The beginning of the semester brings to the library thousands of new students who need to activate their barcodes in order to use library services. What if we told you the loading of active barcodes could be automated?

To begin, you need to first sit down and consider the details:

How frequently will barcodes be loaded into Aleph?

The answer to this question varies campus to campus. For example, the School of Professional Studies (SPS) tends to have a more frequent student turnover population, so an ongoing load of barcodes (such as weekly or monthly) has more advantage. A campus with a more traditional semester structure may be satisfied with loads at the start of the semester. However, even this merits discussion: Should the patron load include barcodes only once at the start of the semester or also include a second load two weeks later (for students registering late)? Should it be just the Spring and Fall, or also include the Summer?

Keep in mind that it would not be techncally possible for daily loads (due to the sheer size of our university). However, we already have weekly loads. Patron loading is scheduled in the off hours as as not to interfere with other batch processing, such as loading/updating bibliographic records, and various patron notices.

Who will be included in these loads?

The scope of the patron load should consider whether to have students loaded just at the start of their academic career at your institution, or loaded every year. Repeatedly loading students every semester will overwrite any changes manually made by staff over time. If someone gets a new ID card, their barcode will be corrected. The update of the barcodes cannot be blocked, so a patron’s barcode will revert to whatever is on record by the ID office.

Would freshmen be loaded both semesters or just when they are new? Would it include summer semester students, who may be taking only a single class? Should the load instead only include people who have been issued a new ID card within the past seven months (for incoming students as well as those being re-issued ID cards)?

What role do barcodes play in authentication on your campus?

The way barcodes are used for authentication varies campus to campus. Some libraries use it for access to electronic resources. Some security staff screen patrons for access based on the ID card.

Does the campus provide an ID with a unique barcode already printed on the card?

The barcode to be loaded should appear on the ID card. (How else will students or barcode readers know what their barcode is?) What if a person has multiple campus relationships (potentially two or more barcodes) and prefers a certain barcode to be their main, active barcode? How would a library manage a situation where someone has their campus’s barcode overwritten each semester (while the individual would rather retain a barcode from a different campus)? Staff will then have to create two accounts for a patron, and does your library wanting to take on manually maintaining the second account?

These considerations vary greatly across the CUNY libraries so please discuss them internally before beginning any work. When you’re ready to proceed, designate someone from library as the point person on this project. The next step will be for this person to open a work order with these specifications. This will be followed by contacting the various other groups involved, and continue to manage follow-up for this project. This includes dialog with the campus staff that manage barcode IDs and IT/CIS.

What is recommended?

The Office of Library Services recommends loading only incoming students (new freshmen and transfer students) OR people who have been issued new IDs within the past seven months. (Seven months is based on understanding the patron loading cycle details.) This will eliminate lines at service desks for 99% of new students. Over time, the majority of students will be covered. This would be a large increase over the current estimated 50% of a campus’s students having a barcode entered. Any subsequent changes would be a more rare exception, and, once corrected by staff, these changes/corrections would be preserved.

OLS has a separate request for changes pending to improve the way that patrons are imported from CUNYfirst. This includes loading patrons 7 to 10 days before the start of a semester, and improving the identification of a primary campus relationship (Home Library). Until this is in place, we do not have a way to only load barcodes when it is a patron’s home campus.