[mail] RE: [Publib] Need your library card?

[Shaw, Matthew M]

I concur with the impracticality of searching for the customer's record
to check out. When you look up someone by name (many systems are not
searchable by driver's license number), there is the very real risk that
you will check out materials to the wrong person. For example, there are
currently 27 Robert Smiths in my Library's database. There are also
similar difficulties in looking up records by the address and other
fields
 
Insisting on having your library card with you is, arguably, not good
customer service. However, inadvertently checking out materials on the
wrong customer's record is even worse.
 
People often protest that they don't want to be "just a number."
Mathematician John Allen Paulos, author of "Innumeracy" and other
popular titles on mathematics for the layperson, often points out that
being "a number" is actually not as impersonal as it seems. After, all
many people may share your name, but only one person has your Social
Security number. There were at least 75 other people in the US with my
name the last time I searched one of the people finder databases.
 


 

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