Transit slips/notes for patrons with fines or fees

Sahra: Transit slips/notes on account for patrons who have fines or fees. haven’t talked about what we should do? could we have a conversation about what the best practices are? We’ll get a paging slip for a patron that owes money, so they likely won’t be able to loan it. At the same time we don’t want to not send the item because they might clear their account up. What’s the best route?

Notes

UCSD: pull item out of stream, billing dept notifies patron about the fine. 7 days to clear, otherwise we send it back.

→ You could create a new cancelation reason to notify the patron. If your reason is clear (we can’t lend due to fines owed) that might be “good enough”? Having consistent language systemwide for canceling would be good.

Want to catch this at the point of paging, not at the circulation desk. This is the direction we’ll go until the blocks are in place.

Sahra: I found this page on modifying and/or adding new request cancellation reasons in Alma. I propose we add a new reason referencing fines/fees on the user's account and use the Cancellation Note open text field when cancelling the request to include more details, such as what the user needs to do (i.e. clear the fine and re-request). I'm totally open to the Cancellation Reason Code. Maybe something like "Blocked Due To Fines/Fees" or "Patron Owes Fines/Fees"?? Can we discuss at an upcoming meeting?

Ingred: Question about cancelling requests due to fines: If UCSD cancels a request because the user owes us $100, would that request then move to the next UC with an available copy, or will it be cancelled entirely? Does either outcome figure into what information we might want to include in the request cancellation note?

Actions

Draft language for cancellation reason to notify the patron?
”Can’t lend due to fines owed…”

Should be able to differentiate text because of the cancellation reason.

Develop in tandem with Disco OST?

Request can be canceled from the patron’s home institution and it will stop all forward movement.

→ Sahra will add a new cancelation reason on her end and do some testing with Ross.

10/9/23

Sahra added cancelation reason on UCR sandbox and we tested for requests placed by me which were canceled on her end. Because no emails are send within the sandbox we don’t know if I would have been notified -OR- if the request was pushed to the next campus in line.

next steps: add another member (Ingred) and continue to test, but this time in the live environment. We’ll be able to test emails that are (or aren’t sent) and test if canceling the request pushes it to another campus.

Depending on those results, we’ll have to make a determination on if there’s a better process for cancelling a request so it wouldn’t be pushed to another campus (e.g. contacting patron’s home institution and asking for it to be cancelled at the source).

10/17/23

Testing between UCM, UCI and UCR.

UCM placed request, UCI cancelled, automatically went to UCR without notifying user and without forwarding any information about cancellation reason.

If a campus receives a paging slip and the patron owes fines, the goal would be for the cancellation to stop the entire request and not push it to the next campus in the rota.

decision/questions:

do we want to implement the new cancellation reason and notify each borrower’s home institution whenever a fine/fee/bill is found on paging slip? (if editing a new cancellation reason isn’t possible, we can use a generic “cannot be fulfilled” reason with a note for the fine/fee/bill; however, that wouldn’t allow us to capture as accurate of statistics).
- “notify user” checkbox also did not work for AFN items. (should probably submit a ticket to ExL).
-OR- leave as-is and patron finds out they have a fine/fee/bill after the item arrives (and can’t check it out)?
-OR- lending institution cancels request because of fines/fees/fills and it continues along the rota for another campus to fulfill…

This is a (hopefully) temporary solution for when ExL eventually adds automated 04/05 blocks - which they say is on the roadmap (with no ETA).

10/23/23

Discussion on bulleted options listed above. Suggestion to submit ticket to ExL to fix notify patron problem, and still use status quo for allowing patrons to resolve any problems within the 7 day window. Further testing is needed (see action items). Do we know if any letters are being sent for each reason?

action items:

-test cancellation reasons to see if the notify user option works. maybe start with “cannot be fulfilled”.

test w/ Mark. if we need a 3rd Sahra can assist.

-(eventually?) submit ticket to ExL to investigate why the “notify user” box isn’t working with AFN patrons

10/25/23

Testing with Merced, Berkeley and Riverside. Tested two existing cancelation reasons and selected option for “notify user”. User was not notified across AFN. User was only notified when home institution cancelled the request (which is what we saw in prior testing). Still left with these options:

If we can’t get the notification settings configured properly, we may have to reach out to the home institution to cancel a request -OR-
you can’t loan from a UC in which you have a bill from, and it would just go to another campus -OR-
leave the status quo for a patron to walk in and learn they have a fine/fee/bill.

Food for thought:

→ how to we get our users to pay attention to the letters/notices/emails that they receive, and how to we educate them to look at the “my library account”?

-education is important because otherwise patrons won’t understand how it works. and who else are they going to learn from and/or how else would they figure it out?

→ is our responsibility to cancel the request ASAP to get the request to the next campus? or to get them to take care of the fines first.

→ patrons might not have the same experience at each campus, but maybe they can hear the same messaging. (i.e. maybe as an OST we develop language to share amongst each other and repeat to patrons).

2/12/2024

Discussed methods for notifying our patrons and developed the following boiler plate to the “On Hold Shelf” letter:

You may not be able to pick up your item(s) if you have active fines/fees at any UC campus.

Please verify the status of your account online by logging into your home institution Library Account and reviewing the Fine + Fees tab for each campus listed.

To do: determine best placement for text in the letter. Perhaps after “The library material you recently requested has been delivered and is ready for pickup” but before “This material may be picked up at…”

2/26/2024

Finalized text above but modified the location. It will go after the first two sentences (“The library material you recently requested has been delivered and is ready for pickup. This material may be picked up at…”)

Mark will look into best practices for screen readers/accessibility in how to display this text.

2/27/2024

Mark got some info for email based accessibility and shared with the group. Tony did more testing with the <pullquote> command and wasn’t able to get the border to appear in the email. It’s possible that element is intended for webpages vs. emails. He was able to find success using a block-level element to wrap the test and that shouldn’t cause a problem with accessibility.

3/11/24

Will generate decision page.