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Circulation Rules File (upload as a text file or link as a google doc)
Briefly describe your approach to your rules, why you chose to write the ruleset the way you did
When did you / will you go into production?
Contact for questions
School Name
Circulation Rules File (upload as a text file or link as a google doc)
Briefly describe your approach to your rules, why you chose to write the ruleset the way you did
When did you / will you go into production?
Contact for questions
Georgia Southern University Libraries
Comments in the circulation rules file provide the specification in human readable language. This allows employees in checkout desks to get permissions to view the circulation rules and by looking at comments, they can understand the software.
Patrons are chunked out into chunks starting with "(A)", "(B)", "(C)", "(D)", and "(E)". Patrons in groups starting with that same letter code have identical checkout. This allows everyone at the Libraries to easily understand how checkout works and have a conversation about changes to quickly make changes, by reducing complexity. This allows systems employees to quickly edit and review logic rules, by reducing complexity.
Before migration, we did metadata cleanup to support checkout behavior working only off of location and loan type.
Noncirculating locations are to where items never circulate, no matter what the loan type is.
Circulation behavior for items in circulating locations is governed by loan type.
This streamlined behavior to have circulating locations working on just one metadata field means that we can post a one pager explanation to all employees on our intranet about how circulation behavior works, and then they can more easily recognize and route problems. A one-pager explanation for library employees at GS is available in Appendix A to this journal article https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/18293 (Alma Item Policy corresponds to FOLIO loan type).
This is a first pass at rules to enable some basic loan import - we expect to have many more rules before we go live
We have a central library system and professional school libraries that all share an ILS, but the professional school libraries have different rules, so the main organizing principle is location
Beyond location, we're still trying to decide if we will group by material type or patron group
we do expect to use loan type to enforce special circulation scenarios (like library use only)
Summer 2022
@(OLD ACCOUNT) Erin Nettifee
Saint Michael's College
We chose to organize our rules primarily around locations and patron groups
We use loan types to handle our Reserves
Summer 2021
@Stacey Knight
Skidmore College
Most of our rules are based on material type and patron group
We also have some circulation rules based on loan type, used for items such as course reserves
As we only have a single library on a single campus we do not use campuses, institutions, or libraries in our circulation rules
We also do not base our circulation rules on location.
We use location to indicate whether something is part of a collection in addition to it's physical location. So our library has many locations (nearly 200) despite only occupying one building. Thus using location circulation rules would be very inefficient and result in more rules than necessary
There is one rule at the top to prevent materials from circulating to certain patron groups (student workers and "API" - used for generating API tokens)
Summer 2021
@Michael Paulmeno
Texas A&M University
Large multi-library system, using location, loan type, and patron type
Some locations charge fines, some do not
Complex rules around media and equipment circulation that differs (somewhat) by location
August 2021
@Elizabeth Chenette
Missouri State University
Our initial approach was to use loan types to replace our location-based rules from our previous system. From there we apply policies, predominantly, based on patron group.
Initially, we had a very simple rule-set, but we had to create additional patron groups for non-circulation reasons and account for those in our rules, which makes our definitions longer than we'd like
We had to expand our patron groups, again, to account for the need to limit the ability of some "local" patrons to page items from their home libraries. This also increased the size of our various group rule definitions and required us to increase the total number of rules, overall.
June 2020
@Brooks Travis
Lehigh University
We simplified our rules in 2015 when we migrated to OLE.
These rules follow the tiered approach we were using in OLE.
Working well so far
August 2020
@Mark Canney
Cornell University
Prior to migration Material types, Loan policies, and Loan types were identified for removal. Fines were simplified prior to migration to Folio.
The primary reasoning behind the style we used for our ruleset was readability by other staff members and new staff members down the road, including:
The `first-line` method was applied.
Policies were written utilizing the nested feature.
Nested rules were written to correspond with the order defined in the `criterium`. (Top levels are restrictive with the final layer (Material Type) having the active policies applied.
A large number of comments were included.
Extra rules were added to the top to ensure that items in special collections were blocked as well as setting a default reserves policy for items with an effective reserves location.
NOTE: As of 7-28-2021, there are a few policies that were added to accommodate discrepancies in imported data from the patterns established for FOLIO.
July 2021
@Thomas Trutt
BNCF Library
Most of the BNCF rules are based on loan type, patron group and material type
There are three loan types:
- Prestito = the book can circulate and exit from the library
- Consultazione = the book can’t exit from the library, it’s only for in house use
- No Prestito = books can’t circulate·
There are different patron groups setting in FOLIO, that are differentiated according to what kind of material to which they can have access and to the loan type (they can bring the item out of the library , they can read the item only in the library or both)
August 2020
@Annalisa Di Sabato
University of Chicago Library
Most of our rules are based on loan type and patron group
Some of the notice policy shown as "standard" will be replaced with more specific policies
There is very little policy variation between the libraries that constitute the University of Chicago Library
December 2021
@Cheryl Malmborg
Chalmers University of Technology
We try to keep it simple.
The rules are based on patron groups and loan type.