Q. I am going on vacation and would like to delay filling my holds.

Our circulation system has a nice feature that may help you the next time that you are out of town and your pending hold requests may generate before you are able to pick them up.  You can suspend/delay filling your hold request, except for interlibrary loan and downloadable audiobooks and ebooks requests, until a future date that you set.

Here’s how …

1)    Go to our homepage at http://www.bcpl.info and click on “Account".

2)    Log in to your account using your library card number (barcode) without any spaces and your password (which defaults to be the last four digits of your phone number unless you have changed it).

3)    Click on the "Requests" link in the left menu to see your requests for titles. You should see the holds you requested and their current status.

4)    Any requests with an “Active” or "Pending" status can be suspended/delayed. Select those requests you wish to delay by clicking in the small box before each item you wish to suspend/delay. Then click on the "Suspend/Reactivate Selected" button if you want only specified requests suspended or "Suspend/Reactivate All" button if you want all your requests suspended.

5)  Enter the date when you want to reactivate the requests that you have suspended/delayed. Type the date in the format mm/dd/year (for example, 1/05/2019 for Jan. 5, 2019).

If you return early, follow steps 1-5 and enter today's date in the New Activation Date. This will reactivate the request hold as of today.

6) Click the Submit button. The hold request will stay in your Requests list with an "Inactive" status with the activation date you set. It will automatically switch to "Active" when you reach the activation date you set.

7)    Log Out of your account when you are finished.

This process will allow your hold to progress up the hold queue but will not allow it to trigger any of your hold requests until the activation date you set is reached.  In this way, you can better time your borrowing time frames.