[Koha] Circulation timestamps

[David Hughes]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this a bug, or merely an observation, but I think it's
worth noting.

A colleague drew my attention to a reader who, according to the circulation
history tab on their patron record, returned 5 books at one of our
self-service stations at 2am this morning.  The problem being we close at
10pm.  Nobody thinks the reader broke into the library specifically to
return overdue books.  The more mundane solution was that somehow, the
clock on the self-service station PC was set 12 hours fast.

Looking at the circulation log, the books were returned at 2pm yesterday.
Querying the statistics table for the reader's borrower number also comes
up with books being returned yesterday at 2pm.  Doing the same for the
old_issues table comes up the books being returned at 2am this morning.  So
it's possible for the statistics and old_issues tables to show different
return dates on books; statistics datetime seems to come from the Koha
server, but old_issues returndate seems to come from the date/time on the
local machine.

The reader's books were overdue, but we have a one day grace period before
fines are incurred - these fines come from the books being returned today
at 2am after being due on the 11th - so fine information seems to come from
the return date on the local machine.

I am a humble librarian who may be completely wrong about this, but
shouldn't the return date on both tables come from the same place and fines
be generated from the server time, not the local machine?

Kind regards,

David Hughes

Systems Librarian
Dublin Business School
13-14 Aungier St.
Dublin 2
Ireland

00 353 1 417 8744

david.hughes at dbs.ie
*http://library.dbs.ie <http://library.dbs-students.com/>*

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