Hello all,
Posted this on the Discord and got great comments from @CyberpunkLibrarian, but wanted to share here as well to get feedback from any non-Discord folks.
New to Polaris and it’s now time to move long overdue items. In Symphony, we ran a report that broke the checkout and moved the items on a group of checkouts we could define - say by patron code. How is this type of thing done in Polaris?
We need to move all our long overdue student card checkouts to (ideally) Lost circulation status, but we don’t bill students. Missing would be acceptable as well. We want a status we supresss from Vega, but if checked in it will go back to Available. Also, these items are checked out and owned/assigned to anyone of 21 branches. Any ideas, workflows, etc. much appreciated!!
move all our long overdue student card checkouts = move the item records to some status other than out?
we don’t bill students = means you don’t want an email or notice to be sent? Or you don’t want the replacement charges to show up on the account? Or both?
Regardless, I think your choices are going to be very limited. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking you basically let them go through the normal billing to lost process and then set up something to Bulk Waive the associated charges on those accounts.
It would also be good to hear what the overall goal of this program is. That might help the community devise another approach for the process.
I was thinking you could also set the price to zero on these items before they go to the billing process, but I seem to recall seeing elsewhere that you needed to maintain what the replacement cost of the item was, is that correct?
We’ve been on Polaris for just over a year, having migrated from Symphony, and we had a similar procedure in Symphony as you described. One key difference is that our checked-out items were automatically moved to “Lost” status after two overdue notices. However, we still needed to run the “Process Long Overdue Items” report (edited: in Symphony ILS) to break the link between the checkout and the item, allowing long overdue items to be deleted.
In Leap, the process is essentially the same: items become “Lost” and are billed after two overdue notices. That said, I’d like to share a procedure we set up after consulting with our support team. This was configured through the Polaris Client under: System Administration → System Level → Parameters → Patron Services → Lost Item Transition.
Below is an excerpt from the documentation I received from Support:
# Set Up Lost Item Transition to Missing or Withdrawn
Libraries in a consortium will need to consider whether to implement automatic transition of Lost items, as the new status will be assigned without regard to Lost Item Recovery settings for the Governing Library.
To enable lost item transition processing (after 2 years):
If the item is Lost and not paid, the charge remains on the patron’s account.
If the item is Lost and paid, no lost-item-recovery actions (e.g., crediting the patron’s account) will be applied.
I’ve also uploaded a screenshot of the Lost Item Transition settings in System Administration. I hope this is helpful to you.
Move all out long overdue student card checkouts - remove them from the student patron account and to a new status. The outcome is a fresh, usable card for the new school year and the item is (ideally) moved to lost (or missing). Then if it actually comes back, they just check it in and the status goes to available. Before I do this, I pull a report and track the prices separately.
For students, we have them configured in Patron Registration to Not get bills and not go to collections. Students are never billed for items they don’t return. We don’t care about replacement charges being connected to an account. We don’t under any circumstances want to send any kind of bill to students. It is part or our MOU.
The goal of the program is for students to use the library. They are allowed to checkout 3 physical books at a time. In the past in our Symphony system, before the new school year, I would run a report that selected student patron code checkouts that were long overdue and break the checkout without billing the student, and moved the item to a new location (function similar to circulation status in Polaris). The loss of items is considered a loss leader/cost of doing business by our Learning Services folks who run the program.
I don’t see that report in our Polaris system, and can’t find any report by that name. I do find a “Long Overdue Items” report, documented here, but that report seems to simply list the items that are long overdue and doesn’t “do” anything with them. So, I’m not sure how that contributes to breaking the link.
I say potentially because this whole process sounds similar to some “kids cards” that we have. In our cases, we have those patrons set up for email notices using a “blackhole” email address for notices, so things can still transition to lost, and we have high Fine limits set on that patron code. So, the account accumulates lost charges, but that never prevents the accounts from CKOing out.
So, that may be another option to consider. Allow all the normal processes to occur with the accounts, but have the Fine limits set so high it doesn’t matter.
In the case of Polaris, @Mei_He 's transition to missing/withdrawn could be coupled with an annual Bulk Waive of any charges on the student accounts.
I meant when we were in our previous ILS (Symphony), we had to run the “process longoverdue items” report to break the links between checkout and items.
