Hey Josh, An interesting proposal. I think it would be a neat addition to to add to patron registration process.
Like Terran, staff being able to view a patrons reading history would be better off as a togglable library setting. The fact that we can retrieve a patrons reading history is a somewhat guarded secret due to privacy concerns in our consortium. Thanks, Jordan Woodard Aubrey Area Library On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 1:44 PM, Josh Stompro <stomp...@exchange.larl.org> wrote: > Hello, we are running into the fact that many of our patrons that want to > make use of a reading history, don’t find out about it until long after > they sign up for an account. Many of these patrons are also non > computer/online catalog users, so there is no chance that they would ever > find the option to enable it themselves, and even if they knew about it, > they wouldn’t be able to set it themselves. So they find out about it > after talking with staff, and then get mad when they find out that it will > only have their history starting at the point they sign up. Since they > don’t use computers, they need staff to walk them through (do it for them) > logging into their account and finding the option, so it would be handy if > staff could just do it for them. > > > > We could set the library setting to default the checkout history to being > enabled, but we really don’t want to make that decision for everyone, and > then put the onus on them to figure out how to use the catalog to turn it > off. > > > > So we are considering adding an opt in checkbox to the patron application, > along with a user setting that staff can check, to allow staff to enable > the circ history at patron registration time. The user setting being > checked or unchecked would trigger a nightly process that would > enable/disable the reading history for that account. > > > > In theory, this could result in a customer saying that they never signed > up for the feature, saying that staff did it on their own. But since it is > already trivially easy for staff to log into the catalog as a customer, it > seems like that would already be a problem. (staff know what the default > pin numbers are based on, or could just change the pin, a customer that > never uses the catalog would never know that the pin was changed) > > > > Has anyone else done this or something like this? Is this a horrible idea? > > > > I think staff would also like to be able to access the patrons history > from their staff stations, which would make readers advisory easier. > “Which Louis L’Amour titles haven’t I read yet”. > > > > We have had problems in the past with patrons physically marking books > that they have read before, to make it easier for them to find the ones > they haven’t read. > > > > Josh > > > > Lake Agassiz Regional Library - Moorhead MN larl.org > > Josh Stompro | Office 218.233.3757 EXT-139 <(218)%20233-3757> > > LARL IT Director | Cell 218.790.2110 <(218)%20790-2110> > > > -- If you need further assistance, please contact the library at 940-365-9162 or send a reply email. Thank You, The Library Staff 226 Countryside Dr., Aubrey, TX 76227