Housekeeping

There are hundreds of facilities in Heritage that fall under the category of 'Housekeeping', so here are just a few:

Global Change Utility

Sometimes it may be necessary to make a change to a number of records in Heritage, for example if a cataloguer has misspelled a word several times or if a group of items has changed in status. Heritage has a powerful Global Change Utility which prompts the user to enter criteria for selection and then allows a new value to be specified before making the change to the selection automatically. This facility can be used on almost any data with care although data is automatically backed up before any changes are made. (A similar global delete facility is also available.)

Authority Control

In many parts of Heritage it is possible to define lists of words or terms which can then be imposed on a particular field, to help maintain consistency. These authority lists offer many benefits by avoiding misspellings and unwanted synonyms. There are hundreds of authority lists around the system but the most commonly used are:

• Series
• Keywords
• Publishers
• Authors
• Media Type
• Subjects
• Departments
• Journal Frequencies
• Locations

Security

Extensive security features are built into Heritage to make it one of the most secure software systems in this market. Users can be given broad areas of privilege or very detailed ones depending on their requirements.

Event Scheduler

Many of the daily tasks run in Heritage can be scheduled to run without supervision and out of hours. An event scheduler takes care of this and allows some of the more processor hungry administration processes, such as running overdue letters, to happen out of hours, when it is quieter and hardware is not in heavy demand. The event scheduler can be set to run on a large range of processes.

Shortcuts/Hotkeys

Menus and mouse operation are great when getting to know the system or for more obscure operations run less often, but for many of the regular and familiar tasks it is possible to assign shortcut or 'hot' keys to speed up the whole process dramatically. This facility comes into its own impressively in areas such as issuing and returning, where not only do single key presses move you between modes, it is even possible to assign a barcode to the process as well, removing the need to touch the keyboard or mouse altogether in many cases.

A good number of processes and tasks already have assigned hotkeys and shortcuts and we provide a useful mousemat with them all set out graphically for your convenience.

Spellchecker

Correct spelling in a database system is vital. Any errors might lead to users not finding the required results in the OPAC and management reports could miss records if they are not correctly spelled. Heritage has a useful spellchecker for use in data entry fields and in particular Cataloguing. There is also a Thesaurus facility in Cataloguing which helps to dramatically increase the chances of an OPAC user finding results from a search.

Stock-Taking

The job that many library staff dread each year! However, Heritage takes away much of the strain of this task with some fast and sophisticated tools. Used with barcode scanners and/or data capture devices, it is possible to move quickly through stock recording items, before Heritage produces a list of missing and excluded items. It is not necessary for all stock to be returned to the library prior to stocktaking because Heritage can take account of loans and a number of other exceptions.

Calenders

Rather than have to reach for a diary each time an advanced date is required, Heritage has an in-built calender facility which is available throughout the system where relevant. For example in Advanced Loans or Acquisitions when collections and deliveries might be expected.