Staff Client

Evergreen libraries that are most comfortable using the staff client tend to manage permissions by creating different profiles for each type of user. When you create a new user, the profile you assign to the user determines their basic set of permissions. This approach requires many permission groups that contain overlapping sets of permissions: for example, you might need to create a Student Circulator group and a Student Cataloger group. Then if a new employee needs to perform both of these roles, you need to create a third Student Cataloger / Circulator group representing the set of all of the permissions of the first two groups.

The advantage to this approach is that you can maintain the permissions entirely within the staff client; a drawback to this approach is that it can be challenging to remember to add a new permission to all of the groups. Another drawback of this approach is that the user profile is also used to determine circulation and hold rules, so the complexity of your circulation and hold rules might increase significantly.

Database Access

Evergreen libraries that are comfortable manipulating the database directly tend to manage permissions by creating permission groups that reflect discrete roles within a library. At the database level, you can make a user belong to many different permission groups, and that can simplify your permission management efforts. For example, if you create a Student Circulator group and a Student Cataloger group, and a new employee needs to perform both of these roles, you can simply assign them to both of the groups; you do not need to create an entirely new permission group in this case. An advantage of this approach is that the user profile can represent only the user’s borrowing category and requires only the basic Patrons permissions, which can simplify your circulation and hold rules.