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Tip for: 01.09.17

Welcome back to another spectacular year!

Have you thought about using a Bulletin Board to publish a list of the new books you have received? It is absolutely perfect for this since you can make the bulletin expire on a specific date—so you don't have to worry about remembering to delete it.

New Books Bulletin

This is a two-step process.

First, you need a list of the new items. Run a report selecting by accession date.

  • Go to Reports and Titles Reports.*
  • In v7, use the Title Information report, and fill in the Titles added selection.
  • In v6, use the Title List - 1 Line report, Select By Title Accession Date, and fill in the Starting Date and Ending Date for the range you wish to include.
  • Click on Print or Run. In the report PDF, copy the list of items.


* Do I want Titles or Copies? Both Title and Copies reports are valid for finding new items, but it depends on the selection of items you want. If you often add Title records long before the items are available, you may want to use a larger and older date range to catch all the new items your patrons can actually check out. Selecting by Copy Accession may work better if you only add the copy records when you have the physical copy. However, new Copies may not be as exciting as new Titles!


Now for the second part of the process: adding the Bulletin Board.

  • Go to Tools (v7) or Show (v6) and select Bulletin Board.
  • Click on the Add (+) icon at the bottom to create a new Bulletin.
  • Enter a descriptive Bulletin Name that the patrons will see, e.g. New Books.
  • Enter dates in the Show Bulletin From and Until fields. After the expiration (Until) date, Alexandria will hide the bulletin.
  • Paste the text from your report of new books into the Bulletin Text field at the bottom of the window. You might have some cleanup to do.
  • Pick a Color, drag and drop an Image, etc. to make the Bulletin look appealing.
  • Remember, you can use HTML to add bold headings and format the bulletin post.
  • When finished, click on Save.

Bulletin setup

If you have just a few new books, consider making a board for New Arrivals and a separate bulletin on the board for each new item, complete with cover art and summaries and a link to the item in your catalog.


See also this Tip of the Week about creating Bulletin Boards.

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