Managing Appointment Exceptions and Closures

A reading room's Open Hours describe its normal week: the days and times patrons can book appointments. That schedule repeats every week and doesn't know about holidays, the afternoon a class takes over the room, or the hour every Monday set aside for staff training. Exceptions are how you override the normal schedule for specific dates and times — either closing the room entirely or temporarily shrinking the number of seats available.

An exception changes what the room can take on for a window of time — it adjusts the availability the booking calendar reads from, so patrons can't book into a closed or shrunk window. Saving an exception doesn't reach into appointments that are already booked; those stay as they are unless you change them yourself. The normal path is to set Open Hours once and leave them, then add an exception whenever something out of the ordinary changes what that room can take on those dates.

When you'll use this

• A full closure — the room is closed for a holiday, a private event, or a facilities issue. Use a Closed exception so no appointments can be booked in that window.
• A partial closure — the room stays open but fewer seats are free, e.g. a class visit reserves 25 of 40 seats, or a recurring training takes one seat for an hour. Use a Reduced Availability exception.
• Planning ahead — you know next month's closures now and want the booking calendar to reflect them before patrons start requesting those dates.

Where this lives

Exceptions are configured per reading room, on the Exceptions tab of that room's settings. Open the Customization Manager, go to Reading Rooms, and select the room you want to edit from the list on the left. The room's settings open with tabs across the top: General, Locations, Open Hours, Exceptions, Policies, and (on multi-site systems) Sites. Click Exceptions.

Exceptions belong to appointment-scheduling reading rooms. Walk-in visit rooms don't have an appointment calendar, so they have no Exceptions tab.

What an exception is made of

Each exception is one entry on the Exceptions tab with the following fields:

Field	What it does
Type	Either Closed (no appointments at all during the window) or Reduced Availability (the room stays open with fewer seats).
Public Notes	An optional note explaining the closure or reduction (for example, "Spring break — building closed").
Start	The date and time the closure or reduction begins.
End	The date and time it ends.
Seats Reserved	For a Reduced Availability exception only: how many of the room's normal seats to hold back during the window. The room's available seats drop by this amount for the duration. This field is disabled for a Closed exception.

Start and End are in the room's time zone

The times you enter are interpreted in the reading room's own time zone (set on the General tab), not your browser's. The tab states this directly: "Exceptions apply in the reading room's time zone." Start and End snap to 15-minute increments.

Adding an exception

The example below closes reading room Special Collections Reading Room for a holiday.

1. Open the Customization Manager, choose Reading Rooms, and select Special Collections Reading Room from the list.
2. Click the Exceptions tab. If the room has none yet, you'll see "No exceptions defined."
3. Click Add Exception. A new block appears, labeled Exception 1, pre-filled with a start time of now and an end time one hour later.
4. Set Type to Closed.
5. Set Start and End to cover the closure — for a full-day holiday, the start and end of that day's hours (for example, 2025-11-27 09:00 to 2025-11-27 17:00).
6. Optionally type a reason in Public Notes, such as Thanksgiving — closed.
7. Click Save at the top of the form.

To reduce capacity instead of closing — say a class reserves 25 of the room's 40 seats one afternoon:

1. On the Exceptions tab, click Add Exception.
2. Set Type to Reduced Availability. The Seats Reserved field becomes editable.
3. Set Start and End to the class window (for example, 2025-10-14 13:00 to 2025-10-14 16:00).
4. Enter 25 in Seats Reserved. During that window the room offers 15 seats instead of 40.
5. Add a note like Intro to Archives class visit in Public Notes if you like.
6. Click Save.

You can add as many exceptions as you need — click Add Exception again for each one. They're numbered Exception 1, Exception 2, and so on, in the order you add them.

Exceptions save with the whole reading room

Adding, editing, or removing an exception is not a separate action — it's part of editing the reading room. Nothing is committed until you click Save at the top of the form. If you click Cancel, all your unsaved exception changes are discarded along with any other edits on the room. If you try to leave the page with unsaved changes, Aeon warns you first.

Editing an exception

1. On the Exceptions tab, find the exception block you want to change.
2. Adjust Type, Start, End, Seats Reserved, or Public Notes in place.
3. Click Save.

Switching an exception from Reduced Availability to Closed disables the Seats Reserved field and drops the reserved-seats value on save — a Closed exception holds back nothing because it allows nothing.

Removing an exception

1. On the Exceptions tab, locate the exception you want to delete.
2. Click the trash icon in the top-right corner of that exception block. The block disappears from the list.
3. Click Save to commit the removal.

Only future exceptions are listed

The Exceptions tab shows only exceptions that haven't ended yet — it notes "Only future exceptions are shown." Past closures stay in the room's history but drop off this editing list once they're over, so the tab stays focused on what's still ahead. There's no need to clean up expired exceptions yourself.

How exceptions interact with Open Hours

An exception is an override layered on top of Open Hours; it never replaces them:

• A Closed exception blocks booking for its window even though Open Hours say the room is open. Outside the window, normal hours apply.
• A Reduced Availability exception leaves the room open but lowers the seat count for its window. Outside the window, the full seat count returns.
• An exception scheduled for a day or time the room is already closed under Open Hours has no visible effect — there were no slots to remove.

For setting the recurring weekly schedule itself, see Configuring Reading Room Open Hours. For the room's seat count, appointment lengths, and lead-time rules, see Configuring Reading Rooms.

Permissions

Editing reading rooms — including adding, changing, or removing exceptions — requires the Operations configuration capability. Saving a reading room is gated on this capability on the server; staff whose role doesn't include it won't be able to reach the Customization Manager reading-room editor to make these changes. See Editing a Role: Configuration Capabilities for how this is granted.