Polaris provides these kinds of prompts today if a patron is marked as an outreach services patron. If they check out a title that is already in their reading history, staff will see a pop-up that says the patron has already borrowed this title and ask if they want to borrow it again.

Has this configuration for patrons already been tried? Or is there a reason a separate options is needed?

For the original poster, in case you are primarily looking to use this with Outreach patrons, this is a feature of the ORS module: https://documentation.iii.com/polaris/7.8/Default.htm#PolarisStaffHelp/Patron_Services/PPoutreach/Check_out_items_from_the_pick_list.htm

It would be nice to see this expanded to other record types if a library wanted.

We've developed a similar feature for use in the customer's My Account in our custom OPAC (it highlights bibliographic records that customers have already checked out). We *really* notice the shortcomings of the reading history feature here even at the bib level.

What we would like is for the reading history to change what is stored and how. On a previous ILS (Dynix Horizon) the reading history didn't store the bibliographic record number or the item record number or the barcode. It stored a set number of characters from the MARC 245 (enough to capture the title and the author from most works). This allows cross material type matches (because if you've read the title, you probably don't want to listen to the audiobook as its the same content). Further, this table isn't touched when bibliographic records are deleted - like Polaris' reading history is.

I think the requested enhancement would be nice for customers that don't have developers or access to their own custom OPAC but for it to work best the way the reading history works needs to be adjusted first.

An option added in the patron registration that turns on a "loan tracking" feature. When checking out books, if this feature is turned on, then when a barcode is scanned that the patron has already borrowed a message comes up to let the patron know they have already read this title.
Would check at a bib level (so not just the actual item that is scanned, but any bib that item is associated with). Should be based on what is in the reading history of the account. Would need enhancement for serial issues, as the reading history currently only advises the serial title previously borrowed and not the issue.
We had this in our last LMS and it was a huge value add to our customers.

...or just include the date the item was returned. This is a common question our libraries hear from their homebound patrons.

We had this pop up with the ILS replaced by Polaris and found it to be a very handy tool when assisting customers with their borrowings. We will have outreach services set up for specific use cases but would like to take advantage of a pop up for all customers with the history tracking checked on

Can you elaborate on the ILL use case here? I'd like to better understand the workflow you're trying to prevent.

It is a feature of Polaris Outreach Services to display a prompt when a patron attempts to check out an item they have already circulated (based on their reading history). This will display for all patrons with ORS enabled in their record. If you are not using ORS today, you could try enabling this checkbox for your patrons as a workaround to see how the existing dialog works for you.

When checking out a material and the the patron has history turned on, a pop-up appears saying this patron had out this item with a date or a number of days ago, so the patron doesn't check it out and immediately return it, especially would be helpful with ILL requests.