SCILS Policies – Circulation
Approved 2/05/2009

Item policy

Charge/Checkout

It is up to local policy whether each school requires the patron to have a school issued ID/library card with them to checkout.

SCILS recommends that at the very least a picture ID should be required for checkouts.

Notes and alerts should be explored before checking any items out to a patron. They may require further action.

Only items that belong to your library should be checked out to your patrons in Sirsi.  Sirsi doesn’t restrict checkouts of other SCILS library items to your patrons, but they should not be checked out using the other school’s barcode. This will discharge it from the home school’s ILL or PASCAL patron. Use a dummy barcode created by your school if you want to check it out to your patrons in Sirsi.

It is up to local policy whether items are checked-out if a patron owes money or has overdue books.

Items due dates should be given to the patron upon checkout in some print form either through due date slips or cards.

You should look at the current circulation map to find out what your school’s checkout policy.

Discharge/Checkin

When items are returned by a user, they should be checked in as promptly as possible.  This can be accomplished by simply scanning the Item ID or typing in the barcode if you do not have a scanner.

When checking in, the computer screen should be looked at after EVERY single item is discharged for error message or important information such as if an item is on hold or in assumed-lost status.

When appropriate, check in dates should be backdated for items such as books returned to the library in the book drop when the library has been closed over weekend or holiday.

Renewing

The Renew User button should be used when renewing single or multiple items for a particular user and the user’s information (e.g., user’s name or user’s id) is available and you do not have the items in front of you such as during a phone renewal.

The Renew Item button should be used when renewing items that the patron has brought back to the library.  In this case, the items are in hand, so the barcodes can be scanned easily. The user information is not needed.

It is up to local policy whether your school permits phone renewals and renewals of overdue material.

The system will block items from renewal if there is a hold on the item.

The system will block items from renewal if the renewal limit has been exceeded.

Bills 

Bill user

The bill a user function creates a record for money owed by the user to the library.  Fields for the reason for bill, amount, item id, and payment type should be appropriately completed. Most bills are system generated like overdue fines.

Reason for bill dropdown box:

Various reasons for bill include the following: charge, copies, damages, fax, lost, overdue, privilege, processing fee, etc.  The appropriate reason for bill should be highlighted.  Most categories are self explanatory, but below is a list of all valid reasons.

Some bill reasons require an item ID to be associated with it such as “Damage.”

Pay a bill

The Paying Bills function clears user bills.  The user’s record may be accessed by keying or scanning in the user id or by searching the user’s name.  The amount of payment and payment type should be selected, then click on the Paying Bills button to complete the transaction.

Payment type dropdown box:

Various methods of payment may be noted in the payment type field.

Payment type “Forgiven” should be used when bill/fine is waived even though patron does owe it (Patron is at fault, but the library is being nice).

Payment type “Cancel” should be used when it is a mistake for the patron to have received a bill (Library is at fault and is correcting their mistake).

Paid for lost items

All paid for assumed-lost items need to be discharged off the patron’s record and checked out to DISCARD or LOST-PD user depending if the item is being replaced.

Some schools choose to check out all paid for items to their DISCARD patron whether they are replacing them or not. They just download a new record if the old one is gone when they get the replacement.

If the item is not being replaced by the exact same title/publication then it should be checked out to DISCARD.

If you are ordering a duplicate copy and you want to use same bibliographic record, check the item out to the LOST-PD user, so that the bibliographic record remains in the system until the new item is received and processed. Then the item should be checked in from the LOST-PD user and checked out to the DISCARD.

Add a brief title

In circulation, Add Brief Title should be used in 2 cases only: creating records for items that do not normally circulate like individual magazines issues and items that are discovered to mistakenly not have a record in the system.

Titles added through the circulation module should be put a location that is shadowed like “ON_THE_FLY” so that the records do not show up in the catalog.

If an item has no record, create a brief record to check it out to the patron temporarily, but you should also put it on hold for the cataloger. This way when the item comes back in, it will notify the circulation staff that it needs to go to the cataloger. Be sure to make a note on the hold record that it needs to be cataloged.

Material that you deem unworthy of cataloging and do not care if the patron returns them such as donated paperbacks; you should use Ephemeral check-out instead of creating short/brief records. See more on Ephemeral check-outs in this document under “Ephemeral Check-outs.” There are also procedures on the SCILS webpage for Ephemeral checkouts.

Change Item ID

In the rare case that the barcode is missing from an item, use this wizard to change barcodes.

This wizard can also be used if a school is moving barcodes from the inside of books to the outside.

Mark Item Missing

When an item is listed as available in the catalog, but it cannot be located then the staff should use this wizard to check the item out to the MISSING user. This will shadow it in the catalog, so patrons are not looking for it.

Have more than one person search for the item if possible.

To do a thorough search, look in other locations to see if the item was misshelved in the incorrect location. If you have other campuses, the other campus shelves should be searched as well.

A monthly report of items marked missing is on the Finished List for every school so it can be searched at that time as well.

If an item that is marked missing is found, simply discharge/check in it to remove the missing status.

Mark Item Lost

When a patron has lost an item they have checked out, but it is too soon to have gone into assumed-lost status, use Mark Item Lost so that the bill can be generated immediately.

Follow normal assumed-lost procedures after marking it lost.

Delete Title, Call Numbers or Items

NEVER use this wizard. This is not a circulation function and any deletions should be handled by the cataloger according to the cataloging policies.

Ephemeral check-outs

Ephemeral should be used for items that are not worth the time to fully catalog and you do not care if the items are returned such as donated paperbacks, but you do want to get circulation statistics for checkouts.

Create a generic item record (for example for paperback) or you want to categorize the books, such as romance or mystery. There is more information on procedures of using Ephemeral Checkout on the SCILS website.

Items are checked out, but then immediately discharged automatically. Patrons will not get overdue notices or be charged for losing these items.

Approve: 2/05/2009