Anonymous Library Cards An Option?

Re:That’s funny…
That is funny, I thought of that when I read this one Slashdot, and then completely forgot to go hunting for that. You should’ve registered that idea!

2001… at least…
http://www.lisnews.com/article.php3?sid=2001120416 5342
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,48 294-2,00.html

I was thinking about it at least as early as 2001, when I submitted this story.

However, my long comment doesn’t appear in google searches, and it appears that some comments have been lost… 🙂

That stuff may or may not be backed up in local files somewhere, but chances are very low.

Some things I wrote up just today:

http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/jun05/Ostrowsky.sh tml

Some things that aren’t addressed:
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* Float money as revenue source.
* Cost for issuing the card.
* Security issues – some cash cards, phone cards have been scammed in the past.

Things I liked that I hadn’t thought of:
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* $1 cash card good for requesting items to be held, put on loan from other libraries, etc.

Things I would do:
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Make cards valid for 1 year. You can bring them in after 1 year, and before 2 years is up, and get a new card (or the same card, if there’s no problems) reissued at that point (allowing you to get new security in place, etc) for the same value.

This would also allow someone to claim a lost card: they submit the card number, and the current cash value, and then wait for the 2 year expiry date.

If you are going to track checkout history, then you can also make a person detail the checkout history of the card to negate it, etc… But I find that to be liable to scamming other people, if you allow private sales (see below). If you disallow private sales, then you can maintain control over stolen cards: someone cannot sell a card to another person. It says no private sales on the card – because the person doing the selling can come in and get the card canceled by reciting the history on the card, or password or whatever, after collecting the cash from the victim.

If you do this, then you can cancel cards when people present them for use, if the card is reported as stolen, etc.

Legal disclaimers, need to be done. Not responsible for loss, theft, etc.

Money does not come back out of cards – ever, which makes it less likely that they’ll become the target of theft – and guarantees that the library will never lose that money. However, if you do this, then you are guaranteeing that people will privately sell their cards, since there’s no way that you can require the library to be the only person selling cards (which was one way, above to limit theft).

Book costs need to include not only the *replacement* cost of materials (different for out-of-print books), but the cost of putting them into catalogs, etc

You need at least two additional codes within check-out stuff: value of item, and whether or not it can be checked out (rare, out-of-pring, reference, etc. cannot be checked out)

You probably will also need an automated, preferably 24hr way to determine how much money is currently available on a specific card.

You also need a verified return area, since there’s no way for a card person to find out stuff, that you can with the ID system. Sometimes books get lost/stolen out of return bins.

You also run into issues with damaged materials, etc.

Material’s prices must be recorded locally, and not on the materials themselves, where they are susceptable to alteration.

— Ender, Duke_of_URL