Processing Long Overdue Items Not Marked Lost

Overview

• When libraries closed in March, PLS suspended the process that marked long overdue items lost automatically.
• PLS also suspended overdue email notifications.
• Most (if not all) libraries did not send printed overdue notifications / lost materials bills, even though these printed notices still continued to be generated.
• Items that were due on or after Sunday, 3/15 had their due dates shifted to 9/30.
• However, items that were due 3/14 or earlier did not have their due dates shifted, but did have their overdue fines suspended through 7/1.
• Patrons who had items due 3/14 or earlier may never have been notified of having an overdue item if the due date fell within a week (or so) prior to 3/14.
  • Even if they were: Remember March? (ugh!) There was a lot going on!
• These items (due 3/14 and back through due dates in mid-January), along with a handful of items due in July, were never marked lost.
• Basically: The checkout library checks their shelves for items and contacts patrons. Most of the time, the checkout library will also be the owning library and can immediately process the items. If an item is owned by another library, the checkout library should touch base with the owning library after contacting the patron to see how the owning library would like to proceed.

Workflow

Process Report (Dec - Jan)

Checkout libraries process report of long overdue items.

• Check shelves
• Contact patron
• If items are owned by the checkout library, you may also choose to proceed to the "process items" stage (but only for items you own!).
• If items are not owned by the checkout library, please consider reaching out to the owning library, especially if the patron has claimed they have returned the items or do not recall checking the items out.

"Overdue Items Not Marked Lost" Report Overview

This new, temporary report can be found in Ad Hoc reports. The report defaults to listing items grouped by owning library (your library at the top, others at the bottom), then by shelving location and call number to make checking shelves easier. You can easily sort by patron barcode if you'd like to group items by patron.

Process Items

• Owning libraries process report (coming mid-January) of long overdue items if they haven't already been contacted by the checkout library.
  • Check shelves
  • Determine what to do with items. Options include:
    • Mark items as Claims Returned
    • Mark items as Claims Never Checked Out
    • Check in items (to remove from account) and mark items as Missing
    • Mark items as Lost and processing bill for patron (see more below)

Billing

• Any of these items that you mark lost manually will not show up on your regularly printed bills.
• Instead, you'll have to print a bill for these patrons manually. For this reason, it's recommended that only the owning library of the item marks an item as lost and bills the patron.
• To do so, once the item has been marked lost, you can navigate to the bills on a patron's account, select the lost items bills, and select "Print Bills" from Actions. More info on OWWL Docs.