Merge Duplicate Patrons
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Your database may contain several patron records for the same person. With the Merge feature, you can retrieve all the duplicates for a particular patron, select the Preferred record, and delete the others. You also have the choice of retaining multiple site associations for the patron or discarding all but the primary association.
Destiny® retains the complete Preferred patron record and its current transactions and statistics, and adds the current transactions, statistics, and other information from the Other patron records. The only information Destiny deletes are any notes created in Circulation for the Other patron records.
You can merge records for only one patron at a time.
How do I merge duplicate patron records?
You first need to identify the possible duplicate records for each patron. You can either search for them or have Destiny retrieve any records that have the same First Name and Last Name.
- Select the method for retrieving the records that may be duplicates:
- Select the first option and enter the patron's first, middle, or last name, barcode number, nickname, grade level, homeroom, user name, a value in one of the User Defined fields, or a District ID.
If you do not have the whole name or word, enter part of it, followed by *, or use a question mark (?) to replace a single letter.
To speed the search, select the field you are searching from the adjacent list. Patron Names searches the First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, and Nickname fields. - To have Destiny search for duplicates, select the second option.
Destiny searches for exact matches of the First and Last Name combination. It ignores case, punctuation, and spaces.
For example, Destiny would consider O'Brian and OBRIAN to be duplicates.
- Select the first option and enter the patron's first, middle, or last name, barcode number, nickname, grade level, homeroom, user name, a value in one of the User Defined fields, or a District ID.
- Click Search.
- Review the list that appears.
If you chose the second option, above, and there are multiple results, click Show More to view the duplicates. - To select a patron record as a possible duplicate, click Duplicated Patron.
The patron record moves to the Currently Selected list at the bottom of the page. - In the Currently Selected list, review each record that may be a duplicate:
- To review their current transactions and requests, click Patron Status to open their Patron Status page.
(Not available for district patrons managers) - To review their patron record, click Edit Patron.
- To review their current transactions and requests, click Patron Status to open their Patron Status page.
- If you determine that a particular record is not a duplicate, click Remove to remove it from the Currently Selected list.
- Once you have added all the possible duplicates to the Currently Selected list, click the arrow at the top of the page.
- If you are the district patrons manager and the patron records have different or multiple site associations, decide whether to keep all the associations, or just the primary association of the preferred record.
- Select Preferred record adjacent to the patron record that you want to retain.
- Click Merge and then Yes on the confirmation message.
If a message appears, stating that a patron record cannot be merged, you can click the arrow and then Patron Status to review and transfer or delete any transactions or requests that blocked the merge.
Destiny transfers all of the transactions, statistics, and history from all of the Other records in the Possible Duplicate Patrons list to the Preferred record. Destiny then automatically deletes the Other patron records.
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