Check Previous Checkouts- How This Works in Koha!

by Kelly McElligott on Nov 22, 2022

There is a system preference that can be set to allow and Koha will check the patron’s circulation history to see if this item has been checked out in the past to this patron. In addition, libraries can determine this feature by patron category also! Koha has given libraries a lot of flexibility with privacy and their patrons, this is a great example of how.

System Preference: CheckPrevCheckout & CheckPrevCheckoutDelay

Let's first start with the system preferences, there are two:

CheckPrevCheckout- check borrower checkout history to see if the current item has been checked out before.

Options a library can choose for this system preference:

Do

Don't

Unless overridden by Patron Category Do

Unless overridden by Patron Category Don't

CheckPrevCheckoutDelay: Trigger a warning if the current item has been checked out no longer than X days ago. (Requires CheckPrevCheckout to be enabled. There is no time limit if 0 or empty).

Breaking down the CheckPrevCheckout a bit further:

When the value of this system preference is set to ‘do’, Koha will look at the patron’s circulation history to see if they have checked this item out before. An alert will show up on the screen indicating that the patron has indeed checked this item out. Staff will be prompted to allow the checkout to occur.

When the value is set to ‘Unless overridden by patron category, do’, this will check the patron’s circulation history unless the patron’s personal setting or the patron category setting specifically says not to.

When the value is set to ‘Unless overridden by patron category, do not, Koha will not check circulation history unless the patron’s personal setting or the patron category setting specifically says to check.

Note: The patron's personal setting: Within the patron's account, there is an individual setting for checking previous checkouts, which overrides the setting of the patron category and of the CheckPrevCheckout system preference.

Patron Category Settings

Within each patron category, there is an option to set the setting, Check Previous Checkouts from here.

Choose whether patrons of this category by default are reminded if they try to borrow an item they borrowed before. The options are: inherit from system preference, no and try to override system preference, and yes and try to override system preference.

Because this option lives at the system level, the patron category level, and the patron level, there are several ways that this can be customized to work for your library.

Note

This system preference, CheckPrevCheckout will not work for patrons that have chosen to anonymize their reading history.