The Genie Orders module can be used not only for tracking materials ordered, including books, journal subscriptions and standing orders, but as a wish list – a database of materials you are thinking of ordering, or that have been requested by your users.

To use the Orders Module as a wish list, we recommend editing the Order Types listed in the MyGenie.config file to add a wish list entry.

e.g. <Type>Wish List</Type>

When entering order records, select this order type and optionally use the Requestor field to record who wished for the item. You will not likely want to create a Catalog record for these Order records just yet – not until you actually order them.

You may wish to edit the Orders Search screen to be able to search for items on the wish list. To do so, open MyQueries.config and find the "orders_search" search screen. The simplest way to add a new field is to copy en existing one and change the field name to OrdType.

e.g.

<QueryField Type="QueryField" CssClass="SearchTextInput" LabelCssClass="SearchLabel" ShowBrowse="true" ShowBoolean="true" FieldList="OrdType"/>

This will allow you to find all items on the wish list. When enough have accumulated, you might select them from the search results and email the list to staff for a vote in which ones to actually order.

The Catalog InfoCart feature in Genie is a handy way of collecting records that you want to edit. As you search through the Catalog, you can click the Add to Cart link without interrupting your searching. When you have assembled a collection of records to edit, you can view the InfoCart, and by making the small change described below, click an Edit link within the InfoCart display to edit each record. The Prev and Next links on the Catalog edit screen will take you through the records in your collection, without having to either return to the InfoCart or search for the records again. This is a great workflow improvement.

To enable the Edit link in the InfoCart, open the MyReports.config file in a text editor and find the "InfoCartBrief" report. If you haven’t made any other changes, the final 2 lines of the report definition will look like this:

<Field Header="&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;">%%CartRemove</Field>

<Field Display="&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;">%%Label</Field>

which displays the Remove from Cart link.

If you change the above 2 lines to these:

<Field Header="&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;">%%EditButton</Field>

<Field>%%VerticalBar</Field>

<Field>%%CartRemove</Field>

<Field Display="&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;">%%Label</Field>

the InfoCart will display an Edit link and the Remove from Cart link, separated by a |.

After saving the config file, be sure to reload it by selecting the About Genie link in the Genie menu and clicking Reset.

Andornot’s popular WebPublisher RSS Control has long allowed our clients to generate an RSS feed of any content from any textbase. Just recently, we configured our RSS control to work with a Genie Catalog. Since Inmagic WebPublisher PRO underlies Genie, it was relatively easy to make the RSS control play nicely with Genie. Generating the RSS feed via a query into WebPublisher is done in the same way, but the tricky part was having the link in the RSS feed take the user into the Genie OPAC, as though the user had searched there.

We’ve configured an example RSS feed here from our Genie demo (best viewed in an RSS reader or as an RSS feed in Outlook).

RSS is an effective way of sharing information with broad audience. Some great ideas for feeds include:

• a feed of the latest items added to the catalog;
• a feed of items on particular subjects or by favourite (or in-house) authors; and
• a feed of the latest serials checked-in.

Please contact us to use the Andornot RSS control with your Genie system.

The Law Society of Saskatchewan is the latest Andornot client to launch Genie (part of the Inmagic DB/Text Library Suite).

The Law Society Library is a long-time Inmagic user, with several textbases used to manage books, journals, legal resources, and other materials. These databases are maintained in the Society’s two main offices in Regina and Saskatoon, with online access for society members through the society's website.

One of the challenges facing the library was managing all of these databases from separate locations. "We were looking for any way to streamline our core tasks of acquisitions and circulation by eliminating double and sometimes triple data entry and the never-ending battle of syncing databases," says Toby Willis-Camp, Director of Libraries at the Law Society. The library selected Genie as a solution, as it provides a single, central, web-based system for all the core library functions. The library also opted to have Andornot host both the Genie system, as well as the entire society website, with its members-only resources and other searchable databases.

Andornot and the staff in the Law Society Library planned and completed a conversion of several Inmagic databases into the Genie system, with special attention paid to de-duplicating records from similar source databases.

While the library staff use the Genie Catalogue, Orders, Serials and other "back-end" modules for their day-to-day work, a new search interface for society members and the public was created, based on the Andornot Starter Kit. This OPAC features:

• quick and advanced search screens for all library materials;
• a specific search screen for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) materials;
• the full text of CPD materials, with a link from the record to a PDF of the material, for immediate online access;
• tick boxes allow society members to mark items as they find them, then submit a request to the library for those materials, or email a copy of the list to themselves or a colleague, or save or print the list; and
• icons in the search results to help users more easily identify the types of materials in their search results. Different icons appear for books, journals, websites, DVDs and CPD materials.

"Every time I use the OPAC I break out into a huge smile, because I am so pleased with how it's working and presents the information.  I am absolutely ecstatic about the 'public face' we now present," says Willis-Camp.

Members of the Law Society register in a different online system, but thanks to a behind-the-scenes transfer of information into Genie on a regular basis, the Genie Borrowers database is always up to date with society members.

"It was a year filled with immense change at the Library.  Working with Andornot made most of those changes go more smoothly.  We are looking forward to using Genie at its full potential, and continuing to improve and expand our web presence with Andornot's expert assistance." says Willis-Camp.

Please contact Andornot for more information on Genie, the Andornot Starter Kit, and our hosting and consulting services.

In their latest newsletter, Inmagic reseller Maxus of Australia reports on a client developing an export from Inmagic Genie to the EndNote bibliographic citation software.  This is using the new functionality to add extra reports to the InfoCart which was introduced in service pack 1 for Genie version 3.3.

“Many Inmagic textbases contain bibliographic records for items that users wish to cite when preparing conference papers or other reports. EndNote is one of the citation tools that is widely used for this purpose and we have often been asked whether it is possible to transfer data from Inmagic textbases into EndNote. Until recently the only way we were aware of to do this was to export a comma delimited file of the required records, that EndNote could import.

However, when Jenny Ward, Information Officer at Women’s Health Victoria asked about users being able to do this from the WHV Genie Catalogue recently, we realised that a new approach was required. In her training on the use of EndNote, Jenny learned that one of the EndNote import formats could be readily reproduced as a Genie report, so she went ahead and designed exactly that report.

We were then able to add the report as an option in the Genie InfoCart activity list. Users can now search in Genie, save the required records into the Cart, then use the Cart to list the items in a report from which the set of citations can be copied into a text file and imported into EndNote. It’s a neat solution.

See it in action in the WHV catalogue at http://resources.whv.org.au/InmagicGenie/opac.aspx.

After searching for some items, click “Add to Cart” for one or two, then click the Cart link to open the Cart.  Select Plain Text Tagged in the drop down list, then click Go to see the resulting page, from which records can be saved.”

Please contact us if you need consulting assistance to add extra reports such as this to your Inmagic Genie implementation.