Hi Ian,

 

When we first had self issue our users had to put in a pin as well as scanning in their barcode.  However, we found this was a barrier to use of self service as it slowed down the process and also the students had another piece of information to remember so we removed the PIN option for self service several years ago.  It may be a co-incidence but issues at the machines compared to at the service desk did rise following this decision. 

 

When we used PINs we had to print out a list of patrons and PINs for the evening staff who didn’t have access to the lms so that they could inform people what their PIN was if they had forgotten it, which again slowed down the process.  Of course the PIN is encrypted in Millennium/Sierra so we wouldn’t have been able to do this now if we were still using PINs.

 

We have only had one instance of someone using a stolen card to take out books and as the users need the card to access the building and a number of other areas on campus they normally report the loss to us fairly quickly.  We then put a block on the card and the user goes to IT to get a replacement, the details of which are then transferred over from the registry system as part of the overnight data transfer.

 

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Emma

 

 

 

 

Hi,

 

       Another request for the wisdom of the list!

 

    We’ve had a suggestion that we should use PINs as well as the user barcode for self-issue on our 3M self-service machines. The idea is that this would prevent lost cards being misused. Does anyone else do this? If so, how does it work? Is it accepted by your users? Or have you deliberately decided against it, and if so why?

 

   I’ll summarise for the list if there are a lot of replies!

 

Thanks in anticipation,

 

Ian

 

Ian Haydock

Library Systems Manager

Keele University

01782 733241