Wednesday, February 9, 2011
HPL Policy for Suspending Customers

Greetings,

I wanted to remind everyone that all staff needs to be very familiar with Policy 2.3 (see link below this paragraph) and ensure that we are all following it when suspending people from the library. This policy explicitly lays out the offenses that can result in suspensions and how long each suspension should be based on type of offense. When suspending someone from a location, we need to make certain that it is done according to this policy.
https://hplnet.hpl.lib.tx.us/polandpro/pol-2_3.pdf

I really want to draw everyone’s attention to section C. In fact, it is a good practice to print this out and share it with all staff. I also would like for everyone to post this information to your location’s blog. We have to make sure that the suspension we issue for rule violations matches the appropriate listed category (Short Term Suspension, Long Term Suspension, and Indefinite Suspension). In addition, it is crucial that the length of suspension follow the guidelines listed here based on whether it is a customer’s first, second, third (etc.) offense.

Finally, and I can’t stress this enough, anytime there is a suspension, there needs to be an incident report to document the details. In the reports, it is important to explicitly state why the customer was suspended and the duration of the suspension. I find it useful to include a reference to the phrasing in our policy that applies to the situation at hand.

Please let me or your team leader know if you have any questions at all about this.

Thanks,

Mike Van Campen