[Koha] Handling student worker accounts

[Elaine Bradtke]

If you are going to create a shared login, change the password every
semester. Otherwise, you're leaving a backdoor open for anyone who has the
password from previous semesters.

We get volunteers, interns, etc. coming through.  I set up a basic account,
and if they're here for a known time frame, I set the expiration date for
the end of that time. But it's usually a very small number.

On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 9:15 PM, Eric Phetteplace <ephetteplace at cca.edu>
wrote:

> Hi Doug,
>
> Thanks—Duplicate looks quite handy. I hadn't seen that.
>
> I doubt we'll go the way of creating a second account for each work study
> student, that seems kind of the worst of both worlds as now it's more work
> to set up than a shared login *and* it's a fake account. I'm not too
> concerned about knowing exactly who performed what work for these accounts
> though I suppose that's worth keeping in mind as a potential downside.
>
> Best,
> Eric Phetteplace
> Systems Librarian
> California College of the Arts
> libraries.cca.edu | vault.cca.edu
> 510.594.3660
> 2>/dev/null
>
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 12:48 PM, Doug Dearden <dearden at sarsf.org> wrote:
>
> > Hi Eric,
> >
> > From a system admin viewpoint I never create generic logins for users.
> > The reason is that if you have to investigate something after the fact,
> and
> > a log file indicates that "Librarian1" was the username you don't know
> who
> > that is if it is shared amongst several people.  Better to create a
> > separate user name for everyone that is going to be using the system.
> You
> > could create a second patron account for these work study students to use
> > when they are working at the library, that would then be deleted at the
> end
> > of the semester leaving their regular account intact.
> >
> > Regarding your "roles" question, Koha does have a Duplicate function.  If
> > you create a "work study" user, assign it all the appropriate
> permissions,
> > you can then edit the user and use the Duplicate function to make a new
> > user with the same permissions, and just fill in the necessary fields for
> > individual identification.
> >
> > Good luck, and welcome!
> >
> > Doug
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Koha [mailto:koha-bounces at lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Eric
> > Phetteplace
> > Sent: Friday, June 3, 2016 1:27 PM
> > To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> > Subject: [Koha] Handling student worker accounts
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > First of all, we are right now starting to migrate to Koha so I'm
> probably
> > going to ask a lot of questions on this list in the coming weeks. Bear
> with
> > me.
> >
> > If you have low-level employees who perform basic circulation work—e.g.
> > work study students, volunteers—how do you handle their account
> > permissions? Do you have a shared internal account with a password you
> > periodically change? Do you edit their patron account to add necessary
> > permissions and then later revoke them?
> >
> > We're trying to find a scalable way to handle this. Editing a half-dozen
> or
> > so patron accounts each semester doesn't seem wise to me. But internal
> > accounts like this are weird too, because they're not "real" patrons. For
> > instance, I'm filling in fake barcodes because they're required but this
> > patron will never check anything out.
> >
> > Also, are is there no equivalent of user "roles" in Koha—sets of
> > permissions I can quickly apply to an account? It's one thing if I can
> just
> > add a student to a "work study" role and another if I have to click a
> bunch
> > of checkboxes.
> >
> > Best,
> > Eric Phetteplace
> > Systems Librarian
> > California College of the Arts
> > libraries.cca.edu | vault.cca.edu
> > 510.594.3660
> > 2>/dev/null
> > _______________________________________________
> > Koha mailing list  http://koha-community.org
> > Koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> > https://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
> >
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>



-- 
Elaine Bradtke
Data Wrangler
VWML
English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org
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