Patron data maintenance policy

[jdessino]

I haven't had time since the 7th to finish my comments, so here they are, along with a couple responses to Tara's changes since then.

1. Internal patron account life cycle:
   My question here is with the statement "retained until the expiration date assigned." Other categories of patrons have some time after the record has expired before the record is deleted, but this sounds like the Internal patrons will be deleted immediately on expiration. If I'm reading this correctly, I have two concerns:  

• All of the city library staff that work in the Joint Use Library have to be internal patrons in order to be given staff roles in Alma. The Alma record is not updated until they update their VBPL library card. We've already had quite a few staff that couldn't log into Alma because they hadn't yet updated their VBPL card. In that case, we can manually change the expiration date in Alma so they have immediate staff access. If the record were immediately removed, the staff member would have not Alma access until the next day, since the VBPL updates are done overnight.
  
• While not a huge issue, we do have community patrons who update their accounts several months after the card has expired as that is the next time they want to use the library. If their record is gone, we will have to recreate them. That is not only extra work for staff, but it also means that, for community patrons who are former students, we will no longer have the EmplID in the patron record. With Alma we just deactivate the EmplID, but leave it in the record. If the person re-enrolls, the SIS load should match and automatically convert the record back to Student. Deleting them immediately, increases the chance of duplicate records.  
  

Right now, the policy says the expiration date is not to exceed two years. I'd really like to see this say the purge date not to exceed two years. 

2. External patrons:  This comment is really just about semantics. I don't have a problem with the steps detailed, but we do have another category of external patron at TCC -- VBPL patrons are are also maintained by an automated patron load. Is TCC the only VCCS college with another external load?  Do we need to indicate in any way that the same rules apply to any other category of external patron that now exists or might exist in the future?

3. Responses to Tara's comments about Faculty/Staff records:

• Am I correct that 'regular' faculty and staff (those whose only role is Patron), just follow the same rules as students.  They get deleted one year after expiration as long as they don't have anything attached to their record?
  
• I'm still not clear exactly what the plan is for Faculty and Staff records that have Alma staff roles. Once someone is no longer employed, the record doesn't get updated, but it is still an active record until 135 days after the last time it is loaded. Since, presumably, people with staff roles work in the library, the library staff should know when someone has left. I think the policy should say that the first level of activity is at the college level.  The library should be responsible for immediately deactivating all roles except patron. Should the library also be expected to put in a ticket to have those roles removed?? Then the review is just to catch whoever was missed.
  
• I'm still not sure how the spring and fall review of faculty and staff accounts is going to take place, but I assume that will be Emily's responsibility.  If you are using expiration date combined with patron category, have you considered that many of our library staff become community users once they are no longer employed? They would no longer be listed as faculty or staff and would have a valid future expiration date, but would still have the staff roles if they haven't been removed or deactivated? 
  

4, My last item is just a question. What does 'regularly' mean:  How soon will the first purge be conducted (I am so excited to get the expired patrons out of the system! I hope the first purge is soon!)?  Will the patron purge be set up as a regular job running on a set interval? Manually scheduled at set times? Not, I suppose, that this matters; I'm just curious.