With the continuation of COVID-19, many libraries are changing how they do checkouts to limit contact.
Read about what some other libraries are doing:
Each library's new checkout process will look different depending on location and various capabilities. We encourage you to consider these questions as you create a plan that works for your library:
Once you have answers to those questions, the next step is to configure various preferences to meet your needs:
If needed, does your patron security group have access to manage holds, access Patron Status, and perform renewals?
Do you want to allow renewals for items that have pending holds? If so, turn on the Allow Renewals When Holds Are Pending preference on the Circulation Rules tab.
After configuring your preferences, these. However, keep in mind that
Patrons will place holds through Researcher (Search, Explore, Scout, or Browse).
Print our How to Place a Hold reference sheet and hand out copies to patrons. |
General strategy:
Before anything, we need to make sure that customers know that this is a guideline. They will need to be the ones that make a plan for how they will handle this process. I think it’s important to stress this since every library will be a little different. This will be helpful for both school and public libraries, so we should keep that in mind. Things to think about:
After creating a plan, they need to get Alexandria ready. Preferences they should check out:
Circulation rules - Do they want to allow renewals for items that have pending holds?
The general steps for remote checkout:
*Schools may want to select by or sort by grade or location to have a more manageable and easier to read report
Encourage the use of eBooks!
TextbookTracker - Check out textbooks to patrons then give the loaned items report to their homeroom teacher to know which student gets what textbooks. The only issue I can see with this is that depending on how many textbooks one student has will probably get confusing to know what goes where.
*The more I thought about using the patron barcode report the more I don't know if it would work. Mainly because not every student from the same homeroom will be getting the same books, and we don't have a way to separate them out by subject.
(Print checkout receipts then maybe?… use D command after checkout.)