SWAN has received multiple reports of patrons checking out many console games from various libraries across the consortium. While libraries have always had the ability to limit the number of checkouts allowed per item type at their checkout library, these limits vary across SWAN, and there has been no overarching limit in place that affects the entire consortium.

In response to these recent reports, we have set an overarching checkout limit for the console game item types – CONSOLEGAM, CONSOLEMAT, CONSOLENEW, CONSOL_SP1. Starting tomorrow, patrons will be limited to 11 checkouts of any of those 4 console game item types regardless of checkout library. The limit of 11 applies to each type – 11 CONSOLEGAM, 11 CONSOLENEW, etc.

If a patron attempts to check out more than 11 of any of these item types, staff will see a “User cannot checkout any more of this item type” message. This message can be overridden for unique circumstances, such as checking materials out to generic users like DISCARD.

We have run reports and found that only 24 patrons in the entire consortium currently exceed the new checkout limit of 11. These active checkouts will not be impacted, but the patrons will be unable to check out additional console games starting tomorrow. We will continue to assess a reasonable limit on these item types to balance patron service with reduction of abuse.

Please send any questions to help@swanlibraries.net [1].