Onboarding

The first time you sign up for Lyra, a four-step wizard collects the few pieces of information Lyra needs to stand up your account, your first school and its first library. Finishing the wizard makes you the account owner and the school’s first admin.

Haven’t signed up yet? Start a free trial — no demo call required — or see pricing first.

The four steps

School and grade range.

Enter your field: School name, then under field: Grades served pick the Lowest and Highest grade your school serves (e.g., K to 5 for an elementary, 6 to 12 for a middle/upper school).

The timezone of your school (used for various workflows) is auto-detected from your browser and can be changed afterwards in School settings.
Number of libraries.

Pick button: Just one and your first library is named after your school with “Library” on the end, so a school called Lakeside Elementary gets Lakeside Elementary Library (you can rename it later). Pick button: More than one and the wizard asks for the name of the first library you’d like to set up. Only one library record is created at this point; additional libraries can be added later.
Circulation defaults.

The numbers that become the first library’s policy defaults, with sensible values already filled in. Click a value to edit it:
- setting: Loan period (default: 10).
- setting: Loan period unit, the row below it, sets whether that period counts School days or Calendar days (default: school days). See School days vs. calendar days.
- setting: Loan limit per patron (default: 5).
- setting: Renewal limit per loan (default: 1).
Open button: More options for the rest:
- setting: Hold limit per patron (default: 2).
- setting: Pickup window in school days (default: 5).
- setting: Deny loans to patrons with overdue items (default: off).
- setting: Deny renewals for items on hold (default: off).
- setting: Never due on weekends or holidays, shown only when the loan period is counted in calendar days; school-day loan periods already skip closed days.
These become the first library’s defaults. Faculty and grade-level overrides and item policies layer on top later (see Policies). Don’t over-think the values here, they’re easy to change from the card: Defaults card of Library level navigation path: Configure then Policies afterwards.

To finish the step, tick the box agreeing to the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Data Processing Agreement, then press button: Create your library. Pressing it without the box ticked shows message: Agree to the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Data Processing Agreement to continue.
Done.

The wizard finishes by creating your account, its first school, and that school’s first library. You become the account owner (so you control billing) and the school’s first admin (so you can run and configure it). A confirmation screen names the new library, gives your trial end date, and hands you one button into it.

What each step affects later

A quick cross-reference for what each choice maps to:

Wizard step	Sets	Where to change it later
School name	Account name, school name, and first library name (with button: Just one)	Account level navigation path: Settings; School level navigation path: Configure then Settings; Library level navigation path: Configure then Settings
Lowest and highest grade	School grade range	School level navigation path: Configure then Settings
Number of libraries	The first library name. Selecting more than one allows you to set the name	School level navigation path: Libraries or Library level navigation path: Configure then Settings
Loan period, pickup window, concurrent limits, renewal limit	First library’s defaults	Library level navigation path: Configure then Policies, card: Defaults card

Nothing in the wizard is irreversible.

OPAC activation isn’t part of the wizard

The wizard configures the staff app, not the OPAC. OPAC activation lives on the Library level navigation path: Configure then OPAC page, where it is the third step of the setup sequence below; it handles the per-library OPAC URL, the visit mode, and the patron sign-in configuration. See OPAC for the patron-side walkthrough.

The page won’t let you configure it on an empty library: until the catalog holds at least a dozen copies, Library level navigation path: Configure then OPAC shows a prompt to add or import items instead of the setup form. A roster isn’t a prerequisite — you can publish the OPAC before your patrons are in — but there’s little point until students have accounts to sign in with.

What happens after the wizard

The last screen of the wizard does one thing: it tells you the library is ready, states the date your trial runs to, and offers a single button named for your library, such as button: Go to Lakeside Elementary Library. The task list isn’t there — it’s on the dashboard you land on.

That list is a card: Set up your library card at the top of the library dashboard, showing four steps in the order to do them in, with a counter such as message: 1 of 4 done:

Step	What it’s for	Button	Where it goes
Import your catalog	A MARC file from your old system, or a CSV	button: Import catalog	Library level navigation path: Catalog then Imports
Add patrons	Sync from your SIS, or upload a roster file	button: Go to the school roster	School level navigation path: Roster then Patrons
Open the catalog to students	Pick a web address and choose how students sign in	button: Set up the OPAC	Library level navigation path: Configure then OPAC
Check out your first item	Find a patron, then scan or search for a copy	button: Check out	Library level navigation path: Circulation then Check Out

Each step ticks itself off from your data rather than from a saved position, so the card survives sessions, reflects work done on any screen, and is never out of step with the library. The Add patrons step is the one that leaves the library for school scope, because patrons are shared by every library in the school.

The card clears itself at your first checkout — that’s the end of the sequence, not all four ticks, since the OPAC is genuinely optional. You can also dismiss it with the ✕ at any time; dismissal is per person and per library and is remembered in your own browser, so a colleague still sees it until they dismiss it themselves.

Until the library has both items in its catalog and patrons on the school roster, the dashboard below the card shows an empty state instead of the day’s circulation, and it offers button: Try Lyra with sample data, which opens the tutorial in a new tab — a guided run through a fake catalog and roster before you load anything real.

Two early tasks aren’t in the sequence but are worth doing soon: invite your staff (under School level navigation path: Staff, or from Account level navigation path: Users, where one invite can also make a co-worker an owner) and set the school’s logo and color (under School level navigation path: Configure then Settings). Your circulation policies are already usable from the wizard’s defaults, but refine them under Library level navigation path: Configure then Policies when you have time.

The trial gives full access to every feature with no credit card required. At the end of 30 days, an account owner picks a billing tier and enters payment to keep the account active. If no one does, the account is paused across every school in it. A paused account is held for a 30-day grace period (add payment any time in that window to pick up exactly where you left off), after which it and all its data are permanently deleted. See Cancelling for what deletion covers.