We are live with v7.5 and gearing up to determine our settings for Pickup Area and we will be reviewing all hold related services, such as looking at Vega LX (Starter, Discover, etc.), Innovative Mobile, and Polaris API. We have been working with our locker vendor to honor the new SIP2 extension, which is going well. The new pickup area functionality needs to be supported in all hold related features, functions, and services.

Polaris 7.5 includes new Pickup Area functionality that will allow a user to select first a library and then a designated pickup area.

Providing an option for pickup locations is crucial as more libraries start to offer smart locker pickup and other, separate, pickup area scenarios.

The current work-around of creating new "branches" in Polaris just for a pickup location for a locker or other area creates multiple data and maintenance challenges both for administrators and library staff. This challenge is further multiplied in a multi-library consortia setting.

Including the new pickup area functionality in the app would allow libraries to provide the options without the need to create new “branches” which would in turn help streamline, simplify, and improve the experience of both staff and users.

This idea was selected from the Always Open space in Idea Lab. Since this idea was not migrated, I'm adding it now so we can keep the enhancements that were delivered in Polaris 7.5 together.