When you have a patron standing in front of you, and you find her/his record by searching in the Aeon Staff Client, you will know that s/he has been 'cleared' if you see three things:

1. The ID Number and ID Type fields have data in them.
2. There is a photograph of the patron in the patron's record.
3. The Clearance Status field indicates Cleared (in green).

Patrons cannot access any of these fields during the account creation process they completed online. The only place they show up is in the patron record viewed in the Aeon Staff Client.

Clearing a patron's record is Aeon's jargon for indicating that the in-person portion of the registration process has been successfully completed. Patrons can request Beinecke, Lewis Walpole, MSSA, and Medical Historical collection materials before their records are cleared, but they cannot physically view those materials in the reading room until the clearing process has taken place at any Yale University special collections reading room that uses Aeon to register patrons (Arts, Beinecke, Divinity, Lewis Walpole, MSSA, Medical Historical, Music, YCBA).

A typical record for a patron who has not yet come in person to a YUL special collection and has not been cleared looks like the following illustration. Yellow highlighting indicates information that YUL special collections staff will confirm either from the ID presented or by verbally querying the patron. Red highlighting indicates information that YUL special collections staff will input directly into the Aeon patron record for every patron.

 Notice that the ID Number and ID Type fields fields are blank, there is no photograph of the patron, and the Clearance Status field indicates Not Cleared.

In order to clear the Aeon patron record, you'll need to see one of the following (Note that as of October 2014 this is a single ID policy for special collections for all of YUL):

• For Yale-affiliates a currently valid Yale photograph ID.
• For non-Yale patrons:  A government-issued id bearing your name, your photograph, and an expiration date indicating current validity (examples: driver's license, passport, U.S. state-issued identity card, military ids, green cards)

Patrons who do not have an acceptable ID as defined by the above Yale University  policy will not be permitted to use special collections material.

Take the following steps in clearing the patron's record in the Aeon Staff Client:

First, check the the expiration date on any non-Yale government-issued ID to confirm that it is currently valid. If it isn't, the patron must present a currently valid photographic ID. For all patrons, Yale-affiliated and non-Yale, verbally confirm with the patron that her/his address, email, and phone as reflected in the Aeon patron record are correct. Update any incorrect information in the Aeon patron record. The address that YUL special collections staff are verifying in the Aeon patron record is the Primary address.

Next, input the following information from the patron's photograph ID in the ID Number field in Aeon.

1. Input the ID number exactly as it is printed on the ID, including all alphanumeric characters and dashes or spaces. For Yale IDs simply input the UPI number on the ID (do not use the SID number, which appears only on student IDs).
   • Do not input a Social Security Number (SSN) as an ID #. In cases where an ID bears only a SSN (e.g., some military IDs), input the patron's name exactly as shown on the ID in place of an ID #.
2. For all non-Yale-affiliated patron IDs, input the geopolitical unit issuing the ID, typically a state, province, and/or country. It is fine to use standard postal abbreviations for U.S. states only (e.g., CT, FL, NM). Spell out all other countries or provinces (e.g., Quebec, not QC).
3. As the final element in the ID Number field, input the expiration date of the ID as it appears on the ID.

There is no need to indicate the type of ID (e.g., drivers license, passport, Yale ID), as this will be done in the ID Type field. The following are correctly input examples for the ID Number field:

• 12734155 [a Yale ID UPI] 
• 186540082 CT 04-25-2020 [a Connecticut drivers license]
• 2734581 ME 03/01/2017 [a Maine drivers license]
• G245-6675-0403-00 Wisconsin 03-14-2016 [a Wisconsin drivers license]
• Jones, Frank R. U.S. Army 2017JAN18 [a U.S. Military photo ID that does not contain an ID #]
• 1401672896 Marine Corps Reserve 2015DEC07 [a U.S. Military photo ID that does contain a DoD ID#]
• 305018381 United Kingdom 13 MAR/MARS 16 [a British passport]
• RM8984452 Japan 03 SEP 2018 [a Japanese passport]

Next, take a photograph using the web camera attached to your public service workstation computer and upload it into the Aeon patron record. See the Taking and Saving a Patron's Photo in the box on this page for more detail about this process. Don't forget to save the Aeon patron record twice after uploading the photograph, or you will lose it!

Finally, after all data has been checked and input, and a photograph of the patron taken and uploaded, clear the patron. This is done by clicking on the Clear icon, which is the left-most icon on the Process tab of the ribbon of icons across the top of the Aeon Staff Client home screen, as highlighted in red in the illustration below.

You can confirm that you have successfully cleared the patron in Aeon by checking the Cleared Status field in the Additional Information box directly beneath the patron's photograph. If it says Cleared in green (as indicated in red highlighting in the illustration below), you've succeeded!

Please feel free to call the Manuscripts and Archives reference center staff at (203) 432-1735 if you have any questions about clearing a patron record in the Aeon Staff client.

Note for the accounts of Yale Affiliates: Please check all Yale\netID accounts for the status selection. If the field is empty, ask the individual what their status is (using the verbiage used in the dropdown). After making the selection, save the record.

This PDF document explains the process of merging two records for the same patron. Contact Steve Ross at Manuscripts and Archives if you have questions about the directions.

The need for staff to merge accounts most frequently occurs when a patron has an account (either Yale or non-Yale) and then has a status change in relation to Yale. Patrons may assume that they can no longer use their Yale Special Collections account (not true, see tab 8. Assisting Patrons with Their Aeon Accounts, specifically the section on Changing a Patron Username) and create a new one reflecting their new status. Patrons may also forget a previous account's username or password and simply decide to start anew.

Yale University Library's Special Collections policy regarding Aeon accounts is that there should never be more than one account per patron! If, in working with a patron, you determine that s/he has multiple accounts, you must merge those accounts into a single account before finishing up your work with the patron. You don't need to keep the patron in front of you while you are merging their accounts, you simply need to know which account is their most current one, so that your merging process ends up disavowing all other accounts and clearing the one they are currently using.

Merging two Aeon records for a patron keeps one of those records and disavows the other. Conveniently, it attaches any transactions that were made on the disavowed record to the record that will be kept and cleared for the patron. You have to use your best judgment when working with the merging of patron records to ensure that the kept record has the correct Clearance Status before you complete the transaction:

• If either record is in the Clearance Status Blocked, you need to resolve the issue for which the record was blocked, or you need to be certain that the record to be kept in the merging transaction remains Blocked before you complete the transaction.
• If the record to be kept was Cleared prior to your merging transaction, regardless of whether the record to be disavowed was Cleared or Not Cleared, you need to be certain that the kept record is Cleared before you complete the transaction.
• If the record to be kept was Not Cleared (perhaps it doesn't include a photograph and/or ID information) prior to your merging transaction, regardless of the Clearance Status of the record to be disavowed, you need to be sure the kept record remains in Not Cleared status so that the process of clearing the patron (e.g., checking and recording an ID, taking and uploading a photograph) can occus on the patron's next visit to a YUL Special Collection reading room. If you have the patron in front of you while merging her/his records, by all means complete the process (e.g., check and input ID, take and upload photograph) so that you can change the status of the kept record to Cleared before completing the transaction.

This PDF document provides guidelines for using a Logitech webcam (#1-3) and for uploading a patron's photograph to her/his Aeon record (#4-11). The details for your particular brand of webcam may be different, but once the photo is taken and saved to a folder on your computer desktop, the remainder of the process (starting with #4) will be the same. Contact Moira Fitzgerald at the Beinecke Library if you have questions about the directions.