Troubleshooting

Patron phones cannot find the library

This is by far the most common problem, and it is nearly always the network rather than Bookleaf. Work through Connecting patron devices, which covers the four usual causes in order: the phone is on a different network, the library computer is asleep, the Wi-Fi has client isolation enabled, or the address changed after a restart.

Everything was working, now nothing connects

Check the library computer first. Nine times out of ten it has gone to sleep, been restarted, or Bookleaf has been closed.

If it is awake and running, the likeliest cause is that its network address changed after a restart. Ask whoever manages your Wi-Fi to reserve a fixed address for that computer — it is a small change that removes the problem permanently.

A forgotten PIN

A patron’s PIN can be reset by any admin from the member’s record.

An admin PIN cannot be recovered. There is no reset email, because there is no server to send it. If another admin account exists, use it to reset the first. If it does not, you will need to restore from a backup taken before the PIN was changed.

This is why the installation guide asks you to write the admin PIN down and keep it somewhere physical, and why a second admin account is a good idea in any library with more than one staff member.

An account is locked out

Repeated failed logins lock an account temporarily: five failures for a minute, ten for five minutes, fifteen or more for fifteen minutes. This is deliberate — it is what stops someone working through PINs at the desk.

Wait it out, or have an admin reset the PIN. The lockout is per account, so it does not affect anyone else.

An import produced wrong data

Stop and check the mapping step before importing more. The overwhelmingly common cause is merged cells in the spreadsheet, which shift values sideways into the wrong fields.

If a bad import has already gone through and it was large, restoring the backup you took beforehand is faster and cleaner than deleting records by hand. If you did not take one, this is the moment that convinces most librarians to start — see Backups.

The same author appears several times

Your source data spelled the name differently in different rows, and each spelling became its own authority record. Merge them from the authorities screen.

Do this soon after a large import rather than later. Every month you wait adds more records linked to the wrong heading.

A book will not check out

Bookleaf blocks a checkout and states the reason. The reasons are:

• The patron is at their borrowing limit — overall, or for that material type
• The copy is already checked out to someone else
• The copy is marked lost or damaged, so it is not available for loan
• Unpaid fines exceed the threshold, if you have enabled that

A librarian or admin can override a limit block with a written reason, which is recorded. The others are statements of fact about the copy rather than policy decisions, and the fix is to correct the copy’s status.

Two staff got different answers about the last copy

Expected, and handled. When two people try to check out the last copy simultaneously, one succeeds and the other is told it is gone. The claim is atomic, so you will never end up with the same copy issued twice.

Reports show numbers that look wrong

Check the date range first — most “wrong” report numbers are a period that is not what the reader assumed.

If a count still looks wrong, check whether lost and damaged copies explain the gap. Copies marked lost stay attached to their title for the historical record but are excluded from availability, so “total copies” and “available copies” legitimately differ.

Still stuck

Email support@bookleaf.site with what you expected, what happened, and a screenshot of the actual error. For import problems, a few sample rows from your file usually diagnoses it immediately.