[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] smartphone apps instead of library card

[McCanna, Terran]

We also began accepting barcodes on apps about a year and a half ago. This is the policy language that the PINES Executive Committee approved:

"Patrons are allowed to present a scannable electronic facsimile of the PINES card on a hand-held device. Staff must confirm the patron’s identity by asking for a key piece of information from the patron record.  Name, phone number, email address, street address, or date of birth would be acceptable. Note that if a library’s barcode scanners cannot scan the card number from the hand-held device, library staff will type in the card number displayed on the hand-held device along with confirmation of the patron’s identity. It is recommended that libraries using self-check machines require that the patron input their PIN."

We haven't seen any noticeable increase in the numbers of people claiming that they didn't check books out since we began allowing it. 

As we receive feedback from libraries on different scanner models and whether they work with phones or not, we update this page:

http://pines.georgialibraries.org/barcode-scanners





Terran McCanna 
PINES Program Manager 
Georgia Public Library Service 
1800 Century Place, Suite 150 
Atlanta, GA 30345 
404-235-7138 
tmccanna at georgialibraries.org 
----- Original Message -----
From: "Holly Brennan" <haderhold at ci.homer.ak.us>
To: "Evergreen Discussion Group (open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org)" <open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2015 4:21:30 PM
Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] smartphone apps instead of library card

Are any Evergreeners accepting smartphone apps that store card barcodes? (CardStar, Keyring, etc) Or I guess I should ask, WHO is doing this?

To keep this Evergreen related, are you using anything in the staff client to verify patrons are who their phone says they are? We don't like that anyone can type in any card number and have it generate a barcode. There needs to be some identification (photo ID? Ask birthdate?). It just dawned on me that any library with self-checkout must be dealing with this regardless of whether the practice is in the library's policy.

Curious what you've come up with to use, besides asking for an ID, in addition to the barcode app. We're dreaming of an Evergreen app that includes something like these "loyalty" apps, but specific to our library....

-Holly

Holly Brennan
Library Technology Specialist
Homer Public Library, Alaska

hbrennan at cityofhomer-ak.gov
907-235-3180 (main)
907-435-3154 (direct)