Renewals

Renewing a loan extends its due date by the resolved loan period. It doesn’t write a new loan record; it updates the existing one.

Where renewals happen

Staff renew from several places, depending on what you’re looking at. Patrons can also renew their own loans from the OPAC.

From the patron record. Open the patron, find the loan on their tab: Loans tab, and select the row’s row action: Renew. Useful for the desk case where a patron is at the counter with their account on screen. To extend everything they have out in one step instead, use Renew all.
From the checkout session. During a checkout, rows for pre-existing loans (loans that were already active when the session started) show a row action: Renew action. Newly-checked-out rows from the current session don’t. Useful when somebody hands over a stack and one item is something they want to renew instead of return-and-recheck.
From Active Loans. Every row on navigation path: Circulation then Active Loans carries a row action: Renew button, for working through what is due without opening each patron.
From the catalog. On an item’s tab: Copies tab, a checked-out copy’s row menu has menu item: Renew. On the copy’s own page, button: Renew is the main action while the copy is out, and the header shows how many renewals the loan has used.

The result of a successful renewal is the same everywhere: the loan’s due date updates and the renewal counter on the loan increments by one.

What blocks a renewal

Renewals can be refused for a few specific reasons. The block message names which:

message: Patron renewal limit reached. The loan has hit the setting: Renewal limit from the library defaults, or from the patron’s faculty or grade-level override.
message: Item renewal limit reached. A separate message: the item’s own policy caps renewals lower than the patron’s limit. Two messages rather than one, because the fix is in a different place.
message: Already renewed today. A single loan can only be renewed once per day; come back tomorrow.
message: This copy is reference only. The copy is marked reference only, so it can’t be extended any more than it could be checked out.
message: Another patron is waiting for this item. Only when the library has setting: Deny renewals for items on hold turned on. It fires whether someone is waiting in the queue or a copy is already assigned and ready for another patron — that hold takes priority over an extension. With the setting off, renewals go through even when there’s a hold.

A library manager can button: Override any of these and renew anyway; staff without the grant can’t.

A block appears where you renewed from: under the field: scan bar when you renewed a scanned copy on Check Out, under the loan’s own row when you used a row’s row action: Renew, and in the header when you renewed from the copy’s page. It lists every reason, carries the manager’s button: Override beside it, and stays until you act on it or close it with the button: ✕ — nothing expires while you look something up.

A renewal that goes through doesn’t announce itself. The due date on the row changes, and that is the confirmation.

If a block surprises you, the Policies page covers the resolution order: library default, a faculty or grade-level override, item policy cap.

Patrons renewing from the OPAC

A signed-in patron can renew their own loans from screen: My stuff in the OPAC, one loan at a time. It’s the same renewal as the desk’s: the same blocks, the same new due date, and it counts toward the same renewal limit. A patron can’t override a block, and the OPAC tells them why a loan can’t be renewed in place of the button. See Renewing from My stuff.

It’s on by default. A library manager turns it off with setting: Let patrons renew their loans on the OPAC page; see Patron renewals. Turning it off doesn’t change what staff can do.

How the new due date is computed

A renewal adds the currently resolved loan period to whichever is later: the loan’s current due date, or today.

Renewed before it’s due, the period is added to the existing due date. A 14-day loan renewed on day 10 becomes due 14 days after its original due date; the fresh period stacks on top of the four days still left on it.
Renewed after it’s due, the period is counted from today instead. An overdue loan renewed a week late gets a full fresh period starting now, rather than a new due date that would still be in the past.

The period that’s added is resolved from the patron and item at the time of renewal. If a faculty or grade-level override, or an item policy, has changed since the original checkout, the renewal uses the current resolved value, so the length added can differ from the original loan period, even though it’s always anchored to the existing due date.

The period is added in the library’s loan-period unit. If the library counts loan periods in school days, the renewal counts that many open days forward from the current due date, skipping weekends and holidays so the new due date lands on an open day; in calendar days it adds the period directly (then applies setting: Never due on weekends or holidays if set). See School days vs. calendar days.

Bulk renewal

On the patron’s details page, the tab: Loans tab has a button: Renew all button above the list; it extends every loan the patron currently has out in one step.

button: Renew all applies the same per-loan rules as a single renewal, and anchors each new due date the same way. Loans that were already renewed today are skipped rather than counted as blocked. There’s no bulk override: a loan a manager wants to push through has to be renewed on its own row.

When everything renews, nothing is announced — every due date in the table below moved, and that is the confirmation. When any loan stays put, Lyra says so beside the button and counts each one under its reason:

message: Renewed 1 of 3 loans. 1 is at a renewal limit. 1 was already renewed today. That includes pressing it when nothing can renew at all, such as a second press on the same day: message: No loans were renewed. 2 were already renewed today. The loans that didn’t renew look exactly like the ones that did, which is why these cases get a sentence and the clean one doesn’t.