By Rogan Hamby, Data and Project Analyst at Equinox Open Library Initiative

The last few weeks have been a tumultuous time for libraries and unfortunately a lot of uncertainty still lies ahead of us.  While having an unplanned closure of a library isn’t something any of us want it is a fact of life from short term inclement weather to the longer closings many libraries are now facing.  In the last few days the Koha community showed the strength of open source and community by rallying and implementing a new feature to push out due dates for items during an extended closing.

On March 11th Bug 24846 “Add a tool to bulk edit due dates” was added to the Koha bug tracker as a wishlist item.  By the 26th, only fifteen days later, the code was completed. As of this post, the feature is now available for installation for users of 18.11, 19.05, and 19.11.  To read more about it I recommend this article from Bywater Solutions.

In addition to this development Koha has existing tools to help prepare for a closure.  Here are three things you will want to think about to handle your library closing.

1. Set a holiday.  

Located under More -> Tools -> Calendar 

While you can’t set a holiday without an ending you can easily go in and add new holidays to extend it as often as you want.  You can also when setting a holiday for a single location easily choose to copy it to all branches so that you don’t have to duplicate the entry by hand.  Setting these dates are very important for making sure circulations and holds work the way you expect, especially in the context of the system preferences we will discuss in a moment.  

2. Contacting Patrons

There are two ways to easily update patrons about the status of your library needing to make an unplanned closing.  One is by email. Koha does not provide a bulk mailer option. However, several emailing services that do provide this option are providing complimentary accounts to organizations helping keep their communities connected.  To generate your email list all you need is a quick report. If you want to create lists of specific attributes you would need to add various filters but a basic list is as simple as this query, which can be put into a SQL report:

SELECT email FROM borrowers WHERE `email` REGEXP ‘^[^@]+@[^@]+\.[^@]{2,}$’;

This will select only valid email addresses from the list of patrons in your system.

Additionally, you can contact patrons by using the News Tool in the Staff Client found at Tools -> Additional Tools -> News in order to add content to your OPAC to alert patrons visiting it.  This can be set per language installed, customized per branch and set to have an expiration date so that it automatically stops displaying at a certain time. The result is something that looks like this:

3. Setting Preferences For a Closing

Koha has a number of preferences that will help you handle closing your libraries.  If you change any of these preferences you will need to make a note of their previous settings and manually restore them when you re-open your libraries.

ExcludeHolidaysFromMaxPickUpDelay – This setting defaults to Don’t allow which means that if a hold were to expire from the pickup shelf in two weeks and you are closed during that entire time it will still expire while closed, so for extended closings consider changing this to Allow.

ExpireReservesOnHolidays – This setting defaults to allow so you probably want to change it to don’t allow so that reserves (AKA holds) don’t expire while you are closed.

finesCalendar – This setting defaults to not including the days the library is closed which will keep people from being charged fines while the library is closed, which is almost certainly what you want during an unplanned closing.  So, if set to directly consider changing it.

OverdueNoticeCalendar – This defaults to Ignore calendar which causes the system to not take holidays into account so notices are sent even if holidays have meant the item isn’t overdue yet.  You probably want to change this to Use calendar.

RequestOnOPAC – This defaults to Allow but by changing it to Don’t allow you remove the ability for patrons to place holds via the OPAC entirely.  Staff can still do so in the staff client however.

useDaysMode – This defaults to not being set and has three possible values if set.  The most forgiving is the calendar to skip all days the library is closed.  This will ensure that materials are not due during closings and is especially useful if some limited circulation is still being done while the library is closed, perhaps as a curbside or by mail service.

I hope this was helpful.  From all of us at Equinox we know these are difficult times and we are here to help so don’t hesitate to contact us!

By Andrea Buntz Neiman, Project Manager for Software Development at Equinox Open Library Initiative

Greetings to all of you, from an appropriate social distance! First, I want to reassure you that Equinox has been a fully-remote office for almost two years now – we are here, working, and ready to help your library navigate the COVID-19 situation.

We know that many of your libraries are faced with the prospect of sudden extended closings. One of the newer features in Evergreen that is relevant here is the Emergency Closing Handler. Sponsored by the Pennsylvania Integrated Library System (PaILS) and developed here at Equinox, this feature gives you several additional tools to manage your closings. It was released with version 3.2 (fall of 2018), and you can access this through the regular Closed Dates Editor, available under Local Administration.

Important note: Please do NOT mark your library closed in Org Unit Configuration by using the Hours of Operation tab to indicate that your library is closed on each day of the week. This can trigger a bug in Evergreen that would require database cleanup to fix. Please use the Closed Dates Editor and Emergency Closing Handler instead!

With Emergency Closing Handler, you can create a new closing (or edit an existing closing) and then instruct the system to treat this as an “Emergency Closing” via the checkbox labelled Emergency. If you select this checkbox – and the one below it labelled Process immediately – and then save the closing, a series of adjustments happen for certain transactions falling within the closed period.

What Emergency Closing Handler WILL do:

• Extend due dates on checked out items due within the closed period
• Extend booking start dates slated to start within the closed period
• Extend hold shelf expiration dates that fall within the closed period
• Void fines that would otherwise accrue for items due within the closed period
• Retroactively do all of the above if you set the closing date to be a date in the past

What Emergency Closing Handler WON’T do:

• Void fines on items due before the closed period, even if they’re still checked out
• Extend patron expiration dates
• Extend hold request expiration dates
• Suspend notices across the board
• Suspend hold targeting on its own

Other FAQ:

• You will need the EMERGENCY_CLOSING permission for all locations at which you will be creating the closing
• As usual, you can choose to apply the closing to all of your libraries (pending permissions) by checking the Apply to all of my libraries checkbox

I’ll go into a little more detail about the above actions.

When you set a closing to be an Emergency Closing, all due dates, booking start dates, and hold shelf expiration dates that fall within the closed period are pushed to the next open day. Additionally, fines on items that would have been due within the closed dates period are voided. Note that fines are NOT voided for items with due dates outside of (i.e. before) the closed period. After an unexpected closing, we always recommend checking in items using the checkin modifier Amnesty Mode to ensure that you catch all possible fines.

Emergency Closing Handler will allow you to retroactively date a closing – so if you need to set your closing period as starting last week, Evergreen will perform the Emergency Closing functions on past dates as well (remember to check the Emergency and Process immediately checkboxes).

There are areas that the Emergency Closing Handler doesn’t affect. Patron expiration dates are not moved, but there is a new wishlist bug to add this feature. Your Evergreen Administrator can adjust patron expiration dates via a SQL update. Similarly, hold request expiration dates are not adjusted (new wishlist bug for that too!) but your Administrator can adjust those via SQL update as well.

Emergency Closing will not unilaterally halt notices for the closed period; however, any notices that operate based on a due date (such as predue or overdue notices) will adjust their send date based on the new due date. Likewise, notices that operate based on a hold shelf expiration date or booking start date will be adjusted as well.

Emergency Closing cannot, on its own, stop hold targeting on the closed dates – but it is aware of two Library Settings: Target copies for a hold even if copy’s circ lib is closed and Target copies for a hold even if copy’s circ lib is closed IF the circ lib is the hold’s pickup lib. You will want to ensure that both of these library settings are set to FALSE for all of your closed libraries in order for hold targeting to be suspended for the duration of your closed period. Library Settings can be accessed from Local Administration → Library Settings Editor.

I hope you found this explanation of Emergency Closing Handler to be useful. From all of us here at Equinox, we hope you stay healthy and weather the uncertainty. Remember, we’re here to help!