Koha Tutorial Videos

Monday Minutes: Library Defined Patron Restrictions

by Kelly McElligott on May 8, 2023

In this week's Monday Minutes, Kelly and Jessie show off a new feature coming in 22.11 which will allow libraries to add values to the patron restrictions.

Patron Restrictions

There are two ways that a patron can become restricted in Koha, through a manual process done by staff or by an automatic process done by a background script set up by the library. A common automatic restriction that libraries utilize is through the Overdue process. Koha will restrict a patron automatically when sending a notice, as set up in the Overdue Notices and Triggers.

The manual process involves a staff member adding a restriction, but putting in a comment and expiration date. In the upcoming release of Koha 22.11, libraries can add defined patron restrictions to this process.

System Preference

We first start with a system preference, PatronRestrictionTypes, by default this will be set to Don't Allow. If a library would like to allow for staff to pick from a drop-down menu of defined restrictions, set this to Allow.

Administration- Patron Restrictions

There is a new option within the Administration Module found under Patrons & Circulation, called Patron Restrictions. Here a library will see the 'hard coded' restrictions Koha currently uses during its automatic process, but also a library can create new Restrictions.

To create a new restriction, a library will create a CODE and Description. Remember a CODE in Koha is all upper case, 10 digits or less, no spaces or special characters.

When creating a new restriction, Koha will allow a library to choose which restriction is set by default. No 'hard coded' restrictions can be deleted, but the ones that the library creates can be edited and/or deleted.