From the President's Desk

Happy Holidays! We would like to extend our warmest wishes for a holiday season filled with fun, family, and friends. As the most important part of our family here at COMPanion Corporation, we want you to feel welcome in receiving the best products, services, and support possible. That is why we will continue to reward your loyalty by listening to your suggestions for improvements and making the coming year even better than the previous.

See you in January!

Thanks
Bill Schjelderup ∞

Collection Cleanup Challenge for September

For anyone new to the newsletter, we have been cleaning up the Authority Control area for publishers using the Authority Control feature of Alexandria.

If you are a new Alexandria user, your indexes were built when your data was imported. Just follow the steps given below to set your Authority Control preferences, then, just start with the A’s in People MARC Authority Control and do a little each day until you finish this Authority Control area. The Challenge Steps portion of this article will help you begin your clean-up. It may take several months, but that’s okay since Authority Control is a never-ending work-in-progress.

Go to Edit on the menu bar and select Preferences.

Set the two drop-down menus in the upper-left corner of the preferences window to Authority Control and Default Local.

For now, enable School and Library by checking those boxes.

Click on the Automatically Update Authority Controlled Information and then click on Save.

For those who have been doing the Collection Cleanup challenges, this month, we are going to begin to clean up the People section of MARC Authority working with those from A through C. Do what you can and remember that Authority Control cleanup is a never-ending process.

Before we start in this area, let’s review a few things about People MARC Authority Control. First, we know that a person may be an author, editor, illustrator, joint author, subject, or have a series, so a person may be used in a 100, 600, 700 or 800 tag, but MARC Authority rules call for the information to always be stored in a 100 tag. If you use it in a field that has indicators associated with it, these follow the entry into the Authority Control index. Hence, you may see the same person entered several times and the only difference may be in the indicators area. These will never become just one entry because of these indicators. You may also see that a person has been used in a subject and the entry will show the other fields used in that subject heading.

A few simple rules to remember during cleanup:

Don’t put commas or periods at the end of the fields. Alexandria supplies the punctuation where it is needed. For instance, if a citation is made in the Researcher and you have a terminal period at the end of the name, then, it will appear after the name along with the punctuation that Alexandria provides making the citation incorrectly punctuated.

Dates do not go in the _a field; they go in the _d field.

The Relator term (how the person is connected to the work such as jt. author, editor, illustrator) is entered in the _e field.

Secondly, I want you to think about See Also references. Does an individual use a pen name? For Mark Twain entries, you will want to add an entry on the See Also tab for Samuel Clemens. This will enable your patrons to find this information when using the Browse interface in the Researcher.

Challenge Steps:

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 People.

Look at the people that are listed. Do you see variations of the same Person: e.g. Aaseng, Nate, Aaseng, Nathan, (with a comma) and Aaseng, Nathan. (with a period)? Do some have dates and others do not?

Decide on the changes that you want to make, then double click on one that you wish to change and a window will open.

Change it to what it should be including adding birth and death dates, See Also entries, etc. If fields are listed in incorrect order, then highlight the offending field and use the Up or Down arrow to move it to the proper order position. When finished with the entry, click on OK.

Repeat this for every incorrect People entry. 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 item records and replace the incorrect people in any instance (100, 600, 700 or 800 tags) with the corrected ones. ∞

Sales Promotion

Did you know that you can receive a $100-200 credit towards a new scanner by trading in an old, outdated, or broken COMPanion Scanner? (Credit amount depends upon the type of scanner returned.)

Here are a few examples of the scanners COMPanion has to offer:

CCD Wedge Scanner—COMPanion offers the industry’s most advanced CCD (Charged-Coupled Device) Wedge Scanner for scanning your barcode labels. Special LED technology allows the scanner to read barcodes without having to touch the label. Includes a 2 year warranty.

Laser Scanner—The COMPanion Laser Scanner, which includes a hands-free stand, is a durable, high-performance scanner that quickly and accurately reads barcodes into the Alexandria system. The hands-free option gives the operator the flexibility to scan multiple barcodes while working on other projects. This scanner’s lightweight, compact design and included 2 year warranty, ensure that you will be using it for years to come.

Linear Imager—The COMPanion Linear Imager uses linear imaging technology to set a new standard for hand-held scanners by combining a bright, sharp aiming line with high resolution imaging, delivering exceptional reading performance. Includes a 4 year warranty.

Kaaren's Corner

By Kaaren Linton, Librarian/Alexandria Trainer

Server Down? Alexandria Off-line!

There are times when you may need to circulate items or perform inventory and you cannot access your Alexandria Data Station. This can be a frustrating situation, but, Alexandria has incorporated ways to relieve the frustration you may be feeling!

With version 5.5.5, Alexandria added the capability of working off-line. This feature allows you to continue doing various circulation functions such as checking books in and out and inventory if connection to the Alexandria Data Station is lost. This feature’s functionality is improved in version 5.5.6 in that if the connection to the Data Station is not achieved when the Librarian Workstation is launched, then a dialog window will open allowing you to select whether to work off-line or to quit. The off-line transaction log shows the patron barcode number, the item barcode number and the type of transaction that was done. When a connection to the Data Station is made, a dialogue box will appear informing you that you are now able to work on-line and will ask if you want to download the work that has been done off-line to the Data Station.

If you select to download, then a login window will appear asking for your login and password. This is to ensure that only someone with the proper security level makes this decision.

But, what about those Alexandria users that have not been able to upgrade for one reason or another who would love to have this capability? Actually, such functionality has been available in another form for many years as the little-known ability to import a transaction script. You may even work on a laptop that does not have a Librarian Workstation installed or any Internet capabilities. Yes, you can use any word processor that can save a file as plain text with the .txt extension to circulate items, check items in, perform inventory, etc.

Please realize that you will not be able to do any functions that would require selecting from a list such as the L (Locate Patron), T (Title Locator), etc., since you will not be able to access a list from which to make a selection.

To make a transaction script:

Open a new document.

Type or scan desired command (i.e. . (period), I, IB, B, etc.).

Type or scan appropriate patron or item barcodes. Also, change the commands as needed for different functions by either typing the command and then pressing or scanning the command barcode associated with the desired command.

Go to File and select Save As and save document as a text (.txt) file.

To import the file into Alexandria:

Run an Archive.

In the Command Line, type * and press .

Select the file to be imported from the appropriate saved location.

Highlight the file and click Start to begin import.

After the import is completed, check the Transaction Log for any issues or problems. ∞

Alexandria Tech Tips

A couple of things to remember for the holiday season:

1. Setting closed dates—with many libraries being closed extra days during the holiday season, be sure to set those days as CLOSED in your Calendar Preferences. This will prevent items from being due on days when the library is closed, which will potentially avoid creating unwanted overdue items.

2. Setting period due dates—for the upcoming new year, if you have not set your Period Due Dates in your Calendar Preferences, now would be a good time to do so. It is important to set these due dates in advance, before items get checked out. If you set the period due date within the loan period of an item already checked out, it will not affect that item’s due date. ∞

COMPanion Tradeshows

Click here for the list of tradeshows COMPanion will be attending for the rest of the year!