[Evergreen-general] Family Accounts in Evergreen

[Aubrey Area Library]

I have a couple of questions.
1. What is the goal for having all family members on one account?
We serve a very transient population and a common question we get with
people moving into the area is do we do family accounts. With grouping yes
we do but once we explain how it works with a family coupled with our
checkout limit (30 items per card) most family groups opt for the one card
or two depending if both parents bring the children to the library. Due to
the transient nature of our service area, you must have your card with you
to checkout this goes for  juveniles as well. If the parents opt for one
card and grandma or a babysitter brings the juveniles to the library then
they must have their parents card inorder to checkout materials. This would
alleviate these concerns almost entirely. Parents would only have one
account to manage and juveniles could still get a library card.

2. Does Grouping not give you what you need?
Grouping does work and im not knocking it in any way. For us this solution
would work best as our policies, fee, and checkout limits are the same
across the board, adult or juvenile.

> Drawbacks:
> They will share checkout and fine limits.
As above this is not an issue for our library as our policies are applied
equally regardless of age. We do have libraries in our consortium that do
have different policies based on age. and I understand that this is not a
solution for those types of libraries.
> There will be no privacy.
This is something I have been thinking about. Privacy is a big issue,
especially for me. In practice, juveniles have no expectation of real
privacy as the parent/guardian is ultimately responsible for all items
checkout. The issue of privacy only really comes to the forefront once you
get into the preadolescent/teen age groups. because our policies apply to
all equally, we take a very hands off approach and leave all decisions
about accounts to the parent/guardian. I do not want us getting into a
situation of basically saying "get your teen their own card so you
can't see what they are checking out".

Grouping works fine for us and the way I laid out solves one problem but
creates another. If anyone has any additional thoughts about the privacy
issue I would be happy to hear them.

Jordan

On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 8:57 AM o1bigtenor via Evergreen-general <
evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 8:38 AM Diane Disbro via Evergreen-general <
> evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi, Jordan -
>>
>> This is clever!
>>
>> I have a couple of questions.
>> 1. What is the goal for having all family members on one account?
>> 2. Does Grouping not give you what you need?
>>
>> Drawbacks:
>> They will share checkout and fine limits.
>> There will be no privacy.
>>
>>
> Wondering if an advantage would be for 'billing' (fees for membership)?
>
> Regards
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> Evergreen-general mailing list
> Evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org
> http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
>


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Thank You, The Library Staff

226 Countryside Dr., Aubrey, TX 76227
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