[Koha] Patron Barcode Question

[David Schuster]

Then there are those of us in Schools in which all students are assigned an
ID number.  We prefer to use that as it links the student to other services
the school provides.

If we need to we have printed kindergarten cards using dymo printers but
usually by semester the kids know their ID because it is used for everything
from Lunch to computer access.

For public library folk... always a mystery

nengard wrote:
> 
> So - what if I started with a fresh new system - how do I tell it
> where to start?
> 
> Nicole
> 
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Owen Leonard <oleonard at myacpl.org>
> wrote:
>>> Got a question today that I never thought about before ... but it's a
>>> good one -- Where do patron barcodes come from?  How do they know
>>> where to start? And how do they know how to increment?
>>
>> They start from the system you automated with originally, back in
>> 1980s. Back then you started with 1 and kept going up. Since then you
>> switched to a system that needed patron barcodes to be a fixed length
>> number, so you programmed all your barcode scanners to pad the patron
>> barcode with zeroes. Now you're using Koha and you can't remember why
>> your patron barcodes are in this weird old format. You're buying
>> library cards with the numbers pre-printed on them and you have to
>> explain to the vendor why you have to do the barcodes that way. And
>> you have to struggle to remember how to program every new barcode
>> scanner. And you ask yourself... How did I get here?
>>
>>  -- Owen
>>
>>
>> --
>> Web Developer
>> Athens County Public Libraries
>> http://www.myacpl.org
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>>
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> 
> 

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