Alma patron purge scheduled 6/4/21

[tcassidy]

The System Office will purge expired patron accounts from Alma over the next few days. Removing this unnecessary patron data lessens our data security liabilities, and improves our ability to manage current users.

This summer, we will revisit the discussion
of the Attachments tab in current patron records. If you recall, this is where patron notices are stored as attachments, and they do contain patron and loan information.

VCCS-wide practice in Aleph was to scrub all stored patron notices after 30 days, but Alma affords more options of course. A retention period can now be set per letter. Many college libraries still need to set this policy, so please watch for a survey later this month to help get this in place for all.


"Setting Letter Retention in Alma:
https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma..._Retention
By default, letters sent by Alma are retained indefinitely and available on the Attachments tab of the User Details (see Managing User Attachments). You can add a retention period, in number of days, in the Retention Period field of email letters so that the configured letters are deleted after a certain number of days.

A weekly job, Letters Purge with Retention, deletes all enabled letters, if they were created more than the configured number of days ago."

Recognizing that patron letter retention and the associated library obligations are often driven by non-library policy and college fiscal requirements, please consider what this policy should be for your library.
-Tara

[ealtman]

We completed the planned patron purge last week. As per our policy, any user with an active loan or fine/fees on their accounts was exempted from the purge, regardless of how long they have been inactive.

If a college would like adjust fine/fee purge thresholds, such that fines below a certain dollar amount and/or older than a given age are waived, please do let us know, and we can certainly accommodate that. I understand that for many colleges, a decision like this would require agreement with offices outside the library.