Search & holds

Where browsing the lists is for “something good,” search is for a known book. This page covers the search-and-hold path: finding an item, opening its detail page, placing a hold, and tracking it on screen: My stuff.

Search

Search lives in the header of every catalog page, behind a search button on a narrow screen. The homepage has its own large search box, and the header’s steps aside while that one is in view. Patrons type a title, an author name, a topic, or any combination.

OPAC search reads a query two ways at once — by its words and by its meaning — and blends the two into one list.

What this means in practice:

A title, author, series, or ISBN finds that item first. An exact title or series name puts the item at the top, ahead of anything that only resembles it; a leading “The,” “A,” or “An” doesn’t matter, so “hobbit” finds The Hobbit. An author’s full name puts their books at the top in either order (“J. K. Rowling” or “Rowling, J. K.”), and a surname alone ranks them just below exact matches. An ISBN, with or without its hyphens, goes straight to the item that holds that edition.
A partly typed title still finds it. “harry pot” finds the Harry Potter books.
Natural-language queries work well. “Books about dragons” finds books about dragons even if no item record contains the word “dragons.”
Small misspellings are tolerated. A typo in a title or name usually still matches, and a close match by meaning can stand in when the spelling is too far off.
Typed-in commands aren’t special. Words like “AND,” “OR,” and “NOT” are read as ordinary words, not as instructions.
No author- or title-only shortcuts. Typing something like “author:Tolkien” won’t narrow the search to authors; the search reads your whole phrase at once.
Availability isn’t a ranking signal. A checked-out item can rank ahead of an on-shelf item if it’s a closer match. The item detail page shows current availability.

A search returns at most a few hundred items, best first — enough for any query a patron would page through.

Matching by meaning is what answers a natural-language query or a badly misspelled one. In an account whose owner has turned semantic search off, search matches the words in the record only, and an item’s card: More like this section is hidden.

Narrowing the results

Search results and any list’s own page share one toolbar:

button: All / button: Available now. button: Available now drops anything with no copy on the shelf at that moment.
button: Reading level. How hard a book is to read. Opens a short list of named bands — below.
button: Age group. Who a book is written for, whatever its reading level — see The age-group bands.
Grid or list. Covers, or one row per title.

There’s no sort control, and that’s deliberate: every page already arrives in the one order that belongs to it. A custom list is in the order the library manager curated it, New arrivals is newest first, Most checked out is most-borrowed first, and search results are ranked by how well they match. A patron can narrow what’s on the page but not rearrange it, so the order a librarian sets is the order a student sees.

Results come a page at a time. Under the last row a line says how much of the set is on screen: message: Showing 24 of 2,114 items on a list’s page, or just the count loaded so far, message: 24 results, in search results. While there’s more, a full-width button: Show more beneath it loads the next page and adds to what’s already there. Nothing loads by scrolling, so a patron who scrolls to the bottom keeps their place instead of being carried further by the page.

The reading-level bands

Patrons don’t know their Lexile number and can’t be asked for one, so the filter offers grade bands with reader-facing names:

What the patron picks	Grades
button: Just starting out	K–2 (PK–2 in a school that teaches pre-K)
button: Reading on my own	3–5
button: Longer stories	6–8
button: Toughest books	9–12

Each band shows its grade span under its name, so a patron saying “it wasn’t in Longer stories” is saying something a librarian can act on. Only bands covering grades the school actually teaches appear — a K–8 school is never offered button: Toughest books — and a school narrow enough to fit inside one band gets no reading-level filter at all. The lowest band has no floor and the highest no ceiling, so nothing falls off either end: in a K–8 school the top band reads message: Grades 6 and up and takes every harder title too.

When the patron picked a class, at the door or by signing in from one, their own band is marked status: Your class. It is marked, never applied: the catalog doesn’t quietly hide most of itself, and a student who wants a harder book can go and get one. button: Show every level clears the filter.

How a title lands in a band

A reading-level band is about difficulty only. Each title is judged by the best reading measure it has:

Its field: ATOS level, which is already a grade-equivalent scale.
Failing that, its field: Lexile measure, through the Common Core text-complexity bands.

An ATOS level is a grade and a month — 4.7 is an average fourth-grader in their seventh month — so a band holds every level that names one of its grades. button: Just starting out takes everything below 3.0, which puts a 2.3 title there rather than between two bands; button: Reading on my own runs from 3.0 up to but not including 6.0. Every ATOS-rated title lands in exactly one band.

The case worth knowing when you catalog: a title with neither an ATOS level nor a Lexile measure has no reading level, and drops out of the results as soon as a patron picks a band. Its target audience doesn’t stand in — who a book is for says nothing about how hard it is. Setting an ATOS level or a Lexile measure brings the title back — see Editing items for where those fields live.

The bands are patron-facing only. The staff catalog’s button: Reading level filter asks the same question in grades, and its button: Lexile and button: ATOS level filters take numeric ranges, which is the right control for someone who knows the numbers; the shared handle between them is the grade span the band shows.

The age-group bands

button: Age group is the other question: who the book is written for. It reads only the title’s target audience — the MARC 008/22 code — never its reading level, so a hard book written for younger readers still shows under button: Younger readers.

What the patron picks	Grades	Target audiences it takes
button: Younger readers	PK–3	Preschool, Primary, Juvenile
button: Middle grade	4–8	Juvenile, Preadolescent
button: Teen	9–12	Adolescent

Juvenile, MARC’s catch-all children’s audience, carries no age of its own, so Lyra spans it across grades K–8 and it shows under both of the first two bands. General, Specialized, Unknown, and Adult titles fall under none. All three bands appear whatever grades the school teaches — an audience can’t fold into the band below it the way a reading level can, so a K–8 school’s teen titles still have button: Teen to be found under. The patron’s own band is marked status: Your class rather than applied. button: Show every age group clears the filter.

Item detail page

Clicking a search result or a list row opens the item detail page. What patrons see:

Cover, title, authors, series. The top of the page. Every author is listed, and a contributor carries their role beside their name (Bolster, Rob (Illustrator)).
Description. Where available.
Reading level and audience. A panel under the description: the reading level (ATOS 2.4 · 650L) and the target audience with its age range (Primary (ages 6-8)). Each appears only where the record has it.
Availability, in one line. status: On the shelf for a single copy, status: 2 of 3 on the shelf where there are several, status: All checked out with the soonest due date beside it, status: Reference only for an item whose copies are all reference only, or status: No copies. The shelving location sits under it, and only for a copy that’s actually on the shelf — a location for a book someone else has isn’t somewhere to go. When the patron has their own hold or loan on this item, that outranks the shelf count and the line reads status: Your hold is ready, status: You're in the queue, or status: Already checked out instead.
Catalog record. Below the fold: copyright year, page count, and topics. It leaves out what the top of the page already shows, and doesn’t appear when the record has none of the three.
button: Place hold. It reads the same whether copies are on the shelf or every one is out — a hold is a hold, and the availability line above it carries the difference. Where a signed-in patron can’t place one, the button is disabled, names the reason, and a note beneath it explains: button: Hold limit reached at their hold cap, with message: You've reached your hold limit (3). Cancel a hold to make room. and no self-service override; button: Already checked out with message: You already have this checked out.; and, for anyone, signed in or not, button: Reference only with message: This item stays in the library, so it can't be borrowed. on an item whose copies are all reference only. (A grade-restricted item the patron is outside the range for doesn’t reach this page at all; it’s filtered out of their catalog, so there’s no button to disable.)

The item detail page is a read surface for patrons. They can hold; they can’t edit the record.

There is no copy table, no copy barcode, and no ISBN on the patron’s page. A barcode identifies one physical object for the person holding it and an ISBN identifies a published form for the person cataloguing it, and a patron choosing a book is doing neither — the availability line answers what they came to ask. Staff see both, per copy, on the item’s page in the staff app.

Placing a hold

Click button: Place hold on the item page. Lyra adds the patron to the hold queue for that item, in the order placed. If a copy is already set aside for that item on staff’s To Re-shelve list (an earlier hold was canceled or expired and the copy hasn’t been re-shelved yet), the new hold claims that copy instead, so it skips the queue and the item page reads status: Your hold is ready at once.

If the library’s account is in read-only mode — over its patron limit, or on a lapsed trial — there is no button: Place hold button at all, and the item reads message: This library isn't taking holds right now. Browsing and searching are unaffected, and existing holds can still be canceled. See Patrons can browse but can’t place holds.

If the library has turned off setting: Let patrons place holds, there is no button: Place hold button either, and no note: the item shows its availability and nothing else. Existing holds can still be canceled. See Patron holds.

A patron who isn’t signed in sees button: Sign in to place a hold instead, unless the library is in On their own mode with student sign-in off for every grade. There, only teachers can sign in, so the item shows no hold button and the header offers button: Teacher or visitor sign in (see Setting a default and per-grade overrides). Clicking it carries the item through the sign-in flow: once they finish signing in, Lyra places the hold automatically and drops them back on that item’s page with the hold already confirmed, with no need to find the book again. In a catalog set up With their class, a patron who hasn’t picked a class goes to the class picker first, and picking one opens that class’s name list.

When a copy comes available and the patron is at the front of the queue, Lyra notifies them (see Notices): the item page reads status: Your hold is ready, and the hold’s card on screen: My stuff shows status: Ready.

The patron sees their own active holds on screen: My stuff and can cancel from the same screen. A ready hold’s card reads status: Ready with the deadline beside it, message: until Mar 14, and message: Pick it up at the circulation desk. underneath. That date counts school days, so weekends and holidays don’t shorten their window (see Holds workflow). The full hold model is on Holds; the staff-side workflow is on Holds workflow.

Canceling turns the button into button: Hold canceled and clears the hold from screen: My stuff immediately. The next time the patron opens the item, button: Place hold is back, so one who changes their mind can re-place it. If a copy had been assigned to the canceled hold and hasn’t been re-shelved yet, re-placing claims that still-set-aside copy and the item page reads status: Your hold is ready at once; otherwise it joins the queue as usual.

Seeing their own holds and current checkouts

Once they’re signed in, navigation path: My stuff in the header (in the account menu on a narrow screen) opens the patron’s own view. What’s on it:

Checked out. Every active loan, with due date, and a button: Renew button under each one the patron can renew.
Holds. Every active hold, with a cancel button.

A sentence under the greeting sums it up, such as message: Heads up: 1 item overdue, 2 holds ready to pick up. or message: You've got 2 items out and everything's on time., and each section’s heading carries its count. Overdue loans come first.

Like the item page, screen: My stuff keeps itself current. Check a patron’s book in at the desk while they have the page open and it leaves their checked-out list on its own; renew it and the new due date is on their screen before they’ve put the book down.

Renewing from My stuff

button: Renew extends a loan by the same rules a renewal at the desk follows: the same limits, the same new due date. The new date replaces the old one under the cover, and that is the confirmation. A loan that can’t be renewed says why in place of the button:

message: Someone's waiting for this, so it can't be renewed. The library has setting: Deny renewals for items on hold on and another patron is waiting for the item.
message: You've renewed this as many times as you can. The loan has used its renewal limit, whether the library’s, the patron’s grade or faculty override, or the item policy’s.
message: Renewed today. A loan renews at most once a day.
message: This one can't be renewed. The copy is reference only.

Overdue loans can be renewed too; the new due date counts from today. Staff can override a limit at the desk; a patron can’t. When the library has patron renewals off, there’s no button: Renew button at all.

History isn’t on screen: My stuff. A patron who wants to look up an older loan asks staff at the desk.