Lending a Resource Item

February 19, 2018Karol Wojtyła

There are basically two ways in which a resource item can be lent to a student or teacher: firstly, where the item is reserved through SchoolMate and then collected, or secondly, where the borrower just orders it in the school.

Student or Teacher reserving an Item through the system:

Students and teachers can log into their SchoolMate accounts and see the items that are available to borrow. Here we are logged in as a teacher, we can:

  1. Find out more about the item.
  2. Click to Reserve it.

Lending a resource item

When they reserve an item, they have to put the date they want to borrow the item from:

date of reservation

On the card of the item they want to borrow, the follow appears:

  1. Number of items available.
  2. Click the up-arrow to complete the reservation i.e. you are handing the book over, or the X to cancel the reservation.

Complete reservation

If you click the up-arrow to complete the borrowing, you will need to put the following in:

  1. The date they are borrowing from.
  2. How long it is borrowed for (this is a default but can be overridden).
  3. If there is a deposit (this is a default but can be overridden).

additional options

Once this is done the item is transferred from the Reservation card to the Items card:

  1. The blue bookmark shows it is borrowed.
  2. This is the unique number for the borrowed item.
  3. The borrower.
  4. Items filled in above.
  5. Actions you can do with this booking.

Booking

The actions you can do with the booking are:

 Return the item to the system when the borrower returns it. You will need to complete some fields:

return item

 Edit button Edit the unique identity number of the item in the system.

Archive button Archive the item. This will store the item and its lending history, but make it unavailable for future borrowings.

History buttonSee the history of borrowings for this item:

List of items borrowed

Delete button Delete the item and its lending history completely from the system.

Borrower orders the item in the school:

The second way items can be lent is when the borrower requests the item in the school, and not through their SchoolMate account.

There are two ways you can lend an item:

  1. Go to the item card and click the up-arrow.

Orders from school

You then need to fill in the lending details and find the borrower’s name:

Borrowers details

2. Click on the green Borrow Signature button and then find the item, the borrower, and enter the other details:

Signature

Returning Items:

As we saw above, you can go to the item card and find the specific item and click the down-arrow to return it.

A second option is to click the Return Signature button:

returning items

then find the specific item on the card that appears:

  1. Tick the item.
  2. Click Next and enter the information about the loan period.

loan period

Other Resource features in SchoolMate:

Drop-Down Menu:

In the drop-down menu, there are three items:

  1. Items Held: this is a list of all your overdue borrowings.
  2. Reservations: this is a list of all reservations in the system.
  3. Print library cards: this is if you want to keep a physical record of each resource item and its lending history.

drop-down menu

Reports:

There are two items in the Reports Module connected to Resources:

  1. Resources – items list: a summary of all your resource items.
  2. Resources – signatures: the current status of every resource item, i.e. borrowed, available.

Teacher and Student Cards:

The results of the borrowing and returning of items are displayed on the Resources card of teachers and students. Here is a student’s card as an example:

Resources card