User History and Change History
Every user record keeps an audit trail. When someone clears a user, replaces their photo, edits a field, or signs them into a reading room, Aeon records it. You read that trail on the History tab of the user record. Nothing here is something you do — it's a log you consult when you need to answer "who changed this, and when?"
Most of the time you open a user record to process a request or update their details and never touch History. You come here when something looks off — an unexpected status, a contact field that's suddenly wrong, a researcher who insists they were never cleared — and you need the record's own account of what happened.
- A user's clearance status or a field value isn't what you expected, and you want to see who set it and when.
- You're verifying that a change you (or a coworker) made actually saved.
- A researcher disputes something on their account and you need the dated, attributed history to sort it out.
- You want to confirm when a user last signed in to a reading room.
Opening the History tab
- Open the user record — search for the user, or click their name anywhere it appears (a request, an appointment, the dashboard).
- In the user record, click the History tab.
- The tab opens with three sections stacked top to bottom:
- User History
- Change History
- Reading Room History
User History and Change History are expanded when you open the tab; Reading Room History starts collapsed. Click any section's heading to expand or collapse it. Each heading shows a running count on the right — for example, 10 of 47 — telling you how many entries are loaded out of the total on record.
The History tab is a record of what already happened. There's nothing to edit, save, or delete here — you're reading the audit trail, not changing it. To make changes to the user, use the Detail section and the user record's action menu.
User History
User History is the broad activity log for the record. It captures the events that matter for security and accountability — clearance changes, photo image changes, staff signing in to the user's web account, and changes made to the user's information from either the staff client or the patron web pages.
Each entry shows:
- What happened — the event description (and its type, such as a clearance change or an attachment update).
- When — the date of the event.
- Who — the staff member responsible. Entries are attributed to the staff account that performed the action (for example, the person who cleared the user or signed in to their web account). If an entry was written with no staff account attached, the Who column is simply blank.
When a file is added to, replaced on, or removed from a user record, Aeon writes an entry to User History. So even though the user record has a separate Attachments tab, the history of those attachments lives in this log alongside everything else.
Change History
Where User History is the high-level log, Change History is the field-by-field detail. Every time a field on the user record changes — name, status, expiration date, ID number, a password change, an uploaded image, and so on — Aeon records the exact before-and-after.
Each entry shows:
- The field that changed (for example, Status or Expiration Date).
- The old value struck through, then an arrow, then the new value. An empty field reads
(empty)so you can tell "blank → something" from "something → blank". - The date of the change and who made it.
This is the section to open when a researcher says "I never changed my address" or you need to prove a status was set on a specific date by a specific person.
A line like
Status
Not Cleared→ Cleared Jun 4, 2026 · jdoe
means staff member jdoe changed the user's Status from Not Cleared to Cleared on June 4, 2026.
If your role has a field restriction covering a field, that field's old and new values are hidden in Change History as well — you'll see that the field changed and when, but the values come back blank instead of revealing the restricted data.
Reading Room History
Reading Room History records every sign-in and sign-out for the user. Expand it (it's collapsed by default) to see the user's visits.
Each entry shows:
- The reading room and, if your institution has configured seating locations, the location within it.
- In and Out times. An entry with no sign-out time shows
—for Out, meaning the user is still signed in. - An Away marker if the user is currently flagged as away.
- In by and Out by — the staff member who signed the user in and the one who signed them out.
This gives you a dated visit log per user — useful for confirming when someone last used a reading room, or who handled their sign-in.
Unlike the other two sections, this one loads only for staff who have the Reading Room permission (see Permissions below). For the current sign-in badge and the full sign-in/out workflow, see Reading Room History and Status.
Loading more entries
Each section shows a page of the most recent entries first (newest at the top). If there are more than fit on the first page, a Load more button appears at the bottom of that section. Click it to pull in the next page; the N of M count at the top of the section updates as you go. Each section loads independently, so expanding or paging one doesn't affect the others.
All three sections are sorted with the most recent activity at the top. The oldest entries are deepest in the list — keep clicking Load more to reach them.
Permissions
The History tab is part of the user record, so opening it follows the same access rule as the rest of the record: you need at least View access to Users. User History and Change History load for anyone who can open a user record, and nothing in those two sections requires Edit or Full — they are read-only.
Reading Room History is gated separately. It loads only if you also have at least View on the Reading Room permission. A user who can open the record but has no Reading Room access still sees the User History and Change History sections, but the Reading Room History section won't load its entries. (The status badge on the record header and the full sign-in/out log are documented in Reading Room History and Status.)