If something goes wrong

Open this page when something is wrong and you’re not sure where to start.

The diagnostic order

When something feels off, work through these in order. Most issues stop at one of the first three:

Scanner. Does the scan get to Lyra at all? If the screen does nothing when you scan, it’s almost always either a browser extension intercepting the keystrokes or focus on the wrong field. The Troubleshooting: scanning page has a 30-second incognito-window test.
Focus. A scan goes wherever the cursor is. The scanning screens pull focus back to the field: scan bar on the first character of a scan, so this should be rare; if barcodes are still appearing in the wrong field, or worse in a different tab, check that the Lyra tab is the active one, then click into the field: scan bar (or press key: /) and try again.
Policy. If a checkout is blocked, Lyra tells you why. The message names the rule: renewal limit, grade restriction, loan limit, delinquency. See “When a checkout is blocked” on the Checkout page for what each block means.
Patron record. If the patron is the source of the block (delinquency, loan limit, missing grade), open the patron record and look. Active loans, current count vs. cap, delinquency flag, homeroom: all there in one place.
Item record. If the item is the source of the block (item policy cap, grade restriction, lost or reference-only copy), open the item and look. The policy assignment is right on the item record.
Contact support. If you’ve worked the first five and you still can’t explain what’s happening, email us. See “What to capture” below.

Example: “this patron can’t check this out”

Look at the patron, then the item, then the library defaults. For example: open the patron and check the delinquency flag, the current loan count against the cap, and the grade; then open the item and check its assigned policy, grade restriction, and copy status. The full step-by-step walk-through is on Policy resolution.

When you find the cause, fix it at the source (the patron record, the item record, or the library default) rather than working around it with a one-off override. The fix lasts; the override doesn’t.

What to capture before contacting support

If you can’t resolve it yourself, send us:

Your browser and operating system. “Chrome on Windows 11,” “Safari on macOS 15,” etc.
What you were doing. Where in Lyra you were, what you were trying to do, what page you were on.
What you expected vs. what happened. “Expected the checkout to go through; got a block with no message” is much more actionable than “the checkout didn’t work.”

A fourth thing that helps when relevant:

A screenshot of the block message or the screen state. A short screen recording is even better for anything that involves a sequence of actions.

Together these let us diagnose quickly.

Send feedback from the app

The quickest way to reach the team is from inside Lyra. Open the user menu (your picture or initial) and choose menu item: Send feedback…. Write what happened in the dialog: Send Feedback dialog and select button: Send feedback. The message arrives with the page you were on and your email address, so the team can reply. It is text only; Lyra never attaches a screenshot. Leave out student names.

When a page fails to load, the error screen has button: Report issue. It opens the same dialog, and your message arrives linked to the technical details of that error, so you don’t need to copy them.

Where to send it

Email support@lyralibrary.com.

For genuine outages (the staff app is down, the OPAC won’t load), the same email reaches us; mark the subject as OUTAGE so we triage it ahead of feature questions.