Home → Administration Manual for Libraries → Auto-Renewals → Auto-renewal functionality
Last Updated 05/16/2023
Every circulation policy has information about whether items checked out on that policy can be renewed. In addition to allowing renewals, you also have the option of auto-renewals. We can set up individual circulation policies so that they allow for the system to auto-renew the material the number of times that you wish.
Essentially, at a set time before the materials are due, the system will look for materials that are coming due that were checked out with policies that allow for auto-renewals and renew them if they are eligible.
Most systems choose to do this one day before the materials are due. A few do it three days before the item is due, but that means that if, for instance, you have a DVD that’s a seven day loan, at the end of the fifth day the material auto-renews, reducing the total length of the loan period.
If the materials auto-renew 24 hours before the material is due, that gives the user less time to renew the material. In this case, we suggest adding a grace period to the loan policy. Grace periods allow for time to go by before fines are actually applied to an account. So, if for instance you have a two day grace period and the person returns the material on day two, they aren’t charged fines for day 1 and 2. On day three, they start having fines for day 1, 2 and 3 on their account.
So, when the auto-renewal process runs, an email is sent to the patron letting them know which materials were auto-renewed and which materials couldn’t be auto-renewed. Each item also lists the due dates of items that were or were not renewed. Auto-renewal notices are only available as emails. You can customize the language in the emails that are sent.
Reasons that things can’t be auto-renewed is that there’s a hold on their item, or the person has run out of auto-renewals for that individual loan.
So, basically, you have the option to have auto-renewals and you can choose which of your policies allow for auto-renewals.
Options available to you:
Which circulation policies do you want to allow auto-renewals for?
You can choose which circulation policies you'd like to allow auto-renewals for. When making the decision about implementing auto-renewals, we'll provide you with a spreadsheet of your circulation policies and ask which ones you'd like to have set up to auto-renew. This way you can for instance choose not to have auto-renewals on your Equipment or Technology materials, or for your Outreach or Limited accounts that already have different circulation due dates. So, perhaps you have auto-renewals only for Juveniles and Teens. Or, you want auto-renewals on Books but not Videos.
How many times do you want auto-renewals to happen?
In each circulation policy, you have a set number of renewals that are possible. Now with auto-renewals, you can also choose how many of those renewals are auto-renewals. You may for instance want to have the last renewal be manual to require action on the part of the user to extend the loan. Or, you may want all the renewals to be auto-renewals.
How many days ahead of the due date do you want the renewal attempt to happen?
If the renewal is unsuccessful, you want to give the patron time to return the material after receiving information about the failed auto-renewal. Right now most libraries have it at 1 day before but some systems have it at 3 days before the due date. The downside to the 3 day is that let's say you have a 7 day loan, the auto-renewal would happen after day 4, meaning you have 7 more days from that day, reducing the overall time of the loan by three days.
What do you want the auto-renewal emails to say?
Similar to other notices, you have the ability to customize some of the language in the email sent to the patron when the auto-renewal attempt takes place.
Do you want material already on loan to auto-renew?
By default, items only become eligible to auto-renew if at the time they are checked out, the circulation policy they're checked out under allows for auto-renewals. That means that none of the things your users have checked out now will eligible for auto-renewal unless we go back and update their loan information. If you'd like us to, we can go back and update your existing circulation records so that items that are already on loan to users start auto-renewing immediately.
Some Initial Notes on Auto-Renewals from Other Libraries
SCLends
North of Boston Library Exchange
A Library can opt in to autorenewal. Only their own items checked out at their own library will be autorenewable. Network transfers are not autorenewable.
Autorenewal processing happens the morning the items are due so patrons don't lose any time from their loan period.
Our autorenewal action trigger uses a custom filter so that it only runs for the libraries who have opted in and does not attempt to process autorenewals for checkouts that are not renewable at all.
When a library opts in, and chooses a start date, we adjust their duration rules to set the number of allowed autorenewals equal to the number of allowed renewals. If a duration rule has zero allowed renewals, we don't set a value for allowed autorenewals. This allows the action trigger filter mentioned above to skip them.
To avoid the transition issue with new checkouts vs. existing checkouts, we update open circulations for the opting in library which are due on the start date and beyond to set the autorenewal remaining field equal to the renewal remaining field. In that way, items that were checked out prior to the rule change will be eligible to autorenew.
Feedback has been positive, though we have adjusted the notice language a few times to make it less confusing.
Roanoke Public Library
We implemented auto renew back in March this year and things have gone fairly smoothly with the implementation for my library.
Generally, the patrons have been happy about it. We did have one complaint that boiled down to a patron simply not wanting to be notified at all, which was an interesting one for me, but that was certainly possible to fix for us.
The only rocky start part was getting our notices to generate properly. The stock notice wording was a little too generic, so we made changes that took a bit of work to get implemented properly.
We don’t really have the email/sms issue, so I’m not sure what the best course of action would be for that to be completely honest. I have some ideas, but I’m not sure if any of them would be viable over the long run.
This has drastically reduced fines here, for the moment. It’s not a forever renewal process, so I do still see fines, but it has generally decreased fines across the board. We don’t rely on fine income for operation here, so this isn’t a giant issue for us, but if you do rely on fine income I’d probably recommend against implementing such a process. With that said, my staff spend a lot less time dealing with fine related issues, and I believe it’s enough to have saved money in general.
For implementation, I’d recommend one of two options for the sake of making things reasonable. Either set the renewal to happen a few days before the due date so that patrons have time to return materials that are not renewed, or set the renewal on the due date but add a multi-day grace period for the same reason. We renew on the due date and give patrons 3 grace days to return the item to avoid fines. Another library in my consortium renews the item 3 days before the due date instead. Both work, but I think the important factor is allowing patrons the time to return items.