The Replace Function

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The replace function can save you a lot of work. Master this command well, and you can get on with doing other stuff!

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The replace function is a little used, but very powerful feature of Athenaeum. (If you are familiar with FileMaker Pro, then you will be familiar with the replace function.) It can save you a lot of time when manipulating the catalogue and borrowers files within Athenaeum.

warning:

Before using the replace function, be sure that you understand it fully and have backed up your data. While Replace is powerful, you can destroy large amounts of data very quickly, because there is no "undo" function.

The replace function allows you to change a collection of data in a single command. You may set the entire collection (found set of records of the current database) to a single value (for example, set the home room of the "found set" of borrowers to the same value, or set the "library" flag for all items in location "Fiction", "Reference" and "Picture Books" to true).

The "found set"

Before explaining the Replace function, it is important to understand the "Found Set". Say, for example, you have 4,500 items in your catalogue. This equates to 4,500 records in the Athenaeum file called Catalog_.FP3. If you do a search for all titles in the catalogue by the Author Paul Jennings, let's assume that you find 39 items. These 39 items constitute the "found set". You can sort the found set, print it, delete it, export it to a file on your hard disk or even set the maximum number of days that any of these items can be borrowed to 2 days, in 1 command. The point is, that the "found set" is a collection of data that you can do stuff with.

We are going to 'replace' something.

Replace Example 1 - limiting loans for a collection of books.

Let's assume that you wish to set all Paul Jennings books to 2 days maximum loan duration, because there is high demand on these but you don't have that many Jennings books. Do the following:- 

1. Quit Athenaeum and back your files up to a Zip disk or some reliable backup method (if you have any connected users, you will need to disconnect them first). Call me paranoid, but I seen long time users use this command hundreds of times successfully, but become over-confident and make mistakes the 101th time and they didn't make a backup.
2. Perform a find that will locate all of the items that you want to update. In this example, you could do a "Fast Find" and enter the words "Paul" and "Jennings" in the Fast Find field. You would then check the list of items that is displayed to ensure you had the correct items.
3. Switch to "browse" mode by clicking on any entry in the list and then click on the "Admin" Tab to see the administrator settings
   (if you do not have the "Catalogue Detail defaults to Tab view" switch set to on then you should click on the "More Detail" button).
4. At the right of the Admin screen, you will see the field where you can enter the maximum number of days for the current item.
   
   
   

   remember, even though we are looking at the details for a single item, the current "found set" is all of the items by Paul Jennings. Switching from list view to detail view, or between any of the tabs, does not change the found set.

5. Because we want to set all Paul Jennings books to 2 days, we change the current item to 2 days, by entering 2 into the maximum # days field and while the cursor is still flashing in this field, we then choose the REPLACE command from the MODE menu. The Replace dialog is displayed:
   
   (this is the Macintosh version, the Windows 95 version is almost identical).
6. There are three options (radio buttons) in this dialog box, but the most important thing is the very first word "Permanently" as there is no undo.
7. We can also see that we will be changing the field named "cat_maxLoanPeriod" (see page 41 of the original Athenaeum reference manual for an explanation of Athenaeum's field names) and that the current found set is 38 records. Make sure these details match what you want to do.
8. The first option (radio button) says Replace with "2". That means, we are going to replace what ever value exists in the cat_maxLoanPeriod field (if any) with the value "2". Because this is exactly what we want to do, we click on the Replace button. All of the values are changed and we are finished.

Pretty quick compared to doing it manually, don't you think?

Replace Example 2 - Migrating borrowers

It's the start of the new year and now is the time to re-assign your borrowers to new home rooms and borrower Year.

You have a couple of choices:-

1) You don't care about borrower histories, or catalogue item usage, so you just delete the circulation archive at the start of the year, delete all of the borrowers and re-import the borrower information from the school administration system.

This is the easiest method, but not many people seem to want to do this.

2) Manually go through each borrower and assign a new home room and new Year (1-13) to them, ensuring that they keep the same borrower ID. This ensures that you can see who borrowed a particular item last year, and keeps their borrower history.

This is fine. It is straightforward, but a bit labour intensive.

3) You upgrade each year as a block, and then fix up home rooms for multiple borrowers at a time.

This will probably be the most efficient method and still keeps borrower histories. This method is detailed below.

Before we start, you need to make a decision about what do you want to do with borrowers that have left your school. But before that, take a backup of Athenaeum.

SumWare Consulting recommends that you keep them on the system for at least a few months, but easily identifiable so that you can remove them quickly.

Assume that you have a library for a school with years 1 to 6. After year 6, the children leave and go to secondary school. So, at the beginning of the year, step 1 is to "isolate" the leavers.

Identifying school leavers

Let's assume that all year 6 children left the school (you can always deal manually with the children who stayed back). Rather than deleting these children, we will do two things. Put them all into Year "99" and room "99" (you can pick any easily identifiable number).

Re-assigning the leavers

Find all of the Year 6 borrowers (if you don't know how to do this, you may need to review some techniques described in the manual, or get some training).

Click once in the "Year" field and replace the current value (should be 6) with 99.

With the cursor still flashing in the year field, choose the Replace function from the Mode menu. You should see something similar to this:-

Ensure that the settings are correct and then click the Replace button.

Do the same for the Home room.

The borrowers who have left are now easily identified (room 99, Year 99), and when you are printing out class lists, are separated from the rest.

Moving the "Top" class

Now the next thing to do is promote all year 5 to year 6, year 4 to year 5, year 3 to year 4, etc.

The important thing to note here is the order. Move the "oldest" upwards, then go down one level and move the next ones into the gap you just created. If you are not sure why you should do this, have a good think about what would happen if you did it from the "youngest" up (if you're still stuck, send SumWare Consulting an email and we will answer the question for you).

1) Find all of the year 5 students.

2) Move to the Year field and replace "5" with "6" (promoting these children up one year) and, while the cursor is still in the year field, choose the replace function, like you did above, to change all of the year 5 students to year 6 in one easy step.

3) Go through every borrower and reset their class. You can either do this manually, or, if you're feeling confident, mark all of the students in a particular room, find the marked students and then replace room value in one step. (Don't forget to clear All marks - you will find a button that will do this on the list layout:

4) Repeat the process for Year 4 students, then Year 3, then Year 2 and so on.

You are done.

The main reason that you keep old borrowers, is so that when you are looking at who has borrowed a particular item in the past, you will see the name of the student who has left the school. If you just deleted school leavers, then you would see a blank space. On a related note, you should note re-use bar-codes for students who have left the school.