[IUG] Permanent checkout query...

[bszalkowski at stcl dot edu]

We currently have a category of checkouts called "permanent loans" which are items purchased out of professor and department budgets and housed in those offices but are still cataloged in the library collection and are technically available for use (usually copying a few pages kind of thing).
When we implemented Innopac Circulation back in 1997, we decided that we wanted these perm loans checked out "indefinitely" rather than located by a location or other code, so that the library staff, a professor or department could call up these perm loan checkouts along with any other regular checkouts from the patron record. One stop shopping if you will.
At first, we set the due date for all of these perm loans as 12/31/2020. As time went on, by trial and error, I determined that the date farthest in the future that I could get Innopac to take was 12/31/2037.
We have been checking out these perm loans in character-based and changing the due date to 12/31/2037 ever since, even after we implemented Millennium in 2004. MilCirc will only allow checkouts for as far as the calendar will go, about 2 years or so.
Now I have received an email from III saying that Circ menu items will be removed that are covered by Millennium functions starting this summer and after a library goes to Release 2007. Although there is no list available yet, I'm assuming that checkout will be one of those items.
Questions:
Is there any other way in Millennium to extend the due date to some future time beyond the calendar? Ideally, I'd love a way to have something checked out "indefinitely", that is, with no particular due date.
Would this long due date functionality qualify as one of those "we can do it in character-base, but not in Millennium" fast track enhancement requests?
Does anyone else have any ideas how to have something show as "checked out" on a patron record without having to automatically renew it every couple of years?
Or, is there a way I can code these items and somehow automatically renew them every couple of years? (From the recent automatic renewal thread, I think I remember that it was an all or nothing sort of thing, not something I could do on a review file created from a code).
Any thoughts or suggestions would be most appreciated, and thanks in advance.

Regardsz, 
--Barbara Sz. 

Barbara Szalkowski 
Senior Catalog Librarian 
The Fred Parks Law Library 
South Texas College of Law 
1303 San Jacinto 
Houston, TX 77002-7000 
(713) 646-1724 
Fax: (713) 659-2217 
bszalkowski at stcl dot edu


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