Caregivers and what data is stored
A caregiver is the person who borrows a carrier. Caregivers do not have accounts — staff and volunteers create and maintain their records. A caregiver record is shared across every library in the organization, so the same person is entered once even if they borrow from more than one library.
What a caregiver record holds
A caregiver record stores the minimum needed to lend and stay in touch:
- First and last name — the only required fields. You can quick-create a caregiver at check-out with just a name.
- Email and phone — optional contact details
- Co-caregiver name, email, and phone — optional, for a partner or second contact
- Email preferences — separate opt-outs for bulk and marketing email. These never suppress transactional loan email like due-date and overdue notices.
There are no cached loan totals on the record — a caregiver’s loan history and active-loan count are computed at read time through the access-mode filter.
Notes, flags, and waivers
Alongside the core record, a caregiver can have:
- Notes — free-text notes from staff, shown on the caregiver’s detail page
- Flags — status markers such as blacklisted, damage history, overdue history, or “see note.” A blacklist flag requires a reason, and clearing or amending any flag also requires a reason. Some flags are set automatically — for example, recording damage at check-in flags the caregiver, and a late return flags overdue history.
- Waiver attestations — a record that the caregiver has attested to your organization’s waiver. Re-attestation on a new waiver version is kept as an additional record.
How caregiver data is scoped
Caregiver visibility depends on the organization’s access mode:
- In org-wide mode, any org member can read all caregiver records.
- In per-library mode, a Library Owner or User sees a caregiver only if that caregiver is tied to a library they can access — through a loan, reservation, or waitlist entry — or if they created the record. Org Admins always see everyone.
To avoid duplicates, a minimal identity search stays available org-wide so check-out can find or create a caregiver even in per-library mode. Contact details are withheld for caregivers a user isn’t tied to.
Removing personal data
A caregiver’s personal information can be anonymized, which clears their name and contact details and their active flags while preserving the loan history that references them. The caregiver table is deliberately kept out of the change-history audit so personal data is never copied into it.