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

Description:
We have had several incidents of patrons inconsistently receiving the wrong due dates when they are checking out books from other libraries at their home institution. It appears that all of these items had been requested and sent to the patrons home institution for check out.

The sequence:

Patron SMT-00003987 checked out UMass item 312066008331101 due date 12/26/07: correct
checked in at Smith
Patron SMT-00003987 checked out UMass item 312066008331101 due date 5/26/08: incorrect

Resolution:
The "checked in at Smith" generated a transfer loan to U Mass. Doing a check-in at UMass before doing the check-out there resulted in the correct date....

Looking at the z36h and z36 entries associated with the second check out: "Patron SMT-00003987 checked out UMass item 312066008331101 ...". I find that the current, effective z36 loan record was preceded by a transfer loan from Smith to UMass, which is recorded in the z36h. The z36h_id -- the patron ID -- is "UMDUB" and the z36h_bor_status is 21 and its z36h_due_date is 20080526.

The transfer loan due date was correct, because the bor_status 21 is associated in the uma50 tab11 with a loan period of 180 days:
UMDUB 01 ## 21 + 00000180 03 A 2359 0000 00000 999 020 0 + 00000014 A 2359 010 014 01 D360

The fix_due_date procedure calls a "get_effective_due_date" routine. This routine looks at the existing (transfer) loan and takes *its* z36_due_date as the new loan's z36_due_date. That is how the current loan got the due date of 20080526.

Doing the following, instead, corrected the problem:

Patron SMT-00003987 checked out UMass item 312066008331101 due date 12/26/07 correct
checked in at Smith and transferred to UMass
checked in at UMass
Patron SMT-00003987 checked out UMass item 312066008331101 due date 12/26/07 correct

The step added was the "checked in at UMass".

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013