You're welcome, Mindy! I agree with the sentinment--I'm happy to post a staff member's unrealistic or 'stupid' enhancement request if it means they will feel like I am taking their input seriously and encourages them to keep making suggestions about our workflows.

No worries, Wes. I promised our Circulation Supervisor I would suggest his idea and now I can share your response with him to illustrate how sometimes what seems like a simple suggestion really isn't. Sometimes the answer to come from someone other than me. Thanks for your input. It isn't always easy to get staff to understand the back end of the system. I did let our Circ Supervisor know this was likely not going to happen, but I like our staff to feel heard and remain a part of the solution process. I like to encourage them to think, dream and engage in their job rather than shut them down. I'm unclear on how printing a username as a barcode is helpful, just type the user name.

Emma, thanks for your comment. I like that idea and it seems more practical. It is sometimes difficult to determine accountability (for training purposes) in order to help the staff making the error with further training.

I don't mean to be rude, but there is almost a 0% chance of this happening. The current permissions are so interweaved with the system it would be practically impossible to implement something like this. There would be thousands of additional tests that would need to be evaluated and run, tons of edge cases that would come up and it would introduce dozens of new bugs that would probably take years to fix.

All in an era when most systems are going towards MORE levels of authentication and logging and not less.

I'm glad you posed the suggestion; I just would hate for you to be planning for a future considering when this might happen when it is so unlikely. You might check on the possibility of using single sign-on, so for example, when someone logs into their email, they can click over to Leap without having to enter their password again.

I've also seen some libraries that would do something like print a person's username as a barcode and then they could scan that barcode and it would type in their username and all they'd need to enter was a password.

Another way to approach this would be to allow libraries to require re-entry of existing login credentials when performing certain transactions. We'd prefer that since we'd continue to use the individual staff logins, and we don't want to add another set of usernames/codes for staff to remember. But I like this concept.

Would work like a cashier code. Staff would enter their assigned code prior to checkout of patron's items. When they hit enter to print the transaction receipt, the "enter your code" box would pop back up for next transaction and staff member handling transaction.

We did not have much luck with individual accounts. Staff did not logout and other staff would use their account.

Our Circ Supervisor is trying to come up with a solution to better track errors for training purposes. He has a background in bookstores, so he is thinking of a scenario, similar to cash registers, where staff could enter codes rather than logging in and out of Polaris completely.

Hi Mindy,

I'm not clear on how you envision clerk codes would replace a login. Would you please provide more details on the workflow you're thinking of?