Days Closed Table

The Days Closed table specifies the days of the week or year when your library is closed, or when a specific library branch or location is closed. Unless you specify a date and location in the Days Closed table, the system assumes that the location is open on that day.

Sierra uses the Days Closed table in the following ways:

• The system prevents items from falling due on days that the library is closed. For more information, see How Sierra Calculates the Due Date for a Checkout.
• If the Fines/Bills: Charge fines for days closed circulation option is set to "NO," the system excludes closed days when it calculates overdue fines and penalty points. For more information, see Charging Overdue Fines and Assessing Overdue Penalty Points.
• The system excludes closed days when it calculates the number of days that an item can remain on the holdshelf. For more information, see Managing Defunct Holds.

You can access the Days Closed table via the following menu path:

For information on modifying this table, see Maintaining System Parameter Tables and Maintaining Circulation Parameters.

For more information, see Functionality Information and Data Elements.

Functionality Information

When viewing and modifying the Days Closed table, note the following:

Maximum Number of Entries

The Days Closed table can contain a maximum of 5,000 entries.

Table Read Bottom to Top

The system reads the Days Closed table from bottom to top. General entries (such as those that contain wildcards) should appear higher in the table than more specific entries.

Calendar Limited to 365 Days Before or After the Current Date

The system retains a one-year calendar of closed days. The system cannot determine whether a given date is a closed day if it falls more than 365 days before or after the current date. For example, you can specify that a location is closed every Sunday or on July 4th of every year, but you cannot indicate that a branch is closed on January 16, 2012 but not January 16, 2013. Library staff must edit the Days Closed table periodically to ensure that the upcoming dates are accurate.

Manipulating the Days Closed Table

If your library has non-standard circulation policies regarding closed days, you might need to manipulate the Days Closed table (and possibly also the Hours Open table) to obtain the results you want. For example, if your library's Music Library is open Monday through Saturday, but you want to allow patrons who check out items on Friday night to keep those items until Monday morning, you must add an entry indicating that the Music Library is closed on Saturday. The Days Closed table does not control when you can check material out and in; the table only determines the due dates of items and the fine schedule. For more information, see the example entries from the Hours Open table.

Data Elements

Entries in the Days Closed table contain the following data elements:

Element	Description
Location	The library branch or location that is closed. Possible values are: a location from the Branches table a wildcard code of five question marks (?????) to represent all locations a partial location code followed by an asterisk (for example, sci* to represent any location code that starts with "sci")
Day Closed	The day of the week or year that the location is closed. Possible values are a calendar date or a day of the week. Calendar dates must be in MM/DD or DD/MM format, depending on the date format used by your system. The month and day may be one or two digits each and may be separated by a slash '/' or a hyphen '-'. For example, an entry could appear as 2/12 or 02-12. Days of the week must be one of the following three-character codes in UPPERCASE or lowercase: mon tue wed thu fri sat sun.
Editable By	The authorization level required to edit the field. This element displays only if your library has enabled edit protection of circulation parameters.