Learning more everyday

I have been learning a lot over the last week or so and thought now would be a good time to comment on it.

Last Thursday I attended a rather wet Heritage Open Day in Oxford with our Systems Librarian. As most of what I have learnt about Heritage has been self taught I was looking forward to learning a bit more about the system. I enjoyed being shown all the variants for different parts of the system. We also got given a Handy Heritage user guide which will help me in the areas I don't know as much about.

Once they got on to reports and global chnage/ delete it took a while but I actually started to understand just how much useful information Hertitage actually stores. This week I ran a report to see how many books we have at our Hinckley site and I was really quite proud  of myself that I managed to do it (albeit with guidance from our Librarian) I think I could confidently run reports if I knew all the codes (of whcih there are thousands) and as I am a bit of a data lover I would actaully delight in all the different reports I could produce.

This week we have had 'training' on how to use the new RF system for the Hinckley Library. I do like the look of the alarm gates much more than those used for the electromagnetic system we used to use, however the procdeure to issue books is a bit old fashioned. We have a large plastic wallet in which we put in an issue card to block the Radio Frequency when issuing books. What I don't like about this system is it makes it very clear where the secutiry tag is as well as how easy it will be to lose the issue card as it stick out of the top of the wallet.

I have enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about the equipment we use everyday and feel a bit knowledgeab;e aboutt he systems Libraries use - both for security and for catalouging.