BOOKMARK NEWS. Bookmark and New Functions Problems found with the CD sent out last year have been located and corrected.

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1 BOOKMARK NEWS Department Education, And Children s Services To: The Librarian Issue39:April 2008 From: Bookmark, Technology & Knowledge Management, GPO Box 1152, Adelaide, SA 5001 Courier R11/41 ph (08) , fax (08) ABN internet Hodgson.Dean@saugov.sa.gov.au or Mitchell.Marion@saugov.sa.gov.au website: Thank you for your rapid response to the recent survey sent out to all users. Closing date will be 16 th May if you haven t returned your survey yet. The survey was sent out by senior DECS administrators in order to collect information about how people feel. The survey indicates that DECS is interested in Bookmark continuing and being redeveloped and is investigating one avenue to obtain the funding to do so. Dean will continue to update and enhance the current Bookmark. A new version with improvements is in preparation. Support is continuing 'as is'. I Contents: Survey Tasmanian users Bookmark Bookmark The good news The bad news Last scanned date Cost field Longer ISBN Stocktaking From the Help Desk Slide holders Contents ALT-ENTER Homework From Gian Rules for filenames Usergroups (SA,Qld, and WA) Training SA and WA If you do not agree with the three checkbox choices in the survey, do not check any of them but write a comment instead stating what you would like and why. Calling Tasmanian users In the Launceston area Margaret Tyne and several other Bookmark librarians get together once a term to talk about Bookmark. If you are interested in attending please call Margaret at St Finn Barr s on Bookmark and New Functions Problems found with the CD sent out last year have been located and corrected. The facility to add a top margin to Overdues has been included so as to allow for those wishing to use school letterhead paper for their notices. Choose <3>Overdues<2>Print overdue notices, <7>Reset top margin size and enter the appropriate number of lines. These are remembered until you change it again at some future date. The ability to borrow items with a status greater than 2 has been added. When a borrower tries to borrow a book with a different status the system asks shows a restricted item alert and then requests an override password. This has been added to both the DOS circulation and the Wincirc program. Another Wincirc only addition was suggested by Greg Manning at Settler s Farm PS. The system can be set up to sing Happy Birthday to a student whose birthdate matches 1

2 the current date when going into loans. Make sure that the Wincirc version is 1.15 or later. Then go into Controls then Sound Controls. Click the radio button for birthday alert, then highlight hapbirth.wav and press the select button, then save, and then save and close as well. Bookmark Improvements Thank you to everybody who tested this version, especially Marianne at Winthrop Baptist College, who has been a star. And yes I know. We ve jumped a version number. Just don t ask! Last Scanned Date Bookmark now keeps a last scanned date instead of a stocktaking flag. Whenever an item is borrowed, returned, edited, copied or entered in Add/Edit Items, imported from SCIS or MARC records, or is scanned in stocktaking, the last scanned date is updated to the current date. In essence, this is the latest time when the item was spotted by someone. The last scanned date can be searched in Complex Item Search in Reports in the same manner as due dates and accession dates. This new date can be viewed in Add/Edit Items in the lower right corner of the screen, and in Check Items in Stocktaking. This new date replaces the previous stocktaking flag, which is no longer used. The good news Last scanned date Cost field! Longer ISBN field! Stocktaking changes The bad news If you have either the WinCirc and/or WebOPAC addon modules, you must update those programs as well in order to match this Bookmark version. These are both versions This update is a one way trip. When you update there will be a message saying updating database. If there are any problems updating please ring the Help desk immediately. Do not try to fix it yourself by reverting to a previous version. If you are doing an extended stocktake please ring to check on implications. 13 digit ISBNs currently stored in the notes within brackets should automatically overwrite anything else in the ISBN field. Ring if this is likely to cause problems. Cost field Bookmark introduces a new cost field. This holds only the cost of items. The value is entered here. The $ is not required although it can be included if desired. If you previously entered costs on other fields, such as ISBN or Extra, these are automatically transferred to the new field with is first run. In addition, the field names are reverted back to ISBN and Extra instead of Cost or Price or anything else. Longer ISBN Field The length of the ISBN field has been stretched to 13 characters. It will now hold longer ISBNs. Importing from SCIS and MARC data automatically places the new ISBN s in this field. The previous method of storing long ISBN s in Notes surrounded by {brackets} is no longer required. When is first run, it will transfer any long ISBNs from notes to the ISBN field. Stocktaking The stocktaking system in Bookmark has been substantially revised in version It is no longer necessary to prepare stocktaking or clear stocktake flags! 2

3 To begin stocktaking, simply choose <1> Scan items and begin scanning or downloading barcodes. This process is identical to the previous process. It is not necessary to indicate which of the collection is being checked, either. When an item is scanned in stocktaking or is returned or borrowed or catalogued the last scanned date is updated to today s date. When <2> List missing items is selected, Bookmark asks for the date when stocktaking commenced. This is the date when you first started stocktaking this year, not today s date. If you re ready to list missing items and started stocktaking a fortnight ago, enter what the date was back then when you began. Missing items are those with a last scanned date prior to the entered start-of-stocktaking date. If you make an error when searching with the date, simply re-enter it correctly. <3> Check items will list items showing their last scanned dates. <4> Stocktaking statistics shows the number of items scanned before and after the start of stocktaking date that you enter. The advantage of this approach is that it is impossible to mess up a stocktake because a critical step was not made at the start e.g. preparing to stocktake. National Simultaneous storytime 11:00am, Wednesday, 21 May Arthur by Amanda Graham is the story for this year. For more information try 08/ Library and Information Week May 2008 The theme for Library and Information Week 2008 is: Libraries are for everyone. For more information on events and activities visit the Library and Information Week webpage at From the Help Desk Slide holders WA library Supplies have 35mm slide holder plastic pages (holding $2.20 a sheet for those people still using cards in a folder. Supply West A3 binder $8.45 courtesy of Marilyn from Applecross Contents There are some hidden controls in the contents editor which may help if librarians are having problems in copying contents. Go to <4>Cataloguing <C> Contents editor. Hold your tongue in the right position, press the control key and the Q key at almost the same time. Yes is the answer to the question about indexing titles. Same again for the control key and the letter R. Yes to reindex all words Then Control and the letter F to bulk update the entries. That will straighten out the currently crooked entries. It doesn t help your tongue. ALT-ENTER A number of people have forgotten the key presses to operate Bookmark from within a window so that it can be minimised. Press altenter to see if this puts Bookmark in a window so that it can be minimised. For this to work the properties of the icon must be set correctly. On the desktop using your right mouse button click on the Bookmark icon then using your left mouse choose properties from the menu which should appear. (If it doesn t ask the school s IT person) Having selected properties click on the MISC tab, and place a tick in the Windows shortcut key for ALT-Enter. Click on apply and then OK. 3

4 Homework Check the age of any quick entries by doing the complex item search for L=37. Then when listing on screen, highlight one and press enter to see the full cataloguing record for that item. Pressing enter when you have finished will take you back to the list. From Gian Young at Dataman Barcode Systems What I contacted you for was to give you some feedback I have received from users of the Cipher 1166 & 1266 wireless units, I have supplied quite a number of these models now over the past 30 odd months. The Cipher 1166 & 1266 units have proved to be very reliable and fortunately by far the great majority of users express positive feedback on their satisfaction with the 1166/1266 s. I have however come across some users who are not so happy, in almost all cases the cause of their dissatisfaction boils down to two areas. 1. Battery retention and failure to charge. 2. Poor quality bar code reading or non reading. Where possible I have attended some local sites and in other cases have discussed the problem with the users. Many of them have not actually read the instructions and have failed to either lock the batteries in with the slider on the top of the battery or in the case of the bar code reading errors have tended to hold the 1166/1266 bar code reader far too close to the bar code. The latest crop of bar code reader designs (especially portables) are now manufactured with optics that permit distance reading of the bar code instead of holding the bar code reader immediately above the bar code. This type of reading behaviour is designed to facilitate the use of these devices in warehouses and/or the point of sale areas of shops and supermarkets. Another area I am looking into is coloured bar code labels; over the years I have had numerous requests to supply a coloured bar code label. I am currently experimenting with the Polylaser labels to see if I can produce a bar code label with Black Bar Code and writing on a Yellow background, if this works Ok I will try some other colours like Pink and Green. The important thing is to keep the contrast level sufficiently high enough to satisfy the contrast specification requirements of the bar code readers so they still read accurately. Recently I have had a number of telephone calls from users of the Cipher scanners who are having difficulties in the area of ISBN. For those users I have made available from the Web Site a downloadable control chart to allow them to easily swap from ISBN 10 to ISBN13 mode. To get to the chart from our web site select the page titled About changes to the ISBN and scroll to the bottom. The link to download the.pdf chart titled Cipher Lab ISBN-10/ISBN- 13 Program Chart can be found there, the chart should be printed out on a Laser Printer. For your interest on another matter Some of the Early Cipher Model 1000 USB units had slightly slower electronics than their later variants. The early units that are not easy to identify from their later models require the Inter Character delay times to be greater than the newer units. 9 Milliseconds instead of 2 Milliseconds. When the older units were originally shipped they were set to the correct delay times, however in more recent times users have been changing the delay times of the older units to the faster delay times and in doing so have introduced problems. The symptoms are usually described in the form that the bar codes are not being read correctly or that the wrong book is being selected for the bar code scanned. If these older incorrectly set readers are tested by scanning the bar code into Word or Notepad the problem shows up as a partially read bar code number split up onto two or 4

5 more lines. I.e. it appears as if the CR / LF (Enter) has been inserted in between numbers and the bar code is spread over two to three lines. If any one is experiencing these symptoms they can get in touch with me by and I will return their mail with an attachment (to be printed out on a laser) of the correct control chart of bar codes to reset their Cipher 1000 USB units back to the correct delay times. Filenames and SCIS Files ( from Dean) There have been several calls recently from schools that are changing the filename when downloading SCIS cataloguing records. By default, the filename is USMARC.DAT. It is a good idea to leave the name as this if possible. However, there is a need to save more than one file it is necessary to change the name. If the filename is too long or contains illegal characters, Bookmark may not open it. Rules for filenames: 1. Limit the name to no more than 8 characters long. 2. Use only letters and numbers. Do not use a dot (.), quote marks or any other non alphanumeric symbols except the dash - or underscore _. A few others are permitted but many are not. Most punctuation symbols should not be used. 3. Do not use blank spaces. 4. Only one full-stop. Follow that by DAT or TXT -- e.g. USMARC7.DAT. Examples: USMARC.DAT good USMARC27.DAT good USMARC bad -- too long and too many dots USMARC "Monday" bad -- quote marks, blank space, no file extension These rules do not necessarily apply to other programs, such as Word. Rule #2, however, does apply, always. Windows has two types of filenames called "long" and "short". The long type can be large and can contain blank spaces. Short filenames are limited to a maximum of 8 characters with no blank spaces. Neither type should contain punctuation symbols except for the dash and underscore. After both types of filenames there is an "extension" which is a single full stop followed by three letters. Filename extensions are usually used to indicate the type of file..jpg is an image,.doc is a document,.txt is a text file,.exe is an executable file (a program),.dat is a data file, etc. Some programs allow additional full-stops in long filename formats. The short format only allows one dot followed by the extension. Bookmark only works with the short format. User groups South Australian user group information Mid North user group meets at Crystal Brook PS on week 4 of the term. Co-ordinator; Sue Wright, Gladstone PS ( ) Western user group meets in week 5 on Monday at different locations at 3.45pm. Term : 26th May; Blackfriars Co-ordinator : Julie Haar, Rosary ( ) Northern user group meets on Wednesdays of week 5 at 2.00pm. Term ; 28 th May. St. Agnes PS Co-ordinator : Frank Maitland, St Agnes PS ( ) Southern user group meets in week 6 on Tuesday at 1.00pm for 1.30 start Term 2:2008:3 rd June Seacliff PS Co-ordinator ; Keith Greenlees, Seaford Rise PS ( ) Eastern user group meets in week 7 on Wednesdays at 2.00pm. Term :11 th June Paradise PS Co-ordinator ; Judy Connor, Ardtornish PS ( ) Queensland users group meetings Brisbane North 5

6 2008 meetings are generally at 9.15am: Term 2 - St Kevin's School, Geebung Tuesday 20th May Term 3 - St Anthony's School, Kedron Thursday 11th September Term 4 - St Flannan's School, Zillemere Wednesday 5th November Western Australian User Group meetings Wednesday week 3 Co-ordinator Marilyn Carter at Applecross PS ( ) Training Courses may be deferred if there are insufficient numbers to attend so please advise us in good time. An invoice is sent only after attending a course. Additional courses can be arranged if enough people join the waiting lists, and they are posted on the Bookmark website in the Training section. A limited number of country courses can be organized if there is enough demand and there is a host school. Cost : $ GST=$ for introductory courses. (includes lunch) $ GST for each of the two advanced course (includes lunch) Please contact Marion Mitchell for more details. ( ) or download the application forms from the Bookmark home page. WA courses (held at SIDE, Leederville) WA Introductory Friday 6 th June Friday 29 th August WA Advanced Advanced reports & statistics & Advanced cataloguing 9.00am-4.00pm Monday 9 th June Monday 1 st September Advanced circulation & pa & Stocktaking & advanced overdues 9.00am-4.00pm Tuesday 10 th June Tuesday 2 nd September SA courses Back at Education Development Centre. Hindmarsh for the first half of 2008 SA Introductory Friday May 16 th Friday August 8 th Friday October 24th SA Advanced Advanced reports & statistics & Advanced cataloguing Run together as a full day course 9.00am-4.00pm May 23 rd August 15 th October 31st Advanced circulation & pa + Stocktaking & advanced overdues 9.00am-4.00pm June 20 th August 15th November 7th Victoria Book Mark Pty Ltd run courses Victoria. Contact Barry or Gary on Bookmark Distance Workshops Correspondence workshops are available from Rhonda Willmett at Interpersonal Dynamics, info@ipdynamics.com.au or phone (07) Rhonda has also written the excellent Looking at Public Access, which has a student book and a teacher book, and can be used to teach students how to use public access in either Bookmark or Public Access for Windows. This newsletter is written and edited by Marion Mitchell and Dean Hodgson 6