Circulation - Assumed Lost / Process Long Overdue Guidelines
About
The Assumed Lost (AL) and Process Long Overdue (PLO) reports are two system hygiene reports that work together to removed lost items from the ILS. This process is necessary to ensure that members are not retaining bibliographic records for titles they no longer hold, as MSC members are charged by the title.
Neither report is optional for public libraries and was scheduled beginning in August 2017, based on your library’s response to the circulated Assumed Lost / Process Long Overdue survey. School and academic libraries are encouraged to run these reports at the end of the semester and / or school year. Special libraries are encouraged to run these reports annually unless they do not circulate items. Please open a help desk ticket to begin this process.
Assumed Lost Report
The Assumed Lost report runs weekly on Tuesdays and bills users for items that have been overdue for 30, 60 or 90 days (the exact period depends on your library’s choice). This report can also be configured to send notices to patrons if your library prefers. The notice will tell patrons that this is their last chance to return the item or they will be billed. They have already been billed, however, by the Assumed Lost report at the time the notice was generated. The bill will reflect the full cost of the book from the item record. If items do not have a price the default price is $20. If your library charges a processing fee this bill will also be attached to the user’s record.
How to Recognize Assumed Lost Items
If you check in an item that has been marked Assumed Lost, you will see the pop-up: Warning!!! This item was reported as lost or assumed to be lost.
You will be given the option to Discharge or Investigate. If you Investigate you will be able to see a brief view of the patron’s fines, which will include the overdue fees for the item you have just checked in. If you choose to Investigate you will still need to Discharge the item to get it off the patron’s card. Once the item is checked in it will be routed to its Home Location.
If a patron is blocked at checkout, you can view the Alerts in their patron record. Most users will be BLOCKED for excessive bills / fines. To understand why, look at their Bills tab. The Bill Reason LOST describes an Assumed Lost item.
If you view the record from Item Search and Display, it will appear with Current Location LOST-ASSUM. Items with this Current Location are non-holdable. If you have the item in hand, you should check it in to remove this Current Location and route the book to its Home Location.
Long Overdue Report
Items that have been overdue for 90, 120 or 180 days and are in Current Location LOST-ASSUM are processed by the Process Long Overdue report. This report runs monthly on the 5th of the month and makes it possible for items that were not returned after the AL notice to be removed from the system or re-ordered. This is so that your library does not continue to have items in the system that have been missing for a long time. The PLO removes the LOST bills associated with the item (from the AL report) and generates new generic LOSTX bills. The PLO also records the lost item information in the patron record. With the item data separated from the user’s bill, the item can be Discarded or re-ordered. Items that have gone through the PLO will have a Current Location of LOST or DISCARD. If your library requested to have MSC admin discard PLO items then your PLO items will be removed from the catalog at the beginning of the month as part of the monthly discard process.
How to Recognize and Process Long Overdue Items
Unlike Assumed Lost items, if you check in a PLO item you will not be prompted. You will see a pop-up that says “item not charged.” This is because the item is no longer checked out to any user. Checking them in removes the Current Location of LOST and routes the item back to its regular shelving location. Staff often will not know that they have encountered a PLO item.
Sometimes, the Current Location will not update and will remain as LOST. When this happens checking the item in is not enough to change the Current Location. To force the record to update the Current Location, go to Call Number and Item Maintenance. Change the Home Location to any other policy, save the record, change the Home Location back to the original Home Location, save the record again. This should cause the Home and Current Location to agree and to be correct.
You are most likely to encounter PLO items on a user’s card. The user will come up BLOCKED at checkout and will have bills listed in the Bills tab.
The bills will have Bill Reason LOSTX and oftentimes an accompanying PROFEEX bill if your library charges a processing fee. The date corresponds to the date the PLO report was run, not the item’s due date. Unlike normal overdue bills, which describe items that have been returned, these LOSTX and PROFEEX bills will not have a title. This is because the item has been decoupled from the bill so that the item can be removed from the system. The item information for this item is listed in the Extended Info Tab of the User record.
These items are clearly described as Lost items by title, call number, copy number, Item ID, and the original due date of the item in yyyymmdd format.
If a patron claims to have returned the PLO item, you can highlight the item ID and paste it into Item Search and Display. If you get the pop-up “Item does not exist” this means the item has been Discarded and removed from the system. The patron can still be charged the LOSTX amounts. If an item record comes up and the Current Location is not LOST or DISCARD, this item has likely been returned. It may even be checked out to another patron. This happens occasionally because staff are not prompted when they check in PLO items. If this is the case, waive the bills and remove the Lost Item note from the patron’s card.
How to Locate Users with LOSTX Bills
If you have an item that has Current Location of LOST you can locate the user with the LOSTX bill. The previous user will not always be the user with the bill, but you can still find them by using the User Search Helper in Display User. Enter the item ID in the “Search for” Box and select the LOSTITEM index:
This will return the user with this item ID in their Extended Info Tab. Because the item is no longer lost you can Waive the LOSTX bill that corresponds to this item and the Lost item data for this item from the Extended Info tab. It can sometimes be difficult to tell which bill corresponds to which LOSTX bill if there is more than one. The price for the item will be in the Item record. You can use this information to determine which LOSTX bill corresponds to the item in hand. If there are other items listed in the Extended Info tab, you may want to double check the shelves for the other lost items. Oftentimes when one is returned others are as well.
List LOST or List DISCARD Report
Many libraries opted to have their PLO items routed to LOST. If this is the case at your library, you are still responsible for removing your Lost items from the catalog. To get a list of these titles please open a help desk ticket requesting a List LOST report. MSC Admin will schedule a report for the 6th of the month that lists all your LOST items. Everything that you wish to have removed you can DISCARD or Delete. If there are any items you wish to re-order, you can change their Home Location to ON-ORDER and replace with new materials.
Some libraries opted to have all their PLO items routed straight to DISCARD. These items will be removed from the system at the beginning of the next month. Once items are discarded from the system it is as if they never existed. MSC Admin cannot provide members with lists of these items. Counts of discarded items are sent every month via msc-discuss. If your library would like a list of the items that are about to be discarded, please open a help desk ticket requesting a List DISCARD report. MSC Admin will schedule a report for the 28th of the month that lists all the items about to be discarded from the system.
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