Heritage Productivity Tools
Heritage has been designed to be comprehensive in its scope whilst not cluttering up day to day activities with unnecessary options. Menus and screens can be re-arranged to suite particular needs, for instance by removing options that will never be used. Menus and fields have been logically grouped into distinct areas which simplifies navigation, but can be re-arranged to suite particular needs, for instance by removing options that will never be used. Help is available throughout the system and is in an editable format and so can be ammended to meet the specific requirements of your centre including translation.
A good system should allow you to work in the ways that you like to. Hence with Heritage the same tasks can be perfomed in several different ways, depending on the preferences of the user. Thus one user might prefer to use the mouse menus, whilst another might prefer to use the just the keyboard; one will type in entries whilst another will pick them from an authority list.
Throughout Heritage there are many standard features which save time and help avoid errors. Examples of these include: authority files, which make for greater consistency and remove the need for any duplication of effort; a thesaurus provides the cataloguer with alternative or preferred terms; a special character case tool allows caps, title or sentence case to be set on blocks of text; a calendar, available on all date fields and quick date entry methods; assigning barcodes to functions is particularly useful on the issue desk; all the data entry screens have been designed so that it is not necessary to move from the keyboard to the mouse and back again when entering data; new data can be added to related files without first having to save and exit the record being worked on. Each of these is only a small feature but taken together they greatly ease the day to day tasks of using a system.
Calendar
Any
date field includes a pop-up calendar to assist in picking
new dates. Frequently used date intervals can easily be entered
in the form too, for instance +2m will put a date in two months
from now, or -1w will go back a week.
The circulation system includes a calendar where the library closed days can be assigned. Thus issue periods, overdues and fines may take account of the library not being open. Different calendars may be set up for each part of a multi-site institution
Email may be used in a number of places in Heritage in the place of printing or exporting. In particular users may be emailed with reminders letters (overdues), recalls and SDI information as well as other reports which they may have requested or require. Users can choose to email the results of their searches in the OPAC to themselves or to another user.
Heritage will work with any SMTP compatible email system including SMPT Auth. Emails are sent by the workstation not the server (with the exception of Heritage Online generated emails).
Calculator
Ever struggled to find your calculator when you need it when entering prices? Heritage will do most calculations for you, but a calculator is always at hand when you need it.
Case conversion
Often data from other sources is not quite as you would like it, or you left the capslock on when typing. Just click on the edit menu (or use a right mouse click) and Heritage can makes the changes for you.
Jumps
The screenshot above also shows how easily you can bring up a related form in Heritage. The last option would open the media types form allowing new media types to be added on the fly (for users with the necessary privileges only).
Housekeeping
Not all shortcuts are applicable at the time of entering data. Heritage also includes a comprehensive set of housekeeping tools such as global change and delete and the event scheduler.