[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Aged Circulation?

[Martha Driscoll]

If the aged_circulation table preserved the user statistical category 
and the copy statistical category then you would be less likely to keep 
the transactions over time and would therefore increase patron privacy.

In our current system we use patron stat_cats for things like college 
major, faculty status (full time, part time), student status (commuter, 
resident), section of town for public patrons -- asically anything our 
libraries decide is important to count.  We want to continue to query 
that information for statistical purposes, but don't want to maintain 
the history of an actual transaction which identifies patrons with 
historical checkouts.

It's true that staff could put identifiable information in a free-text 
stat cat, but I don't think that would be the norm.

--
Martha Driscoll
Systems Manager
North of Boston Library Exchange
Danvers, Massachusetts
www.noblenet.org

On 12/3/2010 10:17 AM, Jason Etheridge wrote:

> Something to keep in mind is that the more data you preserve the less
> anonymous things really get (events can be more easily reconstructed,
> especially if augmented with outside data--e.g. surveillance).  In the
> case of patron stat cats, we have a real foot-gun in that we allow
> free-text entry for patron stat cats, so they could really contain
> anything, including accidental or intentional identifying information
> (staff enters data in the wrong field, or you have a stat cat called
> Student ID).
>