[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Making patron data invisible for other libraries in consortium?

[Dan Scott]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 9:08 AM, skolkova at upcmail.cz <skolkova at chello.cz>
wrote:

>   Hi,
>
> Here in the Czech Republic we are just considering a pilot project for a
> simple consortium of two libraries (so far, in our country there are only
> single plantings). However, the two libraries would be two separate legal
> entities and we need to ensure patron data privacy.
>
> At this moment it seems that the easiest way would be to make sure that
> the two libraries would not share their patrons (meaning that one library
> would not see the other library's patrons). Can Evergreen cope with this?
> And if so, how exactly?
>
> Or is it necessary to make such legal arrangements that would enable the
> two libraries share data about their patrons?
>
> Thank you in advance for sharing any ideas or links pointing to some hints
> regarding this issue!
>

There are some settings for "patron opt-in" in Evergreen that prevent easy
access to patron info from other libraries. The idea is that staff at
library 1 should not be able to search for a patron at library 2 by their
name or other attributes until that patron presents their barcode at
library 1 and agrees to share their information with library 1. We use this
approach in our consortium to minimize unnecessary exposure of patron data
at different branches.

There doesn't appear to be anything about the patron opt-in settings in the
official docs, but
http://docs.sitka.bclibraries.ca/Sitka/current/html/searching-patrons.html
has a screenshot showing what staff see when a user from a different
library presents their card at a library to which they have not yet opted
in to sharing their information.

That said, anyone with the ability to create reports can easily create a
report which extracts all user information for all libraries, and there are
some points where information leakage can occur (for example, I think you
can see borrowers from other libraries on an item's circulation history).
So it's not a completely airtight solution by any means, but it is suitable
for some setups.

Ultimately, however, if you don't want to share patron info at all across
libraries, the only way to do that is to have separate Evergreen instances.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://libmail.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-general/attachments/20141004/7470dcc3/attachment.htm>