[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Displaying patron information for checked out books

[Rogan Hamby]

Hi Jayaraj,

I want to make sure I'm understanding you.  Do you mean to display it in
TPAC for patrons to be able to see what other patrons have a book checked
out?  If so, at least for us in the United States* that would be a huge
violation of patron privacy.  To be honest, it would be such a big
violation that I wouldn't even feel comfortable with that as an option in
TPAC.  It would be like having a bomb waiting to blow up in case someone
turned it on by accident.

As an option for staff to see this in the staff client might be a bit
different but there are other tools that can already be used to do that in
a great enough emergency.  As we tend to operate in the US*, those
situations would be fairly far and few inbetween, we tend to have a
cultural attitude that once an item is checked out the patron has a fairly
exclusive and uninterupted right to the item until it's return.

So, I guess I have two questions (and I'm always curious to know how
libraires operate in other parts of the world), do you mean for this
information to be displayed to patrons and is this a common event that you
would need to recall an item for another user?





*Note that I'm saying the US as an American though I know that many other
countries have similar attitudes.



On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 4:55 AM, Jayaraj JR <jayaraj at iisertvm.ac.in> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> There are requests from the user community about, to whom a particular
> book is checked out.  Is it possible to display the patron information
> (Barcode and Name) in TPAC adjacent to *due date* in the record details
> page. If possible can you kindly share what modification is required to be
> made in the system. It would be useful to seek information from those books
> in *urgent* situations directly from patron, especially in an academic
> environment.
>
> Thanking You
>
> --
> Jayaraj J R
> Library Information Assistant
> IISER Thiruvananthapuram
>



-- 

Rogan Hamby, MLS, CCNP, MIA
Managers Headquarters Library and Reference Services,
York County Library System

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit
me.”
― C.S. Lewis <http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1069006.C_S_Lewis>
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