[Koha] Can Koha be configured for the following variable circulation rules?

[Raymund Delahunty]

Environment:
Six libraries at constituent colleges each with identical circulation rules. Maximum loans apply by user category (books and DVDs mainly).
Maximum loans by user category apply university wide (so 15 items per undergraduate) and using  system preference circcontrol as "the library the member is from" this works fine. Users are free to borrow from multiple libraries, up to the overall maximum loans count of 15.
Our "Learning Zone" is a separate library in Koha- it loans only IT kit and is open 24 hours a day, often with only security staff (no library staff). New self-issue laptop loan units have been installed.

Requirement:
Configure Koha Circulation to allow users to borrow a laptop and other kit from the learning Zone, via self service as an ADDITIONAL entitlement, so users whose account is maxed out with books and audio equipment can still borrow a laptop via self-service kit.

Progress to date:
Not a lot. I have been unable to get this working, despite extensive testing. Initially I tried separate library circulation rules for Learning Zone and had the other 6 libraries as All Libraries, and my changes to circcontrol to "library the user is logged into" saw the laptops borrowable, but the 15 items became 15 per library, increasing the max-loans from 15 to 90 (6 times the 15 per college).That didn't make me too popular- but it did take some months for the problem to be noticed. I have re-imposed the circcontrol setting to "the library the member is from" to ensure sensible loans maxima, but now maxed out users can't borrow a laptop. There are no users registered at the Learning Zone as all users have a "home college" which is the library they are registered at.

With the changes to circcontrol undone in our LIVE system I can continue to test out ideas in our TEST one before rolling them out to the live environment. In October my testing on **one** library plus the Learning Zone in TEST showed the desired functionality was perfect so I rolled it out to LIVE. I did not test multiple libraries and I should have. Any suggestions as to how I can set Koha up to offer what I have been asked to provide would be most appreciated.

Ray Delahunty
University of the Arts London


Koha 16.05
https://libsearch.arts.ac.uk






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