About Checkout and Checkin

Circulation helps keep track of where your library’s items are when they are taken by borrowers. When you check out an item to a borrower, Horizon assigns that item’s record to that borrower’s record. Other borrowers know when they check the catalog that the item is temporarily unavailable. Checking the item back in clears the assignment of the item record from the borrower’s record, and the catalog shows the item as available again.

Sometimes a borrower may want to keep an item for longer than the established borrowing period. Circulation allows you to renew the item and let the borrower keep it for an extended period. Circulation also lets you check out items to borrowers who have forgotten their cards, check in items without calculating fines, change the due date of an item when you check it out, and check out items that ordinarily do not circulate. Horizon Self-Serve Checkout lets borrowers check out items themselves.

Circulation lets you print several kinds of receipts that can help borrowers keep track of what they have checked out. During the checkin process, you can also print workslips that you can attach to items that need special attention. (For example, an item may need to be cataloged; put on hold for another borrower; or, if it is an interlibrary loan item, sent back to its holding library.)

Circulation uses the circulation privilege defaults set by your system administrator to determine loan periods, fine rates and so forth. (For more information on circulation defaults, see “Setting Up Circulation Privileges and Parameters” in the Circulation Setup Guide.)

Before you begin doing the checkout and checkin tasks, you need to know how to open the Checkout and Checkin processes and to identify borrowers and items. You can find these basic Circulation tasks in the “Getting Started” chapter.

For instructions, see Starting Checkout and Checkin, Identifying a Borrower in Checkout, and Identifying an Item in Checkout or Checkin.

This chapter explains these topics:

 


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