From the President's Desk

We hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season and want to be one of the first to say welcome to 2008. COMPanion Corporation is excited about making this year the best year yet. We've grown tremendously during 2007 and are grateful for your incredible loyalty. We're committed to providing the finest customer service and products in the industry and appreciate the confidence and trust you show in us. Please don't hesitate to contact us with any concerns, suggestions and needs you have. We look forward a strong mutually beneficial relationship with you for many many years to come.
—Bill Schjelderup
President ∞

Alexandria Answers

Every once in a while, when I am searching in the Researcher, I see something that needs correcting in the Item record.  It is such a pain to have to go to the Items module then search to find the item so I can make the corrections.  Isn't there an easier way?

Absolutely!  Just go back to the Search Results window where the items appear in a list, hold down the <alt> key and double click on the item that needs correcting and the Items window will open.  Unlock the record, make your corrections, and Save.

What is COMPedit?  It was installed automatically in its own folder (not the Alexandria folder) on the data station when we upgraded Alexandria.

COMPedit is our stand alone COMPanion Word Processor  — the same as VWP in Alex, TT, etc. except it is just stand-alone.

It is a free - unlicensed application our customers can distribute as they wish.  For example: Need to send an Alex report to the Principal, but want the report to maintain its exact formatting - no PDF, no RTF, etc.  Give the Principal COMPedit as well,

and you'll be able to send him or her any Alex or TT created document without the worry of formatting problems or issues opening the document in its original state.

Collection Cleanup Challenges for January

Last month, we gave you a few simple challenges to use Authority Control to clean up your Alexandria database.  The challenge continues!  We are starting with the "little" areas and will slowly move toward major areas such as People and Subjects.  This month, we are going to look at your Homerooms and Funding Sources.  You may discover that that you have used several variations for the same homeroom or for the same funding source.  Authority Control provides a fast and easy place to make changes to standardize your entries.

Challenge One:

• Go to Show on the menu bar and select Authority Control.

• Change the drop-down menu in the upper-left corner of the window to Homerooms.

• Look at the homerooms that are listed.  Do you see variations of the same homeroom (e.g. Rm. 22, Room 22, 22, Rm. — Taylor)? 

• If so, decide on the one that you want to use and then, double click on one that you wish to change and a window will open.

• Change it to what it should be, then, click on OK.

• Repeat this for every incorrect Homeroom.  Remember, deleting the entry here only deletes it from the index and not from the records.  Changing it, will change it on the records when you click on Save.

• Click on Save in the upper-right corner of the Authority Control window. Alexandria will go through your patron records and replace the incorrect homerooms with the corrected ones.

Challenge Two:

Go to Show on the menu bar and select Authority Control.

Change the drop-down menu in the upper-left corner of the window to Funding Source.

Look at the funding sources that are listed.  (Central Union folks, just look at those associated with your school and your district person should check to see if there are any in the list that are not valid for other schools.  You may need to have a district meeting to decide on how to standardize them.)

If there are multiple, varied entries for the same funding source, decide on the one you want to use, then, double click on one of the variations and a window will open.

Change the funding source entry to what it should be, then click on OK.

Repeat this for every incorrect funding source.

Click on Save in the upper-right corner of the Authority Control window. Alexandria will go through your item records and replace the incorrect funding source entries with the corrected ones.

 ∞

Kaaren's Corner

By Kaaren Linton, Librarian/Alexandria Trainer

Effective Use of Alexandria Researcher

Alexandria's Researcher is the patron gateway to your library collection and understanding how to effectively use it will maximize patron success.  Researcher is a prime example of how Alexandria excels in providing an extremely powerful yet simple-to-use program.

To aid you in teaching your students how to use the Researcher, we have developed lesson plans that you may download from our website.  Just go HERE and click on Researcher Lesson Plans to download them.

Four Rules for Searching Alexandria

There are four simple rules to remember when searching Alexandria:

1. Alexandria is a begins with search, so if you want an exact match (e.g. just CAT instead of words beginning with C-A-T), put a period at the end of the search criteria (e.g. cat.)

2. If you can't spell, use Browse.  For instance, you can't spell Tchaikowski, you may type TCH in the Browse tab search field and press <enter>.  A list will appear in the window with the first word beginning with the search term and you will be able to see the words that begin with those letters.  Simply double-click on the desired word and Alexandria will perform the search for that term.

3. Two or more words (e.g. Civil War) typed in the same search field is the same as an exact match search on all the terms using the Boolean operator AND.

4. If using multiple mixed Boolean operators (e.g. ANDs and ORs, the AND search must go last.  For instance, if you want books on either Greek or Roman mythology, you would enter Greek in the first Boolean search field, select the Boolean operator OR from the Boolean Operator list, enter Roman in the second search field, then select More Options at the bottom of the window.  Change the second Boolean Operator selection to AND and type Mythology in the last search field, then press <enter> to perform the search.

 Related Works Links

Within the item record, notice that many parts of the record are blue links.  If the user clicks on one of the links, Alexandria will perform a search on that criteria and show the results of the search.  Many patrons search using terms that are quite limited.  As they read through the record, they may see the links within the record, these links may lead them to other related searches that they had not thought of.

See and See Also References

When the patrons use the browse search, they will also see See and See Also references.  Clicking on the link will generate a search term shown.

Maps

Use the Map Editor function to link graphic maps of your library to call number ranges.  As the patrons view the item's record, they may click on the Show Map link to see these maps.

Saved Lists

When a search is performed, the patron may only want a list of some of the items.  To select several items in a row, hold down the <shift> and Click on the first and last items.  Those items will be highlighted.  Then, to select additional items singly, hold down the <ctrl> key on a Windows computer or the <cmd> key on a Macintosh and click on each additional item.  When all desired items have been selected, go to the icon bar and click on the Saved Lists icon (Bent red arrow) and a new list window will open with just the highlighted items.

In the Web Researcher, just click on the Plus icon before any title that you want to add to the Save Basket.  When you have added all the desired items, click on Save Basket to view the list and then on the Print icon to view the print options.

Printing Options

Have you ever taken a look at the many printing formats that are available in the Researcher?  No?  Some really useful formats included are:

• Standard  — Prints the results as displayed in the Researcher window.

• Simple  — Prints call number, title, and author.

• Bibliographic  — Produces a numbered list with the call number and the bibliographic information for each title.

• Citation  — Prints a list of citations in M. L. A. format. (Make your list an almost perfect bibliography by first clicking on the Title header and then on the Author header.  Remember that you can unlock the resulting document and cut and paste, move margins, set hanging indention, etc.  — even change the header text to make it truly perfect before you print the hard copy.)

• Notes  — Formats a separate notes page for each item in the list with the citation in M. L. A. format at the top of the page, then sections for the name of the project, notes, and other questions. 

Added Features

netTrekker  —  Alexandria provides netTrekker capabilities as an add-on feature so that your search will also be done in netTrekker.

SearchAll  —  Alexandria also has a federated search option available as an add-on feature.

∞