Creating Weeding Reports in Excel

1. Go to Reports Tab
2. Schedule New Reports
3. Bibliographic Tab
4. List Items
5. Basic Tab

a. Change Report Name (so that you can find the correct report afterwards)

6. Item Selection Tab

a. Click on gadget next to Home Location box, double-click which collection code you want to      weed – Click OK
b. Put the same collection code in the Current Location box
c. Click on the gadget next to Date Last Charged, click Before, click the gadget next to the box, and put in the appropriate date. Click OK, then OK again.

7. Sorting Tab

a. Change drop-down option to Call Number.

8. Print Item Tab

a. Click the Generate Pipe Delimited Output box
b. In Title Information, click Entry List Only button
c. In Entry list box, type 245
d. Under Call Number Information, click Call Number Only
e. Under Item Information tab, click Brief Copy Information

9. Click Run Now
10. Open Finished Reports Wizard, double-click on your report

a. Uncheck the View Log and Format Report boxes
b. Click OK

11. Save file to your desktop.
12. Open Excel.
13. Open File, change Look In location to Desktop, change file type to All Files, find your file and double-click to open.

a. In the dialog box that opens, make sure the Delimited button is selected, and click Next
b. In the Delimiters, click in the empty box next to Other and type in a pipe (shift +backslash key), click Next
c. Click Finish.

14. You can now delete whatever columns you don’t want, change font size, change column width, and print out your report.

Creating shelflists for inventory

If you have a small collection, you may find it easier to do inventory using a printed shelflist rather than trying to wand everything in and run reports. There are two ways to generate a shelflist:

1. Go to the Reports module, and Schedule New Report. Select the My Titles tab, and scroll down to Shelflist by Call #. This report will allow you to limit by library and by Home Location. You can then limit the call # range, if you just want to do a section of that particular collection. WARNING! This is a complete shelflist, and will include titles that are Checked Out, in Mending, In Transit, Missing or Lost.

2. To get a shelflist of things that are checked in at the time you run the report, go to the Reports module, and Schedule New Report. When the Report Session Defaults pop up, make sure the Format Page options are set like the photo here:

Select the Templates tab and scroll down to Small Shelflist Template. Under the Item Selection tab, limit it to your library location and change BOTH the Home Location and the Current Location to the collection you want to look at.

Run the report, and when you view the finished report (without the log) in Notepad, save it as a text file (that's the default in Notepad). You can print the report directly in Notepad, but the formating makes it difficult to use.

In Excel, go to File - Open and select the Notepad file you have just saved (as a default, Excel will only show you other Excel files as options...you need to change the Files of Type to All Files). It will tell you that it is a Delimited file. Just click the 'Next' button at the bottom of the dialog box. In the next dialog box, change the delimiter from Tab to Pipe (the pipe character is the shift+backslash key, located just above your Enter key). Then click 'Next', and then 'Finish'.

You have now created a spreadsheet of your shelflist, and you can whack out the columns of information that you don't need (such as CATALOG, MARC> and Title). Just click on the letter at the top of the column you don't want, and once all those cells are highlighted go to Edit - Delete on your toolbar menu.

Here's where it gets ugly....if the item does not have a Personal Author in the record (if it's a group or corporate author), then that whole line in the Excel file gets shifted over a couple of cells and as you delete entire columns you will end up deleting the call # and barcode for that title. SO...scroll down the file, and everywhere in the Personal Author column where the cell says Title instead of Personal Author, click on that cell - go to Insert on the toolbar - scroll down to Cells - and then choose Shift Cells Right - and click OK. You will have to do this twice to get that row of info aligned properly.

It's all a lot of fussing, but once you've done it a couple of times it gets easier and you don't waste as much paper as you would with printing off the file in Word.

Customizing your toolbars (add blanket hold)

To change the toolbars on the left side of the screen in Unicorn, go to the links at the top of the page and click on Preferences - scroll down to Desktop - then to Current Toolbar - then to Local Toolbar Management.

Right-click on the module whose toolbars you want to customize, and then click Copy to Local. That particular module should now be listed at the far right of the screen under Local Toolbar Files. If it's already there, you don't need to re-add it (so if Unicorn asks "Local toolbar by that name already exists. Would you like to replace this toolbar?", you want to answer 'NO'). Expand the files in your local toolbar (click on the '+' sign next to the module name), and right-click on the group you want to modify. All of the wizards that are in Common Tasks just fall under the general Circulation heading, Holds wizards under Holds, etc. To add something to that section of the toolbar, click on Add Wizard. If you click on Remove, it will remove whatever group or wizard is currently highlighted. If you are adding a wizard, a Local Toolbar Management: create box will pop up, and you can just go to the drop-down menu under Wizard and search for the wizard you would like to add. Once you've clicked on the one you want, the rest of the empty fields in the box should fill automatically. Then you just click on the 'OK' at the bottom of the box, wait a minute or two and your new wizard will appear in the proper group on your Unicorn toolbar. By default, it will show up at the bottom of the group where you just added it. To move it around, see the post on Modifying Toolbars.

If you remove a wizard or group by mistake, all you have to do is repeat the first step in this process, and when Unicorn asks "Local toolbar by that name already exists, Would you like to replace this toolbar?", your answer should be 'yes'. This will restore all the defaults.

Modifying toolbars

Moving things around on your Unicorn toolbars is a little more complicated than adding or removing, because Unicorn doesn't like duplicate wizards. It will let you add a duplicate wizard to another part of your toolbar, but if you then try to rearrange its placement, it balks.

SO: to move an entire group you go into your Local Toolbar Management (see the Placing a Blanket Hold posting) and right-click on the group (Holds, Users, Items, Special, In-transit) that you want to move. Select 'Copy' and then select 'Remove'.

Now, go to the group next to where you want your 'removed' group to be located (you will be able to past the 'removed' group either above or below the highlighted group). Right-click on the new location, and select either 'Paste Before' or 'Paste After', depending on where you want it to go.

To move a wizard up and down the list within a group, you follow the same steps as for a group, only you are moving it around within a specific group. If you click on the 'Paste' option, and you get a message stating "The Wizard already exists in the toolbar", it means that the wizard is duplicated somewhere else in your toolbar - perhaps in another group - and needs to be removed.

If you want to have duplicate wizards in different groups, you will only be able to manipulate the precise location of one of them. Once that wizard is positioned exactly the way you want it, you can go back and add duplicates to other groups in your toolbar, but they will always be positioned at the bottom of the list within those groups.

More fun with toolbars

Do you hate the term 'Discharging' and want it to say "Checkin"? Go into your Local Toolbar management, right-click on your Local Circulation and right-click on the Discharging wizard. Select 'Modify' and in the Display Name field, type in Checkin.

Do you want to add a keyboard shortcut for wizards you use all the time? Right-click on the wizard, select Modify, and towards the bottom of the box is a field for Key Sequence. You can select one of the F keys, and you can also use various combinations of Alt and Shift to increase the number of shortcuts.

Tired of swapping back and forth between modules? You can add wizards from other modules wherever you want. You can either scroll through the list of Add Wizards (see the customizing toolbars post), or you can even copy them from the default toolbar list. When you're in Local Toolbar Management, your local toolbar is listed in the right-hand column. The left-hand column shows the default toolbar. Simply right-click the wizard you want and "Copy". Then right-click where you want the new wizard in your toolbar list, and you can either paste above or below.

Changing Hold Pickup Location

If a patron would like to change the library location where they will be picking up holds, this is a much simpler operation than it was in Dynix. In the Circulation module, go to the "Modify User Holds" wizard and look up the patron's account. Select the checkbox next to the hold they want to change, and then click on the 'Modify' button at the bottom of the screen. In the box that pops up, there are a number of different things you can change. To change where the hold is being picked up, select the new library from the drop-down menu. You can also suspend a hold if the patron is going away on vacation. Just select the appropriate dates in the Date Suspended and Date Unsuspended boxes using the little calendar gadget. We don't do Recall, so don't worry about those little buttons at the top.

Once you've made your changes, you will see the new pickup location listed along the item line (or the suspend/unsuspend dates, if you did that).

Lost Cards

If a patron has lost their library card, please DO NOT use the "User Lost Card" wizard. I know this seems counter-intuitive, but when you use this wizard, Unicorn completely duplicates the account, so you eventually end up with one user having multiple accounts and we don't want that.
So if someone loses their card and wants a replacement, go into "Modify User" and change their barcode there.