(7/21/00)
1. Location of University Card Office
4. VUMC Card Office Information
1. Card Office location, 125 Sarratt. Click to go to VU's Interactive Campus Map.
The Card Office provides service in 2 areas.
Confirms the status of a patron in the Gen7 Gate Access System, when library staff person Elaine Goleski is not available.
Provides services technicians if a turnstile is not working.
For service issues between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. (regular Card Office service hours), users were encouraged to call the repair line at 3-2191. (Library staff are encouraged to call Elaine Goleski to report patron problems first.) The repair line does not go to voice mail; it is always answered by a Card Office staff member.
We were asked not call the main Card Office line or Card Office staff's personal lines. Personal lines may go to voice mail, and response to a service request may be delayed.
Library turnstile problems are not generally considered emergencies or security issues since our readers do not control exterior building doors, unlike the card readers on dormitory exterior doors. Evening and weekend staff can send me an e-mail or leave a message on my voice mail and I will follow up with the Card Office the next business day.)
Sometimes when a patron's card does not work in the turnstile, it is determined that their card does not work because it is coded as a "lost card".
The mag stripe on the back of each card contains not only the user's ID number (usually the SSN), but also a two digit code that is used to handle lost/stolen cards. Both the SSN and the lost card code are scanned when the card is swiped through a reader. Since the SSN cannot change, when a user reports a card lost or stolen, the two-digit code is increased (from "01" to "02," for example) so that the lost card cannot be re-used.
Patron are often confused by this, and comment that they have not reported their card lost. There are some ways that a card can become "lost" other than the patron reporting it lost.
- Departures and returns: persons who have left the University and have been removed from the Human Resources or Student Records database. This would include students on leave or in an overseas program, employees who were terminated and later rehired, and other similar situations.
- Operator error: the part of the Card Office database that stores cardholders' photographic images (the "production file") should only be accessed when a card is to be printed. If an operator in either the University or Medical Center Card Office opens an individual's photographic record by mistake, the lost card code is automatically updated, since the system assumes that a new card is being produced.
- Faulty download process to the library readers: The database is regenerated daily (Monday-Friday) and downloaded to each reader. In the download information are SSNs and lost card codes for each user. As with most intermittent computer problems, however, this problem is hard to find and correct, since it is rare and intermittent.
The only solution for a lost card code problem, however, is for the person to take the card to the VU Card Office!
4. People who need a VU Medical Center identification card (not a VUMC library record) should go to this website:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/HRS/records/vumc-id.htm
To create a VUMC library record to let a medical student or staff check out materials, the patron will have to go to the Medical Library.