Athenaeum Pro 4.5 features

Athenaeum 4.5 quietly slipped onto the scene in December. There are are a number of changes, however many of them are internal changes.

Athenaeum 4.5 is available as FileMaker 3 or FileMaker 5.5 documents. The 5.5 version is known as Athenaeum Pro 5.5. This is the last major change that will include FileMaker 3 formats.

Many of the visible changes are:

• Designed for 800x600 screens with and support for 640x480 'Slim clients'. 800x600 is the de facto standard screen size and requiring this for administration and issuing means we can better utilise your computer's monitor. *Note*: to use Athenaeum Pro 4.5, you must reconfigure your 640x480 screens to 800x600 pixels. If you have administration and issue computers than can't be configured to this screen size, you should *not* upgrade Athenaeum Pro.
• Reworked authority list handling - additional terms, customisable field destinations for terms. A brief description of Authority list behaviour in Athenaeum Pro can be found at Note 26
• Special Menu 'stop' option for installations that are hosting Athenaeum to the web along with other FileMaker databases. If you are doing this, you will know what it enables you to do. It must only be used under controlled circumstances, because it can represent a data security risk if you don't configure it properly.
• 'Data Dump' button on the Utility screen for cheater's backup on single user or 'host' computers. It extracts the 'textual' and 'numerical' data from Athenaeum and saves them in compact text files. Even if you are not in charge of backups (as a number of schools have IT staff who routinely do back ups) you can still guard your valuable data by doing a data dump on a regular basis.
• Consistent look and feel with Athenaeum Light 5.5 and Athenaeum Express 5.5
• Extended Bar code utility included allowing the generation of bulk bar code labels quickly and easily - this is only available for the version 5.5 documents.
• 'New' buttons added in more locations, meaning you don't have to press Command/Control-N to create a new record.
• Navigation to directly to list views between modules, rather than sub-menus. Our observation of users of the system indicated that most people would go straight to a list view in each module anyway, so we do it for you now.
• History is retained in the borrowers' files when archiving books. Previously, if you archived a book, any reference to that book in the circulation history would not show (you would see a blank space).
• Create email bug fix (emailing direct from Athenaeum requires FileMaker Pro)