Patron Categories

This is where you define the types of users of your library and how they will be handled.

Categories, Descriptions and Types

Start by assigning a Category Code and a Description to each patron category. Each Category can be one of five types:

• Adult Patrons: can be linked as "guarantors" to other patrons who are their dependents.
• Child Patrons: a patron category that has a "guarantor"
• Organizational Patrons: can be used for institutional members, e.g. other libraries that borrow from you, in which case Koha expects slightly different information about the institution;
• Professional Patrons
• Staff Members: A member of the library staff.

Note on Permissions

Patrons in any category type may be assigned permissions in the staff interface.

Enrollment Period

Enrollment period is a number indicating how many years a user's enrollment is valid. If you consider enrollments to expire after four years for example (as in a school, perhaps), then set this number to 4. If enrollments never expire, set this to an impossibly high number (99).

Upper Age Limit and Age Required

Upper Age Limit and Age Required set the age parameters for this type of user. If you issue children's cards to users between the ages of 2 and 18, for example, then Age Required would be "2" and Upper Age Limit would be "18." If there is no upper age limit, set this value to 99 (the highest allowed).

Enrollment Fee and Reserve Fee

Enrollment Fee and Reserve Fee (if any) should be entered either as whole numbers or with six decimal places, with no currency notation (e.g. "1.250000" instead of "$1.25").

Overdue Notice Required

Overdue Notice Required lets you bypass generating overdue notices for this user type.