October 25, 2021

Miss Honey knows that after Halloween, winter break comes faster than an avalanche–and with it, the need for patrons to return everything before heading out for the holidays. Taking a few minutes to set her period due dates early will make life easier for Miss Honey and the rest of her library staff. 

Period due dates are fixed due dates that require items to be returned to the library, regardless of the loan period or any other circumstances. You can set as many period due dates as you need for your library in just two easy steps. 

  1. First, go to Preferences>Calendars, and click twice on the calendar day that you want to set as the period due date. 
  2. Second, go to Preferences>Policies, and go through your patron policies to ensure that the "Apply Period Due Dates" box is selected for any policy you want it applied to.

When the period due dates are applied to your patron policies, the due dates for items will automatically be adjusted during checkout. This allows items to circulate for their normal circulation period, until it would extend past the specified period due date in the calendar. When the period due date is in place, the circulation period would be shortened to set the due date as the period due date. For example, if Rachel checks out The Penderwicks on December 3rd, and the checkout period is set to three weeks, the due date would be set to the period due date, December 17th, rather than the 24th. 

If you apply the period due dates after you already have items checked out that exceed the period due date, you can run the Recompute Due Dates utility to apply the policy/calendar change. This utility will NOT apply to item policies that have a set Hard Due Date. 

Read more prepping for winter break to stay ahead of the game!