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Public Libraries
Problem:
Horizon's circulation processes do not support two key policies of the library:
  • Charging a fee for patrons who do not pick up items that were placed on hold for them
  • Aging claims-returned items to lost
Solution:

Create two new day-end steps to implement these policies; include full integration with the Horizon borrower block and fine payment functions.

 

More Public Library Solutions:
Community oversight body wants reports that are not available from Horizon. Create report templates that can be run when needed and match the format the library wants to use in dealing with its community government.

Staff needs a simple way to weed items and when appropriate, now itemless bibs. Moreover, they need to get a list of the OCLC numbers (properly normalized) of the deleted bibs to submit to OCLC. Alpha-G's Weed Collection utility handles the deletions; a new day-end step e-mails the properly formatted OCLC numbers to the head cataloger.

  
Special Libraries
Problem:
Partners and employees in a law firm need to know who has a book checked out (they may need it now); iPAC can not display that.
Solution:
Add a Show Borrower function to the appropriate screens of the customer's iPAC display.
 

More Special Library Solutions:
Stock screen layouts for iPAC do not meet patrons' needs; library staff's normal workload does not allow them to learn to make the changes themselves. Alpha-G's restructuring of the screens helps them achieve better service for the library's patrons.

It is time to migrate to a new server, but the tech staff are not experienced with Sybase. Alpha-G assists and advises to ensure a successful, low-cost transition and resolves configuration problems that would have crippled the performance of the new server.

An inexperienced cataloging staff member has entered hundreds of titles into the bibliographic data in all capital letters. Alpha-G develops a customized tool to convert titles to conventional capitalization. The tool also properly handles acronyms (which should remain in all capitals) and proper names (which should be capitalized even when not the first word in the title).

 
Academic Libraries
Problem:
By-hand changes to update fixed-field MARC tag data are tedious and potentially error-prone. These changes simply do not get made because the normal workload takes precedence.
Solution:
Modify existing Alpha-G Replace Tag Text utility to handle fixed-field tag updates as well as updates of subfield-delimited tags.
 

More Academic Library Solutions:
Tools for checking 856-tag URLs fail on some unusual, but valid, characters. Alpha-G's Link Checker handles the unusual characters and produces a particularly helpful report which allows browser-based verification and searching to simplify updating any bad links.

The library staff needs to import data from the campus purchasing system, so expenditure of funds is handled exclusively through the campus system, but they still want to use the tracking, claiming, and processing capabilities of Horizon Acquisitions. Alpha-G creates generic tools that can solve their problem (as well as those of libraries with similar needs but different data sources).

The library needs to periodically export MARC records with serial holdings to facilitate sharing of serials articles among members of a cooperating library group. Alpha-G creates a utility that exports serials holdings along with MARC bibliographic data.