Aspen Patron Privacy
Aspen has several features that safeguard privacy and allow you and your patrons to make choices about what they can track, see, or share.
Reading History
By default, reading history is not enabled in Aspen. Users who navigate to the “My Reading History” section of their account for the first time will see a statement about patron privacy and a thorough explanation of the reading history feature. Users who choose to enable this can delete any entries that appear or stop recording their reading history at any time. While Aspen’s systems do not encrypt titles from a user’s history to allow for sorting and record-linking functionality, the underlying data is only accessible via the back end and cannot be retrieved directly even by the library unless they are self-hosted.
Masquerade Mode
Staff accounts granted the appropriate permissions from their administration can “masquerade,” or act as, a library patron within Aspen without the staff member needing to ask for the user’s password or PIN. This feature can be helpful when trying to help a patron troubleshoot their account over the phone or perform actions for the patron. However, libraries can choose not to enable this feature altogether.
If your library chooses to turn on the Masquerade feature, you can still build in an extra layer of privacy for your patrons by leaving the “Allow Display of Reading History in Masquerade Mode” option disabled. This way, library staff masquerading as a patron will not be able to see their reading history, even if the patron has it turned on. Additionally, you can specify an automatic timeout length so that the Masquerade Mode will end and log out completely after a short period of inactivity. Masquerade settings are located within the Primary Configuration module under ILS/Account Integration.
Search History
While logged into Aspen, users have access to their own search history during a session. To view search history, visit My Account and click Search History at the bottom of the left-hand menu. Upon logging out, a user’s search history is automatically cleared. Searches are only saved if the patron specifically chooses to
save them in case they would like to easily access the same search results at a later time. At any time during an Aspen session, users can choose to purge their unsaved search history and delete their saved searches.
User Lists
While Aspen does allow users to create lists of items and make their lists “public,” this only means that they are able to share their lists by sending others the direct URL or sharing via the Email List button. Patron lists will otherwise never appear in a Lists search in the catalog or be viewable by anyone else.
Linked Accounts
Aspen allows patrons to link to other user accounts as long as they have both the username and password/PIN of the account to which they wish to link. This feature can be really helpful for families managing checkouts and holds across multiple accounts, assisting a homebound neighbor, or for a variety of other reasons.
A user managing another linked account will be able to see their current checkouts and holds, but will never be able to see the other user’s reading history, even if they have it enabled. At any time, logged in users can see accounts they manage in addition to any accounts who have linked to them. If a user sees an account linked to them that shouldn’t be, they can contact library staff for assistance. Changing their password will also instantly unlink their account.