How to select a patron management system?

What is the best process to define needs and opportunities related to selecting a patron management system? By patron management system, I mean a system that enable patron to opt-in to more active engagement from both the system, and the library staff. Perhaps some kind of customer management system (CRM) for libraries.

For example, Evergreen does not appear to have any automated marketing systems to message and track patron response.

blunders

• software
• patron-management
• marketing

Comments

• Ben Ostrowsky: Can you give some examples of what you mean by patron management systems as opposed to general library software packages like Evergreen (assuming you do mean something else)?
• blunders: @Ben Ostrowsky: Updated the body of the question. If you have an additional questions, just let me know. Thanks!
• Ben Ostrowsky: Aha -- customer relationship management for libraries? Interesting! I'll be eager to learn about this from the answers.
• blunders: @Ben Ostrowsky: More like marketing automation than customer relationship management.

Answer by stephenfrancoeur

I hear that NCSU libraries are exploring the use of CRM software. Don't know where they are with it at the moment.

Comments

• Ben Companjen: This sounds more like a comment (a reference to another source) than an answer to me. Could you find out how NCSU are doing it?

Answer by Joe Atzberger

Lebbeous and I wrote code a couple years ago in Evergreen to integrate with Asterisk telephony (on the same server or a different server). Users could control whether or not they signed up for various kinds of phone notices (like a hold notice). Evergreen updated itself based on the output from the telephony system. Both parts were asynchronous.

This may not be as complete (or foolproof) as you might like, but it is extensible and open source. I'd be interested to see what else is out there for email or social media campaigns.

Comments