PAC/Millennium & "Fineless" library system?

["William Gray" <wgray@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm working on a proposal for a "fineless" library system, meaning, a system
where fines are not charged for overdue items (well, unless the item reaches
the normal "billing notice" stage, or is damaged, on hold, ILL, etc--just
not for regular overdues). Instead, I wanted to see if there was a way to
apply past accrued overdue *time* against a new checkout item's due-date.

My idea was to have a counter for each patron that would accrue according to
the number of days for each item returned late (like the fines accrue now).
Then, when the patron goes to check out another item, that item's due-date
would be shortened according to how many overdue days they'd already
accrued. So, for example, a patron returns a book 7 days late that normally
goes out for 3 weeks. So, the counter would increase by 7. Then the next
item the patron wanted to borrow would have the due-date cut by 7 days, so
for a book the due-date would be cut from 21 days (3 weeks) to 14 days, and
the counter would decrease by 7.

I could see setting a maximum for the amount of overdue days to be applied
against a particular check-out--maybe 14 at most would be best. Items with
shorter loan periods could be adjusted accordingly.

So, my question: Is there any way to set up something like this in
PAC/Millennium? And can it be done so everything is worked out automatically
with minimal or no input required by staff? If PAC/Millennium definitely
can't handle this, does anyone know of any other software that can so I can
compare how it's done?

Thank you in advance. If you'd like to reply to my personally, please use my
e-mail address:

William Gray
Clerk A, Lending Services
Greenwich Library
101 West Putnam Ave.
Greenwich, CT 06830

(203)625-6541
wgray@xxxxxxxxxx

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