Circulation policy settings

This is the settings inventory for Lyra’s circulation policies. Policies explains how the three layers resolve; Managing policies covers creating and assigning them. This page is the values.

Every setting below lives at Library level navigation path: Configure then Policies, and editing any of them is a library-manager action.

Library defaults

The base layer, applied to every patron who has no override. All five are required — there is no blank “unlimited” option at this layer.

Setting	Meaning	Default	Minimum
setting: Loan period	Loan period for a checkout, counted in school days or calendar days (see below).	10	1
setting: Pickup window	How long a Ready hold waits on the shelf before expiring. Always school days.	5	1
setting: Loan limit	Maximum active loans per patron.	5	1
setting: Hold limit	Maximum active holds per patron.	2	1
setting: Renewal limit	How many times a single loan can be renewed. 0 means loans on the default can’t be renewed.	1	0

Loan and hold rules

Five further settings in the same defaults editor, shaping what’s allowed at the desk.

Setting	What it does	Default
The unit beside setting: Loan period	school days or calendar days. See below.	school days
setting: Due date ceiling	A date past which no loan can be due. Computed due dates landing later are clamped to it. The way to handle end-of-school-year.	Not set
setting: Never due on weekends or holidays	Rolls a computed due date forward to the next open day. Applies only in calendar-day mode; hidden for school-day loan periods, which already skip closed days.	Checked
setting: Deny loans to patrons with overdue items	When on, a patron with at least one overdue loan can’t check out anything new. When off, overdue patrons can still check out and notices keep coming.	Unchecked
setting: Deny renewals for items on hold	When on, a loan can’t be renewed while another patron has a hold on that item.	Unchecked

School days vs. calendar days

The loan period carries a unit:

School days (the default) — the period counts only days the library is open, skipping weekends and holidays as it counts, the same way the pickup window always works. A due date computed this way always lands on an open day. Because the count already steps over closed days, setting: Never due on weekends or holidays is redundant and is hidden.
Calendar days — the period is added as plain calendar days. The due date can land on a weekend or holiday unless setting: Never due on weekends or holidays rolls it forward.

The unit applies to the library default and to any override or item-policy cap on the loan period; all of those numbers are shown in the same unit. The pickup window is always counted in school days regardless.

Patron overrides

An optional second layer that replaces library defaults for a set of patrons. Two kinds, and at most one applies to any patron:

Faculty override — one set of limits shared by every faculty patron. There is no per-teacher policy and nothing to assign.
Grade-level override — a named override covering a band of grades, students only. A grade belongs to exactly one grade-level override at a time.

Both carry the same five fields, and every field is optional:

Field	Effect when set	When unset
setting: Loan period	Replaces the library default loan period.	Inherits the default.
setting: Pickup window	Replaces the library default pickup window.	Inherits the default.
setting: Loan limit	Replaces the library default loan limit.	Inherits the default.
setting: Hold limit	Replaces the library default hold limit.	Inherits the default.
setting: Renewal limit	Replaces the library default renewal limit.	Inherits the default.

Faculty patrons never use the grade-level layer; students never use the faculty override.

Item policies

An optional third layer carried by an item. Unlike the first two, an item policy never sets a base value. It only caps and exempts.

Caps

Field	Effect	Unset value
setting: Loan period	Lowers the resolved loan period when the policy’s value is stricter.	Unlimited
setting: Pickup window	Lowers the resolved hold pickup period when stricter.	Unlimited
setting: Renewal limit	Lowers how many times the item can be renewed.	Unlimited

A cap can only tighten, never loosen. If the resolved loan period is 10 days and the policy caps it at 7, the loan is 7 days; if the policy caps it at 30, the loan is still 10.

0 is the strictest setting for each: a 0-day loan period means same-day return, 0 renewals means the item can’t be renewed, and a 0-day hold period means same-day pickup — once a copy is set aside, the patron has only that day to collect it. A 0-day pickup window does not stop holds from being placed.

The loan-period cap shares the library’s unit. The hold-period cap is always in school days.

Exemption

Field	Effect
setting: Ignore loan limit	Items with this policy don’t count against the patron’s loan limit, and a patron already at their limit can still check them out.

This is the item policy’s only effect on concurrency. There is no item-side loan limit or hold limit; those limits exist only at the library-default and patron-override layers.

Resolution order

Lyra resolves each value in this order:

Start from the library default.
Replace values the patron’s override sets — the faculty override for faculty, the grade-level override for students.
Apply any item-policy cap on top.

Policies works through examples of this. At the desk, the card: Why This Date? panel on any loan shows which layers moved that particular due date.

Grade restrictions

Separate from the policy layers, an item can carry a grade restriction — a minimum and maximum grade, each an integer from −1 (Pre-K) through 12. A student outside the range cannot check the item out and cannot place a hold on it, regardless of what the policies resolve to. The OPAC won’t surface a Hold button; the staff app blocks the checkout.

A library manager can override a grade restriction at the circulation desk.