About Inventory Setup

Your library’s cataloging staff marks incoming items with barcodes, collection codes, and call numbers that indicate information such as where the item belongs, title, author, publication date, and other such facts. (For more information about cataloging, see the Cataloging Guide.)

This chapter assumes that you know how to use the Table Editor. (For more information, see “Horizon Table Editor” in the “Getting Started” chapter of the System Administration Guide.)

Whenever you make a change to Horizon setup, you should exit Horizon and restart it on any workstation where you want the change to take effect.

When you enter the items’ barcodes, collection codes, or call numbers marked on the items into the Horizon database, they become part of the record you use for tracking those items. Your system administrator must set up tables in the database to help track and report where the items should be and where they are. If you use hand-held computers for your inventory, your system administrator must also set up those units.

Have your system administrator set up the correct passkeys and roles in Horizon security before you continue. (For more information about roles and passkeys, see “Securing Horizon” in the “Security and Preferences” chapter of the System Administration Guide.)

Before you take inventory, your system administrator must set up parameters in these tables:

Item status. When the system administrator sets the parameters in the item status, Horizon uses those parameters to determine whether or not to report an item with a particular status as an exception.
Collection. Lets you group related items.
Collection inventory. Lets you assign the location and call number type for an inventory. A call number is a set of characters that describes such things as the location for an item and type of information in that item. Call number type refers to a system used to identify and track items in a library (for example, the Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal System). Collection Inventory is linked to the Collection table.

Make sure any exceptions from previous inventories have been cleared before starting inventory. (For more information about how to do this, see Running the Inventory Exceptions Report.)

This chapter explains these tasks:

 


© 1998-2017 Sirsi Corporation