[Koha-devel] RFC: alternate borrower IDs

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

Various LibLime customers have requested the ability to have the
borrower record store additional IDs beyond the barcode and OPAC user
ID.  To meet this requirement, we propose the following development,
which barring a general escape of zombies from the sewers of Chicago,
I could implement by the middle of next week.

The concept of alternate (or additional) IDs would support the
following use cases:

[1] A (academic) library loads patron records for their students from
CSV file extracted from a database run by the campus registrar.
However, the registrar does not know or care about barcodes and
userids assigned by the library; all they supply is a unique campus ID
number that the library is expected to match against during patron
imports.

[2] A library has more than two identifiers for their patrons.  Two
types of identifiers can take passwords or PINs.

[3] More broadly, and this is something that falls out of the specific
implementation I'm about to propose, the library wants to add
free-text attributes to the patron record that are not covered by the
existing columns of the borrowers table.

To implement this, two new database tables would be added:

borrower_attribute_types (ID or attribute_types)
 * ID type code (e.g., INSTID)
 * ID type description (e.g., 'Campus student ID')
 * repeatable (whether or not a borrower record can have more than one
ID of that type)
 * unique (whether or not the ID should be enforced as a unique identifier)
 * opac_display (whether or not the ID should display in the patron's
account page)
 * password_allowed (whether or not a password can be associated with
the ID and used for patron authentication)
 * staff_searchable (whether or not the ID can be searched in the
staff interface)

borrower_attributes
 * borrowernumber (foreign key)
 * ID type (foreign key)
 * attribute (text string containing the ID or attribute)
 * password (optional password associated with the ID)

The primary functional changes would be

1. new Administration page to define borrower ID types
2. new patron editing page to add, delete, or edit borrower ID types
3. additional pane or box in patron account tab in OPAC to display
additional IDs
4. in staff client, ability to include one or more ID types in search box
5. ability to load alternate IDs via the patron import tool.  This
would be done by adding an optional column in the CSV file that would
contain ID types and IDs.  Any unique ID would act as a matchpoint.
For example, the column might contain:

"INSTID:12345, MAJOR:Physics, ADDLOGIN:abcdef/passwd"

The new feature would be guarded by a syspref - if the preference is
off, no sign of the additional IDs would display in the Administration
menu, the patron editor, or the OPAC.

I would appreciate comments on this proposed functionality, the
proposed implementation, and whether or not this would be of use to
others.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
Koha Application Developer
LibLime
galen.charlton at liblime.com
p: 1-888-564-2457 x709


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