Home → Circulation in Evergreen → Patron Record → Searching for Patrons
4.1. Searching for Patrons
Last Updated 01/22/2024
How to Search for Patrons
The NC Cardinal consortium requires that all member libraries honor the library cards of all other member libraries, allowing patrons the fullest access to NC Cardinal consortium materials. Because the consortium does not currently share all electronic resources consortium-wide, patrons may establish and maintain library accounts in more than one member system in the consortium based upon the established patron registration policy for each library system, so long as they are in good standing. If a patron owes outstanding fines or fees to another member library in NC Cardinal, staff at any member library should not create a new account or issue a new card to the patron until that outstanding debt is resolved.
If a patron requests a new library card or wishes to use their existing library card in another NC Cardinal library, please follow the recommended workflow in the Multi-Card Policy.
Before issuing a library card to someone, staff at every NC Cardinal library must search the consortium database in Evergreen for patrons with the matching name and other identifiers. The scope of the patron search MUST be set to NC CARDINAL.
To search for a patron, select Search for Patrons from the Search menu in the menu bar.
The Patron Search screen will display. It will contain options to search on the following fields:
- Last Name
- First Name
- Middle Name
Next to the Clear Form button there is a button with an arrow pointing down that will display the following additional search fields:
- Barcode
- Alias
- Username
- Identification
- Database ID
- Phone
- Street 1
- Street 2
- City
- State
- Postal Code
- Profile Group
- Home Library
- DOB (date of birth) year
- DOB month
- DOB day
It is a good idea to include patrons marked “inactive” by clicking on the Include Inactive? checkbox.
- Search one field or combine fields for more precise results.
- Truncate search terms for more search results.
- Search ignores punctuation such as diacritics, apostrophes, hyphens and commas.
- Search by Date of Birth: Year searches are "contains" searches. E.g. year "15" matches 2015, 1915, 1599, etc. For exact matches use the full 4-digit year. Day and month values are exact matches. E.g. month "1" (or "01") matches January, "12" matches December.
Some fields, such as the Profile Group and the library dropdown list, are "sticky" - they do not reset to the default after you change them - so be sure to reset them (as above) before leaving the search screen.
Once you have located the desired patron, click on the entry row for this patron in the results screen. A summary for this patron will display on the left hand side.
The Patron Search button on the upper right may be used to refine or resume searching for patrons or click the blue linked barcode in the Card column to go to the patron's account.