Papyrus Cloud – Member Types

👥

What Member Types Control

Every member record in Papyrus Cloud must be assigned a Member Type. The Member Type affects:

Area affected	How Member Type applies
Reports & lists	Members are grouped and subtotalled by Member Type in most reports — circulation reports, member lists, overdue reports, and fine summaries all use Member Type as a primary grouping.
Borrowing quota	The Quota field sets a ceiling on how many items a member of this type can have on loan at once, regardless of publication type. Leave blank to let Privileges determine the quota instead.
Return deadline	The No Issue After date sets a hard date by which all loans to this member type must be returned. Useful for year-end — for example, setting Grade 12 to require all books back by the end of the school year.
Fine limit	Max Fine caps the total fine that can accumulate for a member of this type, regardless of how many items they have overdue or what the per-item fine rate is.
Bespeaks / reservations	Bespeak Days controls how long a reservation is held for members of this type before it lapses.
Promotion	The Promote To field enables the annual promotion routine — moving members automatically from one type to the next (e.g. from Grade 4 to Grade 5) at the start of a new school year.
Import mapping	The Admin Type field maps this Papyrus type to a corresponding type in an external management system (e.g. D6+, Adam, Engage, Wonde) used for member imports.

ℹ

Member Types vs Privileges. Member Types set hard upper limits — a ceiling that cannot be exceeded. Privileges (configured separately under Member Parameters → Privileges) set the normal lending rules per publication type per member type. If both are set, the more restrictive of the two applies. Restriction fields on the Member Type can be left blank, in which case Privileges alone determine the rules.

📋

The Member Types List

The screen displays all defined Member Types in a table on the left. Click any row's type code button to select it and load its details in the editing panel on the right. The list can be sorted by any column heading.

Member Type	Description	Quota	Promote	Admin Type
??	??		??	?
01	Grade 1		01	1
02	Grade 2		02	2
03	Grade 3		03	03
04	Grade 4		04	04
05	Grade 5		05	05
06	Grade 6		06	06
07	Grade 7		07	07
08	Grade 8		09	08
09	Grade 9		09	9
10	Grade 10		10	10
12	Grade 12		13	12
13	Leavers	0	13	13
P	Part Time		P	P
PR	Parents		PR	PR
S	Staff		S	STAFF
ST	Students		ST	ST
T	Teacher		T	T

The ?? type is a special catch-all for members whose type has not yet been assigned — typically used for new imports before members are classified. The Leavers type (13) has a Quota of 0, preventing any new loans to members who are leaving the institution.

💡

Click the Print button at the top of the screen to print a summary list of all Member Types and their key settings — useful for reviewing your configuration or sharing with library staff.

➕

Adding a Member Type

To create a new Member Type, fill in the two fields at the top of the screen and click Add.

Type…

Description…

Add

Print

Field	Description
Member Type	A short code of up to 3 characters that uniquely identifies this type. The code is used throughout the system — in reports, member records, imports, and the promotion routine. Choose codes that are meaningful and consistent. Examples from the sample library: 01 through 13 for school grades, S for Staff, T for Teacher, PR for Parents.
Description	The full name of the Member Type as it appears in drop-down lists, member records, and reports. Maximum 30 characters. Examples: Grade 1, Staff, Parents, Leavers.

💡

Think ahead about promotion order. If you plan to use the annual Promote Members routine, design your type codes so they reflect the natural progression — for example, 01, 02 … 12 for school grades — before setting the Promote To field on each type after creation.

🔧

Editing a Member Type

Click a Member Type code button in the list to open its detail panel on the right side of the screen. Make changes to any field and click Update to save. Click Delete to remove the type (only possible if no members are currently assigned to it). Click Cancel to discard changes.

Field	Description
Member Type	The type code — shown read-only in the detail panel. The code is set when the type is created and cannot be changed after members have been assigned to it.
Description	The full name of the Member Type. This can be updated at any time. Maximum 30 characters.

🔒

Restriction Fields

The following fields set top-level restrictions for the Member Type. All restriction fields are optional — leave them blank if you want borrowing rules to be determined entirely by Privileges rather than at the Member Type level.

Field	Description
No Issue After	A date (format yyyy MMMM dd) after which no new loans can be made to members of this type. Items already on loan are not affected — only new issues are blocked. Leave blank if there is no date restriction. Useful for year-end scenarios: for example, setting Grade 12 leavers so no new loans are issued after their final exam date. This is a type-level override — if set, it takes precedence over any Privileges-based loan period calculation.
Quota	The maximum number of items this Member Type can have on loan at the same time, across all publication types. Leave blank to let the Privileges for each publication type determine the quota instead. Setting 0 (as on the Leavers type in the sample library) prevents any new issues to members of this type entirely.
Max Fine	A cap on the total fine that can accumulate for any single member of this type, regardless of how many overdue items they have or what the per-item fine rate is. When the total fine reaches this amount, no further fine is added. Leave blank for no cap — the Privileges and Fine Types settings will apply without limit.
Bespeak Days	The number of days a reservation (bespeak) is held for members of this type after the reserved item becomes available. If the member does not collect the item within this period, the reservation lapses. Leave blank for no time limit on reservations.

Example — using restriction fields at year-end

Grade 12 (type 12): Set No Issue After to the last day of the school year, so that the library can stop lending to matric students while still processing returns and collecting overdue items.

Leavers (type 13): Set Quota to 0 so that members who have left the institution cannot borrow any items, regardless of what they had access to before. The Promote To field on Grade 12 points to Leavers, so the annual promotion routine moves all Grade 12 members into this blocked state automatically.

⚠

Blank means unrestricted at the type level. Leaving restriction fields blank does not mean members have no limits — it means the limits are inherited from Privileges. Only set these fields when you need a type-level override that is more restrictive than what Privileges would allow.

⬆️

Promote To

The Promote To field defines which Member Type members of this type will move into when the Promote Members routine is run (found under Routines → Member Routines). This is typically used in schools at the start of each new year to advance all students up one grade.

The Promote To drop-down lists all defined Member Types, so the progression chain is fully configurable. In the sample library, the promotion sequence is:

Grade 1 (01)

→

Grade 2 (02)

→

Grade 3 (03)

→

…

→

Grade 12 (12)

→

Leavers (13)

When the Promote Members routine runs, every member whose type has a Promote To value will be moved to that target type. Members in types where Promote To points to themselves (like Staff, Teacher, Parents) stay in their current type — these non-grade types do not progress.

💡

Run promotion at the start of a new year, before importing new learner data. The typical sequence is: (1) promote existing members up one grade; (2) move Grade 12 leavers into the Leavers type; (3) import new Grade 1 members; (4) archive or delete Leavers from previous years.

ℹ

The ?? type is used as the default Promote To value for types where promotion is not applicable — pointing a type to ?? effectively means "do not promote this type" when the routine runs.

🔗

Admin Type — Import Mapping

The Admin Type field maps this Papyrus Member Type to the corresponding type identifier used by an external school administration or student management system. This mapping is used when importing members from external systems such as D6+, Adam, Engage, or Wonde.

During an import, Papyrus uses the Admin Type to match each imported member's type from the external system to the correct Papyrus Member Type. Without a correct mapping, imported members may be assigned to the wrong type or remain unclassified.

Papyrus Type	Admin Type value (example)	Meaning
01 Grade 1	1	External system calls this grade "1"
S Staff	STAFF	External system uses the text "STAFF" for this category
T Teacher	T	External system uses "T" for teachers

ℹ

The Admin Type value must exactly match what the external system exports — check the format used in your import file. Contact your administration system provider or check the import routine documentation if you are unsure of the correct values.

📐

Planning Your Member Types

Member Types should be set up carefully before members are imported, as changing a type code after members have been assigned requires re-assigning all those members. Here are practical guidelines:

Guideline	Detail
Use short, memorable codes	Type codes appear throughout the system. Short numeric codes (01–12) work well for grades. Single letters (S, T) work for staff roles.
Include a Leavers type	A Leavers or Alumni type with Quota set to 0 is strongly recommended. Members who leave the institution can be promoted into this type to block further borrowing while retaining their history.
Design the promotion chain first	Map out the full promotion sequence before setting up Promote To values. Each type should point to the correct next type in the chain, with the final grade pointing to Leavers.
Set Admin Type before importing	If you plan to import members from an external system, set the Admin Type field on all types before running the first import, so members are correctly classified on arrival.
Leave restrictions blank where possible	Use Privileges (Member Parameters → Privileges) for fine-grained per-publication-type lending rules. Only set type-level restrictions (Quota, No Issue After, Max Fine) when a hard ceiling is genuinely needed for the whole type.