Ebook Central Admin: Authentication, 'Patron Login', create or modify a Patron account

If your Ebook Central site uses the 'Patron Login' authentication method, as a librarian you can create or modify patron accounts. For general information about the 'Patron Login' authentication method, go to this article: Ebook Central Admin: Authentication, 'Patron Login' method

To access the Manage Patrons options:

1. You will need to have a LibCentral login. If you don't, you can either request one from an Ebook Central librarian within your organization, or please contact the Technical Support Team by submitting your query on this form.

2. Go to your LibCentral site:

3. Under “Users” select “Manage Patrons”

4. In the Manage Patron window, there are options to:

• Add a patron account
• Upload a list of patron accounts
• Modify an existing account (including an option to reset the password)
• Delete existing accounts (individually or in bulk)
• Search for a particular account, or for accounts created or accessed within a given time frame
• Export a list of all patron accounts

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To add a patron account, click “Add New Patron”

 

• Fill in the patron's account information. It is recommended to use their full email address as the username
• Note that you can set the account to expire on a given date
• When complete, click Save
• Note that there is a daily limit of 5,000 new accounts that can be created

To upload a list of patron accounts, click "Import Patrons from CSV"

• You will then see the following options:

• The template is an empty text file with the following headings.  Only the first 3 fields are required.
  • USER_NAME
    • It is recommended to use their full email address as the username
  • PASSWORD
    • Minimum 8 characters
    • No spaces
    • Cannot be same as username
  • EMAIL
    • ​Duplicate entries with the same email address is not allowed
  • FIRST_NAME
  • LAST_NAME
  • PERMISSION_ACRONYM
    • Needs to be one of the Permission IDs found under "Settings", "Access Permissions"
    • Default is: Guest
  • EXPIRE_DATE
    • Expire Date must follow YYYY-MM-DD format. If not properly formatted, Expire Dates will be left blank on new accounts, and will not be modified on existing accounts.

• Line 4 determines what the system should do if the list you are importing contains one or more usernames that already exist.
  • "Don't Import" will alert you about which username(s) already exist, but it will *not* modify the data for those usernames.
  • "Update Existing Account" will alert you about which username(s) already exist, and it will modify the data for those usernames.
• There is a daily limit of 5,000 records that can be created. Attempting to upload a file that exceeds this number will fail.

• Problems uploading a file?  Check that all passwords meet the requirements listed above.

To modify an existing patron account, click on the patron's username

• You will then see the following options:

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• Note that you can set the account to expire on a given date

• You can change the patron's password, but you cannot see what their existing password is

• You can delete this patron account by clicking "Delete"

To delete existing patron accounts, there are three options.

• To delete specific patron accounts, click the check-box next to the account(s) to delete, then click "Delete Selected Patrons"

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You can also delete a patron account individually by clicking on the user name to delete from the 'modify' screen

• To delete all patron accounts listed on the current page of results, select 'Delete Patrons on Page'
• To delete all patron accounts, select 'Delete All Patrons'

You can search for patron accounts by name or email, and you can search for accounts created or used within a given time frame



To export a list of all current patron accounts, at the bottom right of the window, choose file type then click "Go"