Summary: | Identify patrons as a group or family unit | ||
---|---|---|---|
Product: | Koha | Reporter: | Christopher Brannon <cbrannon> |
Component: | Patrons | Assignee: | Bugs List <koha-bugs> |
Status: | NEW --- | QA Contact: | Testopia <testopia> |
Severity: | enhancement | ||
Priority: | P5 - low | CC: | gmcharlt, kyle.m.hall, mspagnuolo, wdeschamps |
Version: | Main | ||
Hardware: | All | ||
OS: | All | ||
See Also: | https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=31329 | ||
Change sponsored?: | --- | Patch complexity: | --- |
Documentation contact: | Documentation submission: | ||
Text to go in the release notes: | Version(s) released in: |
Description
Christopher Brannon
2022-12-09 22:02:35 UTC
Christopher makes valid points. From our (legal, privacy) perspective, we accept that adults cannot have access to other adults' accounts without the account's owner allowing access him/herself; i.e., giving the spouse their login credentials. Divorce and other family drama not where we want to be involved. Further, juveniles are not allowed memberships without an adult guarantor who assumes legal responsibility for that juvenile's library account until that juvenile reaches the age of majority. In our library, guarantors are only flagged when one or more guarantee's account has fines (which for us doesn't occur until the item becomes "lost" (i.e. 21 days) or damaged resulting in a replacement fine. A Guarantor's account is not alerted or flagged due to any other restrictive state of a guarantee's account (i.e., "normal" overdues). However, it would be great to have other "household" (to include other adults) included in a "hey, something is amiss with an account in your household" notice and/or restriction. I understand the baby-steps approach. Our focus in on loss prevention as it relates to the adult who is held legally responsible for their guarantees (who are minors...we do not allow guarantees to be 18+). We have considered completely revamping our membership to only adult accounts and assigning patron categories in item-limit increments. But older guarantees feel empowered to have their own card, and short of us investing in a card generator/printer so that multiple people in the family can have their "own" card (but same card number), this really isn't feasible, nor does it offer the most accurate statistics regarding membership and individual patron usage. If Christopher's approach is the most viable way to eventually provide true (and customizable) "links," I support this bug. That said, though, our desire for true links is to help us enhance our loss prevention efforts and better monitor and inhibit patrons who abuse the system with multiple children's accounts to get around the rules by manipulating the system. Therefore, I am happy with any forward movement in this realm as long as the goal is to make the "guarantor/guarantees" (plural guarantees) all "function" like one "account" [household/organization] with individual "sub-accounts" [guarantor/guarantees]. Your comment made me think of another great use for linking non-children. Spouses often pick items for each other. We usually have to make a note in the account of the spouse that is allowed to do so, and we usually require they have the card number at least. Maybe down the road we could specify on each account who in the group is authorized to pick up items for this person, and who is allowed to know details in the account. Perhaps if you are given that permission, when you scan your card, there is another button/link in your account that says "Picking up for..." and giving you a choice to switch to any account you are authorized for. Our library migrated from Evergreen which allowed the linking of accounts into a group. The Koha method of linking accounts by guarantor has taken a little bit of getting use to, and has required a workaround of the system to get the functionality we wanted. Currently, our library links multiple adults together by assigning one account a child patron category named Adult2. Even though there is no actual guarantor in the relationship, we have to use what Koha has available. I would like to see a more robust linking system in Koha, along with the options to customize what libraries can do with that system. Right now, for our library, we have two enhancements that would help our workflows and customer service: - being able to link multiple adult cards together - being able to view all linked accounts from the details page I can see this group linking as a separate system from the guarantor/guarantee system or an extension. Not sure which way would work better. |