Patron blocked for overdue notices unblocked when item set to Lost

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 18.01

Description:
I have a question about Blocking patrons in circulation. We would like to block our patrons when they recieve an item replacement bill, that is, when the item is declared lost or becomes "lost" due to the fact that it is very overdue.

We are trying to do this by using The tab 100 setting for the number of notices.

tab 100
. OVERDUE-LETTER-NO
Defines the number of overdue letters sent to be considered as a block in circulation functions.
Possible values are: 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4.
Defines "overdue" for tab_check_circ_1_d block. A loan is overdue if the due date has passed and "n" or more notices have been sent.
The default value is 0.

What seems to be happening is that the Patron does get blocked, but once the item is "Lost" the patron is no longer blocked. I have tried it with several patrons. They will get blocked with tab 100 is set to "2" and the item is overdue, but once the notice number goes to "3' and the item is "Lost" the patron is no longer blocked.

Can i use this setting to block patrons who have have "lost" items ? If not is there any other way to accomplish this ?

Resolution:
In calculating whether the overdue-notice threshold is exceeded, the check_circ_1_d.cbl program looks for a z36_status to be "A". (It does *not* include status "L".)

If the patron pays for the book, you would not want the patron to be blocked due to this Lost loan record.

When the Loan status is changed to Lost, a Lost-item-replacement-cost cash transaction is created. It would seem that, though the patron may no longer be blocked due to the overdue item, they would be blocked due to money owed.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013