HERITAGE - LIBRARY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

What better way to get an idea of how a system works than to actually try it? We have a demonstration version of Heritage Online setup for just this purpose.

Use the demonstration version of Heritage Online

Some suggested 'Logins'

Heritage Online is highly configurable and you can set it up to match the needs of different groups of users. To get an idea of how this can be used, we have configured our demonstration version to provide different facilities for different users. The default, which you get before logging in, shows more or less all the options, but different setting are visible if you try logging in using one of the following users (readers in Heritage terms):

• R0001 (this login is for a reader with very simple requirements, so shows a basic view of the OPAC)
• R0009 
• 022516

Below is a script which will take you through much of what can be achieved using Heritage Online. This is particularly useful for searches as our data may not contain quite the sort of material you are used to searching for.

Heritage Online Test Script

This quick guide should give you a good overview as to the type of services Heritage Online can offer. The instructions have been divided into sections for ease of reading, but for a full introduction to Heritage Online it is best if you work through the whole list in sequence.

Starting out

Firstly, have a look around the screen at all the information provided. Each of these ‘widgets’ (the information panels such as ‘News and information’ and ‘Quick links’) are customizable and can be turned off, if you require. If you want to offer certain widgets to some of your users whilst keeping the interface very simple for others then you can offer as many views of your Heritage Online as you like using our Enquiry Groups facility (the group a user belongs to determines which view of Heritage Online they see). There is no cost implication to this.

Reader information

• In the ‘Please log in’ widget on the right enter a Reader Code of R0009.
• You will then be able to see (along the top toolbar) the Account information, Circulation (for self-issue, renewals etc), History (previous searches), Favourites (reading lists and saved searches) and Preferences for Dianne Allen. She is a librarian in our library, so has a Manage option too, so that she can manage other users’ preferences if required. You will also see additional widgets appear at the foot of the screen, such as the records she has most recently viewed.

Basic Searching

• Try a search on the term environment.
• Click on the title Human interactions with the geosphere (you will notice that the search term, environment, is highlighted in red in the notes field of the full record view). The bibliographic information displayed in this screen is customisable - you can select a different display format from the 'Display' widget on the right-hand side of the screen. Hover your mouse over the magnifying glass icons displayed after the subjects and keywords and you will see that you can use it to find similar items.
• You will see that this item has been reviewed and has a star rating. It is possible, now you are logged in, to create reviews and ratings for any item (by clicking on the 'Rate this' or 'Create review' buttons below the book cover image). Our reviews are unmoderated, so please don't be libellous! Library staff would normally moderate reviews before they are published, depending on the institution.

Selecting & Printing/Emailing/Saving search results (inc. Reading Lists)

• Search for Fiction. Select a few of the records using the checkboxes to the left of the screen.
• To the right of the results display you will see a ‘Results’ widget. You have the option to print, email or download those records, or add them to a favourites list that you can name yourself (e.g. Books I’d like to read). NB. These lists can be shared with other OPAC users if the user is given permission to do so (so in an academic institution a tutor could share with a group of students - this is done by clicking on 'Favourites' on the menu bar above and clicking on the 'Share' icon next to the list concerned (the person icon). The list will then appear as a 'Public list' in all the other users 'Favourites' areas.
• Search for Education. Click on the ‘See Also’ tab (just above the search box) to see other terms linked to education in the thesaurus.
• Choose learners to perform a further search. You will see a search hint appear at the top of the screen (the hint is linked to the term ‘learners').

Advanced Search

• Click on ‘Advanced’ (underneath the search box) and try searching for education in any field, but just looking at websites. This will give you a list of websites to try (note: some of the other documents such as brochures and PDFs may work, but some may have been moved, so it is best to go for live links to websites where specified).

Boolean Searching

• Click on ‘Simple’ to go back to the simple search box again and search for environment and uk and politics and health. Because there are no hits it will give you hits on each individual term and related terms from the thesaurus.
• Select something to search on.

Guided search

• Click on ‘Guided Search’ (on the top toolbar) This enables you to search for a term where it occurs in a particular field (much like the Advanced search, but these are fixed search options intended to help guide the casual enquirer). Try searching on fiction in all fields but with a publication date between 2012 and 2014.

Circulation

• Click on ‘Logout’ on the left of the screen, then ‘Login’ and enter a reader code of R0003. Usually he has text size of 125% as he is short-sighted (although we can’t stop the people trialling this copy from changing it – check his ‘Preferences’ information if it doesn’t look larger than normal).
• Click on ‘Circulation’ in the bar above the search box. You will see Circulation functions appear in a widget on the right-hand side of the screen.

NB. You can try issuing, returning and renewing different items (T and a number between 14000 and 15700 number will normally work as an accession number e.g. T14378, T15129 etc).

Reservations

• Log in as R0009 again.
• Click on 'Search' again and enter any term.
• When looking through the full details of the results, try placing a reservation by clicking on the ‘Reserve’ button just above the item details at the foot of the screen.

Place Bookings

• Search for Meeting rooms and select the 'Meeting rooms' record. You could, if you wish, use a photograph of a meeting room where the book cover would be displayed on a book record. You can add images to any catalogue record to act as the OPAC image.
• Click on the 'Place booking' button on the left of the screen.
• You will see the availability for all the rooms in the next few hours. To see the future availability of Meeting Room 1, click on the 'MR1' button at the foot of the screen.

Email the Library

• Click on ‘Email Library’ (at the bottom of the 'Library contact details' widget at the bottom right of the screen). There is a list of suggested subjects in the drop-down list, but each library can choose their own.
• Click back to ‘Search’ again. You might try clicking on ‘Help’ at any time – it is context-specific.

Phrase Searching

• Search for war and peace.
• Click on 'Search' again and this time try “war and peace” (with double quotes). This will search for the phrase rather than a boolean search.
• Search for war and peace and not nuclear (no quotes again this time) – this will result in a different number of hits.

Wildcard and Date-range Searching

• Try searching for psych*. This will return results for psychology, psychiatry, psychiatric etc.
• Click Back and amend the search to psych* and 2000...2010 - this will only get you works published between 2000 and 2010 (it is possible to search on other types of dates, e.g. in the title field, using the Advanced search facility, but the facility from the General search assumes you mean publication dates).
• Finally, search for *ology. Not that you ever would, but just to prove it works!

Thank you for taking the time to look closely at Heritage Online. If you have any problems with this script, or if you spot any 'damage' done to the data by previous testers, then please email Emma Duffield. We are very happy to arrange free demonstrations of Heritage upon request (on-site if you are in the UK).