[Evergreen-general] How are you using Privacy Waiver?

[Aubrey Area Library]

Our Library is right in the middle of a neighborhood and the surrounding
areas that use the library have a lot of children that are cared for either
by a babysitter or grandparent. We use the privacy waiver as a means to
authorized caregivers of children to check out items on the parents account
should the child/caregiver not have their own card. Also, it is used as
a way to facilitate family cards. Now to your questions: (answers in red)

   - *Pickup holds *-- This is the most straightforward situation, and
   means that John has permission to pick up Mary's holds, and check them out
   on Mary's card.  Do libraries ask John for any identification?  Do
   libraries have situations where John wants to check out Mary's holds on his
   own card?  How do they handle this?  So a similar situation we have is
   when spouses or children come in and pick up holds for wife/mom. We check
   the items out to the account they were placed on. We would follow the same
   procedure here. We have never had and real push back but in the event that
   a patron asks if they can be checked out on their card and not the card the
   hold was placed with we are to tell them that "holds have to be checked out
   on the card they were placed with". This is mostly to keep Evergreen from
   going crazy should there be another hold on the item as you are
   essentially canceling a hold and then trying to check out an item to
   someone who is not the next individual with a hold.
   - *Checkout items* -- This gives John permission to checkout items that
   were not on hold.  Are there any issues here with him actually presenting
   Mary's card or having staff look up Mary's card, or identification
issues?  Our
   instructions to staff are if we are unsure about a patron checking out we
   are to ask them to verify identifying information on the account (phone
   number, address, etc.).
   - *Place holds* -- This allows John to make staff-placed holds on Mary's
   account
   - *View borrowing history* -- Can staff even view Mary's borrowing
   history, assuming she has that turned on?  All the other features refer to
   transactions with staff, and this "viewing" option doesn't seem to fit
   here.  For active patrons, viewing history tends to be very unwieldy to
   work with.  Or is this meant to imply that he can log into Mary's account,
   in which case he could view her checkout history and place holds, but would
   also have access to editing all her information and preferences, which
   depending on the circumstances, may or may not be a good thing.  Since
   staff is unable to view browsing history, even if the patron enables it in
   the OPAC, this is a non-issue for our library. In the event that that
   information was visible to staff, we would never check that box nor would
   we give out the browsing history of a cardholder to anyone who is not the
   primary account holder. Even if the primary account holder said it was
   okay, Im not sure that is a line our library would ever be willing to cross.


Our library has a service population of about 25k so a lot of procedures
may not be appliable to larger libraries. We rarely use this feature so we
have yet to run into situations where we need hard and fast rules.

Thanks,
Jordan Woodard
Library Assistant
Aubrey Area Library



On Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 9:08 AM Thomsen, Elizabeth via Evergreen-general <
evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:

> We're interested in learning more about how libraries are using the
> Privacy Waiver
> <https://docs.evergreen-ils.org/eg/docs/latest/admin/patron_registration.html#_privacy_waiver>
> feature.  This gives patrons a way to grant permission to one or more
> people to place holds, pickup holds, view borrowing history, or check out
> items on their account.  Patrons can add and edit this information in the
> OPAC, and staff can add and edit this in the Patron editor.  (See
> screenshots.)
>
> This feature doesn't actually control any circulation functions or link
> patron records together, it's really just an online permission slip, but
> this is a big step up from how we have handled these situations in the
> past, using notes, etc.  We turned this on shortly before the libraries
> closed, and now that they are open again, library staff have questions.
>
>    - *Pickup holds *-- This is the most straightforward situation, and
>    means that John has permission to pick up Mary's holds, and check them out
>    on Mary's card.  Do libraries ask John for any identification?  Do
>    libraries have situations where John wants to check out Mary's holds on his
>    own card?  How do they handle this?
>    - *Checkout items* -- This gives John permission to checkout items
>    that were not on hold.  Are there any issues here with him actually
>    presenting Mary's card or having staff look up Mary's card, or
>    identification issues?
>    - *Place holds* -- This allows John to make staff-placed holds on
>    Mary's account
>    - *View borrowing history* -- Can staff even view Mary's borrowing
>    history, assuming she has that turned on?  All the other features refer to
>    transactions with staff, and this "viewing" option doesn't seem to fit
>    here.  For active patrons, viewing history tends to be very unwieldy to
>    work with.  Or is this meant to imply that he can log into Mary's account,
>    in which case he could view her checkout history and place holds, but would
>    also have access to editing all her information and preferences, which
>    depending on the circumstances, may or may not be a good thing.
>
> This isn't the kind of feature you can actually test on the system, we're
> really just looking for help explaining these options to patrons and
> circulation staff.
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> --
> Elizabeth B. Thomsen
> Member Services Manager
> NOBLE: North of Boston Library Exchange
> Danvers, Mass.
> www.noblenet.org
> _______________________________________________
> Evergreen-general mailing list
> Evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org
> http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
>


-- 

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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://list.evergreen-ils.org/pipermail/evergreen-general/attachments/20210625/b567737d/attachment.html>