Patron data maintenance policy

[tcassidy]

Comments are welcome before Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2018.
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Alma Patron Data Policy
Continued maintenance of expired patron records presents a risk of unauthorized access. To that end, VCCS Alma patron records that are not required for the operation of the library will be purged as soon as their operational purpose is served. In the interest of protecting the confidentiality of patron records, and because the collection and maintenance of such records beyond their essential operational use is not within the VCCS educational mission, the System Office will purge expired Alma patron records once each spring and fall term,  beginning Nov. 2018.
 
A.    Circulation Transactions
The Alma patron record provides the contact information, status, and affiliation of a patron with a college library. All patron records include only items currently checked out to the patron, and not items that have been previously borrowed and returned. Circulation transactions have links to a patron’s identity.

• For items returned on time, these transactions will be purged from the patron record within two weeks.
  
• For items not returned when due, the patron information (including item loan history) is retained until the item is returned and all outstanding charges are paid in full.
  

 
B.    External Patron Account Lifecycle
External account types (College Faculty/Staff and Student) will be deleted from Alma one year after the record expires, all loans are returned, and any outstanding charges are paid. An expired account with outstanding loans or unpaid charges will not be deleted.

• External (faculty/staff and student) patron accounts are created and maintained by an automated patron load from PeopleSoft SIS, the VCCS system of record.
  
• Upon creation, external accounts are set to expire after 120 135 days. These account expiration dates are extended daily for individuals that remain enrolled/employed at a VCCS institution.
  
• Student External patron accounts are deleted from Alma one year after they expire, unless pending items are attached to their record, such as overdue items or bills.
  

 
C.     Internal Patron Account Lifecycle
Internal account types (Public Library Staff, Community Patron, and Emeritus Faculty) will be deleted from Alma one year after the record expires, all loans are returned, and any outstanding charges are paid. An expired account with outstanding loans or unpaid charges will not be deleted.

      •    Internal account types are created and maintained by college library staff or an affiliated public library system of record.
      •    Upon creation, internal accounts are set to expire after 365 days. These account expiration dates should be extended annually for individuals that continue to receive library services from a VCCS institution.
     •    Internal patron accounts are deleted from Alma one year after they expire, unless pending items are attached to their record, such as overdue items or bills.


D. Account Role Management

• If any expired external or internal Alma account has Alma roles other than Patron assigned, the Alma staff roles are to be removed from such an account immediately.
  
• To ensure compliance, Faculty and Staff Alma accounts are reviewed at the end of each spring and fall term, and staff roles deleted if the employee is no longer with the college. 
  

[jcarrell]

I ran into a problem with the external accounts expiring at 120 days this semester.  We have a semester-loan laptop program, and the due date for that is always the last day of finals.  I typically check out those laptops before school starts to the students who've been approved into the program.  So, on August 13 or so, I needed the due date to be December 17.  In the spring, I will check them out around January 7 or so with a due date of May 13.  That's over 120 days.  Alma truncates the due date if the expiration date is earlier, so I had to click the "open for update" button on each patron and manually modify their expiration date a few days in advance to allow the end of semester due date.  Can we get a little bit more of a buffer to cover semester-loan policies?  Maybe 130-140 days?

[jwalz]

This sounds great to me. Very reasonable.

[Tamara]

Same here.

[cflora]

I echo Jacqueline's concern, but otherwise this looks good.

[jdessino]

I see a conflict in the External Patron Account Lifecycle. The narrative immediately under B. says" External Account Types (Staff and Student) will be deleted from Alma one year after the record expires, . . . The last bullet, however, says that Faculty and Staff patron accounts are reviewed at the end of each spring and fall term, and deleted if the employee is no longer with the college.

So, are faculty and staff records being deleted 1 year after expiration or immediately if no longer employed? If the latter, how are you planning to determine 'no longer employed?'

Plus, if the latter, I have a concern primarily for adjunct faculty records. Adjuncts don't necessarily teach every semester. Even those who generally do teach in both spring and fall may not teach during the summer. Plus, sometimes don't know until classes start if their classes will make or if they will have to give up a class to a full time faculty member whose class didn't make. If the record is deleted at the end of the semester, we will have to manually add them in as community patrons and ensure that we include their EmplID so that they don't end up with duplicate patron records. At a minimum, why not wait until the record has expired? Plus, what is the rationale for leaving expired students in Alma for a year but not even waiting until the record expires for faculty and staff?

[tcassidy]

I ran into a problem with the external accounts expiring at 120 days this semester.  We have a semester-loan laptop program, and the due date for that is always the last day of finals.  I typically check out those laptops before school starts to the students who've been approved into the program.  So, on August 13 or so, I needed the due date to be December 17.  In the spring, I will check them out around January 7 or so with a due date of May 13.  That's over 120 days.  Alma truncates the due date if the expiration date is earlier, so I had to click the "open for update" button on each patron and manually modify their expiration date a few days in advance to allow the end of semester due date.  Can we get a little bit more of a buffer to cover semester-loan policies?  Maybe 130-140 days?

Understood, thank you. tc

[tcassidy]

I see a conflict ...

Thank you, Jacque. Agreed, detailing what External means at VCCS makes it unclear, and instead of deleted, it should say expired: Faculty and staff records are to be expired immediately if no longer employed. Student and Faculty/Staff patron accounts are deleted from Alma one year after they expire, unless pending items are attached to their record, such as overdue items or bills. 

What is the rationale for leaving expired students in Alma for a year but not even waiting until the record expires for faculty and staff? Please disregard that. I've conflated library staff/student worker Alma access with college staff/teaching faculty borrowing privileges, which are certainly not the same thing. What I'm getting at there is that Alma staff roles are deleted immediately upon termination of library employment. tc

[tcassidy]

how are you planning to determine 'no longer employed?'

I believe active/inactive student and employee status is automatically managed as part of the PeopleSoft SIS patron load, Emily will correct me if this is wrong. tc

[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.

[tcassidy]

Thanks for your thoughful comments, Jacque.

1. Please see updated item A and new item D in original post.

2. Yes, TCC is unique as it is the only Alma instance with more than one kind of patron load. For now I think it's enough to have a policy applied to patrons by type, and we can revisit if the need arises.

3. Yes, we are still considering the details of how to accomplish this. NVCC has a convenient staff account security review done regularly by college IT, proactively identifying anyone who is no longer employed and sending a ticket to have the staff roles deactivated as you describe. Ideally, all colleges would do this as part of employee separation, but I realize that's not the case.

4. Once each spring and fall term, starting at the end of the current term.

[Elizabeth]

I have a minor issue.  I've been involved in an application for a recently retired faculty member to be awarded Faculty Emeritus status.  Do other colleges have this?  Part of the perk is "Full use of the facilities of NOVA’s Learning Resources Services"  The practice is these faculty members can come and borrow items.  So how will the maintenance policy effect these patrons? 

Elizabeth Dellavedova
NVCC-Annandale

[tcassidy]

Hi, Elizabeth,
I think an emeritus would be toggled to internal and then managed by the college. If such a patron did not use the benefit for two years after their retirement, then showed up in the library, the account would potentially have been deleted according to this policy. Is that what you are asking?
-Tara

[jcarrell]

Crystal just gave me a copy of the Alma Patron Data Policy that was presented at the Directors' Meeting yesterday.  It just occurred to me that there is nothing in here about purging the overdue/request letters that show up on the Attachments tab of each patron record.  The completed circulation transactions are purged within two weeks, which I'm reading as what shows up under the Returns tab of a patron's account when you look them up in Manage Patron Services and what shows up under the individual item's History tab > Fulfillment Activities and what's kept in Analytics.

What about the Attachments tab of the patron record?  There are notices there that need to be purged because they have loan information on them.  Two weeks may be too short for some schools.  I'm okay with it because we print out what we need, but I'm not sure about processes at the other schools.  The letters were scrubbed in Aleph after 30 days, I think?  

Here's the documentation for setting letter retention period:
https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma...on_Periods

[jdessino]

I think letter purging and retention is a whole other issue. Right now, we do not print them out from Attachments unless the obligation goes all the way to the Business Office and collections. That takes 6 months from the due date, so I'd really have to give some serious thought to a letter retention policy and how we would need to change our workflow. I vote for saving that discussion until next year!