Optimizing a Library's Loan Policy: An Integer Programming Approach

Providing the best service in order to satisfy users is the main objective of any library. The loan policy is a major tool available to achieve this objective. Previous studies have all focused on the loan period, ignoring the loan policy’s other equally important aspect, which is the maximum number of books a user can borrow. Moreover, only book availability has been used as a measure of user satisfaction. User satisfaction with either the length of the loan period or the number of books allowed to be borrowed has been largely overlooked. This article combines those relevant components into a more complete model. An easy-to-solve integer programming model is formulated, whose solution yields the optimum loan period and optimal limit on the number of books that can be borrowed to maximize user satisfaction. A case study of an actual university library is presented.