Each library’s account in SHAREit has a Lending Policy associated with it.
A library’s Lending Policy defines the policies associated with lending your library’s materials through interlibrary loan – in other words, that’s where a library designates what formats it will lend via ILL and whether or not they are eligible for renewal.
The Lending Policy is also used to determine due dates for items supplied.
Historically, a participating library has been in charge of its Lending Policy. And as long as your loan period was at least the consortium minimum of 35 days, everything was copacetic.
Many of our participant libraries have never even looked at or touched their Lending Policy in SHAREit since migrating over in 2016. And, until we implemented the Hub Shipping model, this actually led to very few consequences, relatively speaking.
Hub Shipping changed that.
To avoid the extra transit time required by the Hub Shipping model impacting the length of the patron loan, it was determined that the default cooperative loan period needed to be raised to 42 days.
That change was more than a year ago. In the interim, that information was announced several times. Additionally, multiple reminders were issued to libraries that they needed to update their Lending Policy to reflect the change.
Unfortunately, many of our participants have not done so. This has created an added layer of frustration to the already challenging shipping situation we are currently in – materials are arriving to the borrower just days before they’re due back to the lender.
So the time has come, and we performed the change for you.
Rather, yesterday, Auto-Graphics ran a script that hit every library’s Lending Policy. And if your Lending Policy indicated that your library does lend a format – you have it set to YES – the loan period was automatically set to 42 days UNLESS YOU ALREADY HAD IT SET TO A NUMBER HIGHER THAN 42 DAYS.
Renewals were not touched – they are still at the discretion of the loaning library, both whether the item is eligible and for how long.
If you have any questions about any of this – Lending Policy, Hub Shipping, or any other Access PA issue – please
contact HSLC Support.
