Amlib News

Last updated: 22 January 2008

 

 

NEW CUSTOMER

We are very pleased to welcome Egerton University, situated in the town of Nakuru in Kenya’s Rift Valley.

 

NEW FEATURES

The full list of new features will be published when Version 5.2 is released, but these are just a few of the most recent enhancements:

 

REPORTING

·         Dispatching: New Dispatch Lists for use when doing bulk transfers between sections or libraries.

·         Collection management: New ‘turnover’ reports, e.g. average loans per author.

·         Access audit: tracking of staff logins per module and location.

 

ORDERING

·         Fast Receive: a new option for libraries and library services that need to check in large numbers of items from suppliers. As each item is scanned in using its new barcode number, the status switches automatically to ‘received’. This brings to three the number of receive modes, which are (a) receive individually and set receive status manually (b) scan in individually with Fast Receive (c) bulk receive of an entire order in one go.

·         New security on releasing of orders: New password authorisation added to release orders from ‘Pending’ into ‘Ordered’ status.

·         Max display of items per single order: increased to 1,000.

·         Searching: more options added for searching invoice records.

·         Cancellations: New auto-cleanups when orders are cancelled.

 

PERIODICALS

·         Renewals: Speeded up subscription renewals.

·         Leap year: Added leap year recognition to issues predictions.

 

OPAC

·         Search analysis: Immediate online display of successful and unsuccessful searches by search type and date range, e.g. list all unsuccessful author searches for last month.

 

CATALOGUING:

·         Audit: Keeps audit trail of both original cataloguer and the last cataloguer who worked on a catalogue record.

 

CIRCULATION:

·         Short Loan/Reserve Collection: Extended into a parallel system to normal circulation, with more options and tighter loan periods and fining system.

 

AMLIBNET

·         Redesign of web pages with a slick look and feel.

 

FORTHCOMING

INTERLIBRARY LOANS

·         NCIP: Currently being incorporated and due for release in Version 5.2 is interlibrary loans following the NCIP standard. NCIP will allow the online interchange of messages between libraries for the purposes of ILL. NCIP stands for “NISO Circulation Interchange Part 1” (now you know!) and here is a formal definition – “This standard defines a protocol that is limited to the exchange of messages between and among computer-based applications to enable them to perform functions necessary to lend and borrow items, to provide controlled access to electronic resources, and to facilitate co-operative management of these functions.

 

ONLINE HELPDESK

Customers outside of East Africa were given online access to the Infovision Africa Amlib Helpdesk in the second half of 2007. Users are reminded that they have two methods of submitting service requests, either by logging into http://infovisionafrica.ilient.com and entering their request on a web screen or by emailing support@infovisionafrica.co.za. The website was recently upgraded and now has a much slicker interface.