a 7 day delivery time and a checkout length of 112 days. 

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If an item is not available through any Rapido pod it can still be requested, but no estimate will be shown. These items may be switched to a duplicate record to request through Rapido or pushed to another Resource Sharing system to be filled outside Rapido. As more libraries start using Rapido this will be less and less common. 

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