Forgive and Forget: Voyager Fine Forgive and Patron Purge Jobs explained

Abstract

We started using the purge job to remove old patron records with SSNs, as a first step toward removing the numbers in all our patron records. With new state laws, we are trying to eliminate as many privacy issues as we can by deleting records for patrons who are not currently using the libraries. The Commonwealth of Kentucky has a statute of limitations of 5 years on small fines. We forgive fines older than 5 years by running the Fine Forgive program at the beginning of the Fall Semester each year.

I plan to show using command, crontab and WebAdmin methods for running the jobs. I hope to share Access information for viewing output files. These are powerful jobs. They perform as advertised, but you MUST read the fine print before proceeding! I will explain why in this presentation.