Follett VERSION 6.00, User Manual

Page: 52 / 730

04/04 52 System Setup
Increasing access to your collection with categories
Circulation Plus/Catalog Plus let you create categories for your collection. You
assign your categories to copies in your collection in Cataloging. Categories are
most commonly used for report generation and curriculum support.
As an example of a reportbased category, let's imagine that you wanted to see a
list of books you purchased using money from an Olin Foundation grant. You
would create a category, Olin Foundation grant," and then assign that category
to those copies as you purchased them. You would then generate a Titles by
Category Report.
For an example of a curriculumbased category, let's look at a teacher's reading
list. If you create a category for the books on Mr. Smith's biology class reading
list, the Titles by Category Report you generate can then be distributed to Mr.
Smith's students. Since copy call numbers are listed on the Titles by Category
Report, students can go to the shelves to find the books on their reading list.
Another example of a curriculumbased category might be Books about
presidents." You can selectively assign this category to books that contain
presidential biographies. When students are searching for report topics, your
Titles by Category Report will save them time when finding the books they need.
The following is a list of additional reports, other than the Titles by Category
Report, that you can generate according to category or limit by category:
Bibliography, Inventory List by Title, and Circulation Statistics.
See also:
For more information about the reports listed above, please see
Chapter 37, Cataloging reports," and Chapter 38, Circulation reports."
In addition to reports, you can use categories for collection maintenance tasks. In
Cataloging, you can specify a category or a range of categories when exporting
MARC records or when adding them to the Book Cart for further processing.
If you have OPAC installed, you can quicken the search process by selecting
Category as one of the search options available at a search station. For
information about enabling category searches in OPAC, see Choosing search
options," page 410.
Except for selfgenerated categories created by Cataloging during MARC 21
import and the Temporary category, there are no default or builtin categories. If
you import a MARC 21 record into Cataloging that contains a category code that
doesn't already exists in System Setup, Cataloging creates a category with the
description <Code> <Added by Import>," where the code would be the
category code number from the imported record. After the MARC records are
imported, you can change this description to something meaningful to your
collection. The Temporary category is automatically assigned to temporary items
that are created in Circulation Desk during a checkout.