Importing borrowers from administration systems

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Most schools run automated administration systems these days. To save you a bit of work, you can usually bring data about your students into Athenaeum, updating their 'year' and 'room' as well as automatically entering the new students.

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Importing borrower information from other data sources involves generally the following steps

1. Choose a compatible data format
2. export the data in that format from your administration program
3. Remove old borrowers from the Athenaeum borrowers file
4. Transfer the data to the Athenaeum computer
5. Import the data into the borrowers file
6. Set the borrower type for borrower data

Choose a compatible data format

Athenaeum is a FileMaker Pro based application. Version 3 of FileMaker Pro can import data in the following formats:

• Tab-separated text (ASCII)
• comma separated text (ASCII)
• SYLK (an old spreadsheet interchange format)
• DIF (data interchange format - used in many old database systems)
• WKS (Lotus 1-2-3 worksheet - remember that program?)
• BASIC (like comma separated)
• Merge (also like comma separated, but a header record names each of the fields in the data, commonly used when merging data into a word processing mail merge document)
• DBF (dBase II and FoxPro use this older format)

Version 5 of FileMaker Pro adds

• Excel
• ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity - a Microsoft specification for bringing data in from a variety of database systems).

Tab, Comma and Merge formats are probably the easiest formats to use, and most programs can create these. If your program supports it, include a 'header' record that specifies the name and order of each field in the data.

Export the data from the Administration program

Have your program select the data for export and then create the export file in the format you chose in the previous step. Simplified examples from two New Zealand programs are described here.

Kidbase

On the Kidbase Main menu, click the Utilities button and then the Export button. A message dialog is now displayed, with a pop-up menu in the middle. Click this menu and choose the Export Borrowers for Athenaeum option. Note how many pupils you are working with, because you want all current pupils. Click the Continue button. A dialog box is presented asking if you wish to perform a find for pupils first, or just export. If the number of pupils at the previous step was correct, then click OK. If not, then perform a find for the pupils you want to export in the normal kidbase manner. Kidbase then creates a file called LibUsers.swc with your data.

Musac

The following describes the procedure for PF5. Earlier versions of Musac are more difficult to use and are not supported here (and we understand that you should always be using current versions of administration software to comply with Ministry requirements).

Set the filter for the pupils you wish to include. This typically would be all full-time students. Go to the utilities menu (the icon with the lightning bolt). Just below the middle of the screen, you will see a button labelled 'Extract Selected Data to Disk'. Click this button. Now, create a new export design (you only need do this once). Call the export design Library, or something meaningful and add the following PF fields to the design: Enrol#, Family Name, First Name (or Preferred Name), 'This Year' (which contains the year or Form information), Room and Gender. If you want to send correspondence directly from within Athenaeum to the pupils' caregivers, you will also need to select the contact detail and addresses. After creating and saving the export design, click the Export data button. You are asked whether to export the whole school or use the current filter. Make your choice and you can now specify the file format and destination. We recommend you choose Tab delimited, 'Include Header Record' and specify your hard disk or floppy disk as a location (e.g. c:\brwData would create a file at the root directory of the C: drive called brwData.tab). Proceed with the export.

Other systems

Each computer system has its own export method which are too numerous to mention here. The data you want to extract from the system is:

• school enrolment number (this number is permanently assigned to each student)
• first name (you may choose to use the student's preferred name instead
• family name
• year (the year at school, eg. Year 9)
• room (secondary schools would use the student's home room)
• gender

There is also a notes field that extra information can be imported to.

Transfer the data to an Athenaeum computer

Using either your network, zip disk, email or floppy disk (if your computer uses them), transfer the newly exported file to the Athenaeum computer and start Athenaeum as an administrator.

Remove old borrowers

This process assumes that you have settled any overdues for students who have left the school (the details of those who have not left the school will be retained).

First back up Athenaeum in the normal manner - quit Athenaeum, copy the data to a zip disk, restart Athenaeum.

Go to Athenaeum and then your borrower file and find the pupils (you don't include 'teachers', 'librarians', class sets in this find, because you don't have these details in your export file).

Then, delete all of pupils (Mode menu, delete all). If you accidentally deleted all borrowers, restore your back up and try again. Be aware that Athenaeum doesn't have a sense of humour when you instruct it to delete all - it does what you tell it.

Import into the borrower's file

You should now be looking at the borrower file, either a list of the remaining borrowers (if any) or the detail view of one of the remaining borrowers.

From the File Menu, choose Import/Export->Import Records...

Select your import file from whereever you saved it and click Open.

The Import Field Mapping dialog is displayed. This might look complex, but it's not, really.

First, ensure the radio buttons at the bottom left are set to 'Add new records'. This ensures that Athenaeum will add the new data rather than overwrite the existing data.

There are three parts to the import area.

On the left, you have the data that is being imported.

Because we selected the 'include header record' option in Musac, the names of the fields are displayed, making it easy to align the data. If we hadn't selected that option, then the first row of data would be displayed.

On the right are the fields internal to the Athenaeum borrowers file. These follow a set naming convention. See note 21 for more detail on that.

We need to ensure that the data from the administration system goes to ('maps') to the correct fields in the borrowers file.

You do this by dragging the appropriate fields on the right next to the fields on the left and ensuring there is an arrow between the two. For example, on the right you see the field brw_nameLast. This needs to be moved next to FamilyName.

To do this, point, click and drag brw_nameLast upwards next to FamilyName.

When the two fields are aligned click on the two dashes '--' between them to show an arrow.

Repeat this for each field that needs to be imported. You will need to scroll the list on the right to find all fields.

When you have finished, the import map should look similar to this:

Now click the Import button. You are asked what options to use when importing.

Just click the OK button.

The data will be imported into the borrower file. There are a few small things to do to clean up. The first is to set the borrower type for the imported data, the second is to update the borrower counts (Athenaeum Pro only).

Set the borrower type

When the data is imported, immediately go to the borrower detail screen. You will see that no borrower type is set.

Either set the borrower type of each borrower you have just imported individually or use the replace function. Athenaeum note 9 and note 18 give examples of using the replace function.

Update Borrower Counts (Athenaeum Pro)

Finally, Athenaeum Pro stores counts of books for each borrower. This needs to be updated for your borrowers.

Go to the borrower Utilities screen (click on the icon with the hammer and screwdriver).

From the Select menu, choose Find All (if it is not grey) and then click the 'Update Borrower Counts' button. Athenaeum Pro will then automatically recount the number fiction, non-fiction, etc, books that each borrower has.

You are done!