Tab_block_circ Configuration for Overdue Items in Certain Sublibraries

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Article Type: General
Product: Aleph
Product Version: 18.01

Description:
I need to configure tab_block_circ so that borrowers who have one overdue item or one overdue recalled item in certain sublibraries (MEDIA and MULTI) are blocked. I've set up tab_block_circ in Test so that these two sublibraries are the first two entries, and the final line uses wildcard characters in the Item Sublibrary column to indicate that borrowers with overdue materials in all other sublibraries won't be blocked unless they have ten items overdue. It's not blocking borrowers with one overdue item in MEDIA or MULTI from checking out additional materials.

Resolution:
Column 3 in tab_block_circ is the sublibrary of the item being checked out. What it is saying if you are checking out a MEDIA item, then the number of overdues in column 4 (or column 5) for *any* sublibrary is going to cause the patron to be blocked:
! 1 2 3 4 5 6
!!!!!-!!-!!!!!-!!-!!-!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ABC50 ## MEDIA 01 01 000000000000

It *may* be that if you had sublibrary MEDIA z305 (local borrower) records, you could put MEDIA in column 1 (the patron sublibrary) and then the overdues that it counts in column 4 would be *just* the items overdue for this MEDIA borrower record.

But what you would certainly *not* be able to do, even in this second set-up, is to prevent an item from some other sublibrary from being loaned because the patron has one overdue MEDIA item.

The only alternative I can think of, which would probably also not be satisfactory, would be to make the patron exceed the cash limit by charging an extra fee when the first overdue letter is sent out for this sublibrary. You would have this in tab32:
MEDIA ## 50 00 001 001 O 0070

And this in tab32:
0070 ##### ## Y 50.00 Overdue Media Fee

The effect would be that a patron who had a media item overdue would receive a $50.00 overdue Media charge, which could be refunded when the item was returned(?) The "$50.00" charge would need to be big enough to trigger a cash block (a block due to too much money owed).

Article last edited: 10/8/2013