Added two tables and system preference to support
a new patron alternate ID and attributes feature.
A patron attribute (or extended patron attribute) is an
additional piece of information associated with a patron
record. Each attribute has a type that specifies
whether the attribute is repeatable, can serve as
a unique identifier, can take a password, and
whether it can be used to search for patron records
in the staff interface.
The list of attribute types is controlled by the
superlibrarian. Once an attribute type is defined,
values for that attribute can be added to the patron record
via the staff interface or the batch patron import.
Two uses of extended attributes are:
- defining additional unique identifiers, such as
a campus student ID number, a library staff
HR number, and so on. These IDs can be used
for searching or matching and overlaying records
during a batch import.
- additional statistical categories. For example,
a library could define an attribute type for
tracking the academic major of a student patron.
Any number of attributes of this sort could be
defined.
The extended attributes feature is completely optional. If
the new syspref, ExtendPatronAttributes, is OFF, the patron
attributes tables will be ignored; it will not be possible
to display, edit, search for, or match on extended
attributes.
The tables are:
[1] borrower_attribute_types - store attribute types
defined by the administrator.
- code
- description
- repeatable (whether a patron record can have
more than value of a given attribute type)
- unique_id (whether values of this type
must be unique within the database)
- opac_display (whether values of this type
can display in the patron details page in the OPAC)
- staff_searchable (whether values of this type
can be used to retrieve patron records in circulation)
- password_allowed (if set, staff patron editor will
allow a password to be associated with a value; this
is mostly a hook for functionality to be implemented
in the future.
- authorised_value_category (code of an authorised_value
category. If one is specified, the staff patron
editor will use a dropdown for setting values of this type)
[2] borrower_attributes - the actual attributes.
- code (attribute type code, FK)
- borrowernumber (link to patron, FK)
- attribute (the value)
- password (password associated with value)