Tip of the Week

Tip for: 06.24.02

Policies - A policy not only governs what a patron can or cannot borrow from the library, it also is used for advanced statistics broken down by time or even by types of items checked out. Create your policies in your preferences, one for each patron or item group that has different circulation rules or that you need to track statistically.

Under Patron Policies and Item Policies, set the general rules for those subdivisions. Under Circulation Policies, set the exceptions to the rules - such as Staff Patrons get to check out Video Items for 60 days. On the circulation policies, changing the maximum number of items that can be checked out will cause ALL circulation to those patrons to stop when they reach the maximum in any one group of items.

Don't forget that creating the policy is only the first step. You must assign your patrons and items to the correct policies. This also means constant maintenance. With each new patron or item added or imported you must assign them to the correct policy. Alexandria will not use call number, medium type, level, or location to set an item's or patron's policy automatically. You can use either your utilities, the appropriate circulation command, or the management windows to assign the policy to your patrons and items.

For school libraries, if your patron policies differ for each grade, you will need to assign the patrons to the correct policy each year.