Athenaeum Pro 6.0 features

Athenaeum Pro 6.0 is available. It includes a number of changes over 5.5.

Athenaeum Pro 6.0 is not available in FileMaker 3 formats. That means if you are running Athenaeum Pro 4.5 or earlier and are networking Athenaeum, you will need to purchase licences of FileMaker Pro 6.0 for each computer to be networked or stay with version 4.5. If you are using the 'client-server' model for networking, then you also will need to run FileMaker Server 5.5 or higher on your database server.

a brief list of the changes are:

• Athenaeum Pro 6.0 is built with the FileMaker Pro 6 run-time engine. This is the first version of FileMaker that is officially sanctioned to work on Windows XP. It is also certified for Mac OS X 10.2.

• the SumWare Consulting B3921 font is now used for all bar code prints.

  This is a cross platform bar code font that works on Windows, Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. SumWare Consulting designed this font to be as narrow as possible within the specifications for Code 3 of 9 fonts as well as using a single font for all supported operating systems.

  For the first reason, B3921 bar codes must be printed at as high a resolution as possible. We have had success printing at 300dpi, but recommend 600dpi or higher, which is well within the reach of most printers less than a few years old.

  As users of Athenaeum (or Magister), you are licenced to use this font with Athenaeum (or Magister), however it is not free for other purposes.

• Support for Avery L7158 laser labels (A4, 10 rows, 3 columns) and Avery #05810 labels (US Letter, 10 rows, 3 columns) has been added. The setting is controlled with a switch on the 'System' tab in the administration screens of Athenaeum.

• Athenaeum Pro 6.0 includes a switch 'Borrower rooms are numbers'.

  Setting this switch to 'on' will cause Athenaeum to sort a variety of borrower lists as if the borrower rooms are numbers. Setting this switch to off will cause Athenaeum to sort those same borrower lists as if the borrower rooms are text (as per previous versions of Athenaeum).

  Say you have a sequence of rooms: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 15, 20, 21, 30, 40. Sorting these as numbers will order them as printed in that sentence. However, because you can enter any text for a borrower's room, Athenaeum normally treats these as text, and pages would be ordered thus: 1, 10, 11, 15, 2, 20, 21, 3, 30, 4, 40, 5, 6. This has caused some people apoplexy, so you now have the option.

• A new switch has been added to the Issue preferences tab enabling or disabling name searches during the issue process. When enabled, Athenaeum Pro will search for names when "?" or the first 3 letters of a surname are entered for the borrower bar code, as in previous versions. When disabled, these functions don't work.

• Printing of borrower bar codes has changed slightly. You can print borrower sheets with 2 or 3 columns (as before).

  If you are printing 2 columns, you can print in the order of borrowers displayed (whatever you have set that to be) or you can print by room. Printing by room respects your 'Borrower rooms are numbers' setting.

  If you are printing 3 columns and you have 'A4' as the setting, the labels are designed for L7518 labels. Otherwise, the setting is for Avery #05810 labels. 3 column printing does not summarise by room.

  Printing borrower bar codes with photos (2 column) respects your 'Borrower rooms are numbers setting'.

• When renumbering the circulation and you are using either FileMaker Pro 6 or FileMaker Run-time 6 (the run-time version is included with Athenaeum Pro 6), the process is fully automatic. When setting the next borrower ID or catalogue bar code, Athenaeum Pro will guess the next value and prompt you for confirmation. You can then overwrite this value if you wish and Athenaeum will store the value with less fuss than in previous versions.
• Deleting a borrower will now delete that borrower's reserves.
• When viewing a borrower's issues on the issues tab, a new button will list those issues in the circulation listing.
• A new circulation print option will print the found set of circulation items by borrower name.
• A new button on the circulation utilities will allow you to easily set the due date of the found set of items to a specified date. An example usage might be that a teacher has a lot of resources out and you wish to adjust the due date extending each item individually. So, go to the teacher's issue tab, show their issues, omit any issues you don't wish to adjust and click the utilities button. Clicking the 'Reset the due date of circulation found set' button will allow you to specify a date to which all of these will then be due. This was previously possible using the Replace function, though it may not have been obvious to all users.
• It is now very easy to print bar codes for the found set of items in circulation (this used to be a 3 step process).
• Athenaeum saves page settings when printing with Mac OS X
• The Utility layout is now accessed from Administration screens, rather than as a button on the Options menu.

• Athenaeum Pro 6 includes a setting 'include itemID in overdue lists'.

  Setting this means lists of overdue titles or overdue letters will include the bar code of the item. Clearing this means the lists exclude the bar code.

  For some schools, including the bar code on overdue lists and letters was a problem because they also allow students to return their own books. Reminding them of the bar codes made it easier for some students to electronically return books without physically returning them. However, including the bar code makes it easier for the librarian to identify the overdue book when there are multiple copies of a title.

• Fixed a cosmetic bug where listing 'recent' overdues would leave you in a funny place if there were no 'recent' overdues.
• When a returned item is reserved, Athenaeum Pro 6 now beeps 3 times as well as shows a dialog.
• If an item is issued to a reserver who is at their borrowing limit and the administrator uses the override facility, the item is now correctly issued to the reserver.
• If storing internet URLs in the catalogue, clicking the Open URL button opens the URL using the normal method for the operating system, including 'mailto:' URLs. This requires that the operating system be correctly configured for such actions (most modern computers are).
• Manipulating reserves is easier than in previous versions. You may now
  • directly list all reserves in the system;
  • explicitly find all reserves where the reserved items are 'out' or where the items are 'in';
  • find reserves by various criteria;
  • list all reserves that are candidates for expiry;
  • generate lists of reserves by room (and the room pages are ordered numerically or as text).

  Reserve lists are accessed from the Catalogue Utility menu.

• The Dump data button has been added to the Options Menu. This function will export all of the raw data from Athenaeum into 'merge' files into the Dump folder that is inside the Athenaeum folder by default (the location might be different for networked users).

  A merge file is a comma delimited text file where the first record contains the field names.

  These text files can be compressed using a utility such as PKZip or WinZip (Windows) or DropStuff (Macintosh) to produce files that are small enough to email or store elsewhere. If you look at the uncompressed trial data that comes with Athenaeum, you will see it requires about 10 megabytes of disk space. If you compress the Athenaeum Pro 6 trial data files, the result requires about 1.6 megabytes of disk space (about an 85% saving). However, the compressed 'dump' files require less than 0.1 megabytes - a dramatic saving. Such dump files might also be considered an ad-hoc backup, because it can be performed any time. An example usage might be when requiring support. SumWare Consulting may need to see your data to solve a problem. Compressing the Dump files means that the files are small enough to email, which SumWare Consulting can then import into their own copy of Athenaeum. Previously this was often not easy or practical if the catalogues were large (over 100 megabytes).

• A corresponding 'Import Dump' button has been added. This will read the data in the dump folder and add it to Athenaeum. If you need to rebuild Athenaeum Pro (when you haven't backed up recently), then it is a simple matter to take an empty copy of Athenaeum and read your own 'dumped' data into that empty copy.
• Athenaeum Pro 6 includes many internal coding changes consistent with SumWare Consulting programming practices.