Restrict Viewable Objects by User/Group/Role?

SwiftCurrentMuseum

Hello,

Looking on the forum it appears similar questions have been asked in the past, but any search results that came up were from a few years or more ago. Something might have changed, so I thought I'd ask.

I'm looking to restrict viewable object records based on a user, group, role, or some other criteria. Our institution has some staff that do not work in collections, but utilize the backend (Providence) of the database for other tasks such as education and programming. Our database has some records that are identified as copyright concerns due to how the objects were obtained. For this reason we don't want those objects used in social media or publicity to avoid any legalities. The issue is that the non-collections staff don't always remember how to differentiate them from suitable records (different prefixes). Throw in deaccessioned objects which have the correct prefixes, but also cannot be used, it can become confusing for some. We'd like some way to restrict or filter out object records that should not be used from showing up in searches preformed by non-collections staff. Is this possible? From what I can tell it isn't, but I wanted to ask in case I missed something.

While the public side of the database (Pawtucket) is growing, it'll be years before it can be a suitable substitute for staff.

Thank you.

jeffschneider

Can you create and assign an object type for the filtered records? If so you can restrict access by role if you set this in app.conf

perform_type_access_checking = 1

monica

Turn on item level access control https://manual.collectiveaccess.org/providence/user/configuration/mainConfiguration/app.html#item-level-access-control
This will create a new screen on each record called 'ACCESS' that you can control which 'groups/users' can see that record. Turning this on will allow by default, all users to see the record (assuming no other level access control in blocking it), unless you restrict that item/record. You can change the default to no access or read only if you rather and the exception is to give certain groups/users access.

There is also source level access control you can turn on. And this controls which role can access records based on their source. You would edit the list 'object_sources' with your values, add the sources field to your object UI and then decide in roles, who has access based on these values.

Access control can be a combination of one or all types, but the more types you use, the harder it can be to track things down.

SwiftCurrentMuseum

Thank you both for the advice.

I'll have to look into each suggestion to see what would work best for us. Whirl-i-gig hosts our database so they would have to be the ones to add/modify the lines of code to allow them, but as long as it doesn't cause some other issue hopefully they'll be able to do so.

Thanks again!

seth

Just a note: we do not host your system.