# Requirement change

Two things, and they go together.

**We need the overdue list.** Every morning the desk wants to see every book that is currently out
past its due date — the whole library, not one member at a time — with the most overdue first, so we
can start telephoning. Add a way to ask for it.

**And nobody borrows while they are holding an overdue book.** If you have something out past its due
date, you get nothing else until it is back. That is separate from the fines rule: you can be holding
an overdue book and owe nothing at all, because nothing is charged until it comes back.

A few things I want to be clear about, because they have caught us out before:

- **The list is ordered by due date, oldest first.** The book that has been out longest is the one we
  chase first. Loans that are not yet past their due date are not on the list at all.
- **A book that has come back is not overdue.** Obviously — but it means the list is a question about
  what is out *right now*, asked at the moment you ask it, not a record we keep.
- **The new rule comes after the two we already have.** If somebody is at their borrowing limit
  *and* holding an overdue book, tell them about the limit. If they owe five hundred *and* are
  holding an overdue book, tell them about the money. The order is: limit, then fines, then the
  overdue book, and only then do we look at whether a copy is free.
- **Somebody else's overdue book is not your problem.** The rule is about what the person at the desk
  is holding.
- **Returning is still always allowed**, however overdue the book is. That is the whole point — we
  want it back.
- Nothing else moves. Same loan period, same fifty a day, same threshold, same catalogue, same
  refusals for everything else.
