[46] in Information Retrieval
access to circ data out of Barton
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tom Owens)
Tue Jan 7 20:42:14 1992
To: akajerry@Athena.MIT.EDU
Cc: elibdev@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 92 20:41:03 EST
From: Tom Owens <owens@Athena.MIT.EDU>
Grant is right about the access to circ data out of Barton.
The Geac circ system has an interface which would allow patrons to do searches
of their own records, including transaction and address data. It secures the
system by asking the patron to wand his barcode.
The first problem is obvious: how do we get barcode wands at all the terminals
likely to want to see circulation status. We could dummy up what a wand input
looks like, but then anyone could who has someone's barcode number could get
access. (see below)
The second problem is less obvious: the circulation system can be made to emulate
a vt220 but not a vt100. This means we'd have to do even more work to the
tenuous library interface and circ would not be available from as many stations.
The third problem is even less obvious: I was not here at the time, but I have
been told that the privacy committee did not consider wanded access to be
secure enough because wand input can be approximated (see above).
In brief, it is difficult to do and if we did it, it would almost certainly be
too insecure to make it past the privacy committee.
I think access into your own record is fine if it is secure access. This would
mean that your library record would have to be tied, somehow, to your identity
on the net. _How would this information get to the library_ and _how would it be
kept current_ would be the beginning of problems to solve.
Just a note to djtowner, if you could pass it along, aka. Student address
information is loaded into Barton each semester from registrar tapes. If the
library data is wrong, the registrar is likely to be wrong as well.
What we need is a way to centralize address changes on campus. The libraries
have asked for that kind of access in the new registrar system. I envision a
barcode in the circulation system which would point to name and address
information in the registrar's system.
--
Tom Owens
MIT Library Systems Office
617-253-1618
owens@athena.mit.edu
