Background

The university library use the iii Millennium system to control book loans and borrower details. Part of the loan process is the automatic allocation of fines for late loan returns and exclusion from library resources if the amount of outstanding fine should increase beyond £15.

Students could pay their fines in person at the Customer Services Desk by using cash or cheque (and in 2009 by credit card) but no service was available out of hours or for distance learning students. In some instances students would be forced to make a special trip to campus to pay fines.

Library fines are generally small ranging from 20 pence to £25 for a lost book charge but some students allow the amounts to accumulate.

The Project

The Millennium system is equipped with a programming interface allowing an external program to query whether a user has fines and to pay those fines. It was possible therefore to develop a small amount of program code to extract fines and use the payment system to display them, total them and forward the customer to online payment. When a successful payment is made the TTS system calls the payment system with the payment reference and the payment system in turn instructs Millennium that the fines have been paid [more ...].

Improvements for the Client

The Library Fines Online system went live in June 2009 and processed £3800 of fines in its first two weeks of availability. 370 individual users paid fines within that period without intervention from Customer Services. Previously each face to face transaction would have taken upwards of five minutes.

The library staff are pleased with the process and report that the reaction from library users has been very positive. The tangible benefits to the department are-

• An increase in service level and an alignment with the perceived modern practice of payment online.
• A positive environmental impact in reducing travel
• An increase in cash flow and liquidity with students and staff finding it easier to pay when reminder emails arrive.
• A significant reduction in staff time handling each user and recording payments in Millennium.
• A less stressful environment for Customer Services in managing angry customers and a reduction in unfounded appeals.
• A reduction in cash handling and reduced risk of fraud

Further information of setting up an internal trading account can be found at http://go.warwick.ac.uk/onlinepayment For further information on payment solutions and how they might be integrated please speak to the IT service analyst for your area ( itsa@warwick.ac.uk )