Specialty Checkout Policy Change

Sometimes we make policy changes to certain services, and the most important thing to know about them is that the changes come about in an attempt to make the service better, smoother, and more accessible for as many people as possible.  

On that note, we’ve made a change to our Specialty Checkout policies that we want to make everyone aware of. 

In plain language, if you have 3 “abandoned” holds on Specialty Checkout items in the same year, you’ll be unable to use the service for 6 months following the third abandonment.

To avoid this, pick up your hold during the 24-hour pickup period OR cancel the hold.

Let’s be SUPER clear about this: this only applies to specialty checkout items (laptops, mifi units, etc.). This does not apply to regular items, books, DVDs, Prospector, or Interlibrary Loans. 

The reason we’re trying this out is because once a hold is placed, the item is unavailable to anyone else during the entire checkout period. When a hold is not picked up, it takes that item out of circulation, usually for a full week, and we can’t always turn it around fast enough to get it back in the line. 

The other thing we tend to see in libraries is that a very small number of people end up being responsible for the majority of abandoned holds. So, it’s our hope that by incentivizing people to pick up their requests (or make their requests more carefully, so they know they’ll be able to pick them up), we can adjust the system to get these items to a larger number of people.

Specialty Checkout items are really limited, and their use is a big help to a lot of folks. We owe it to our communtiy to get these items to as many people as possible.