Take a look at the cool things we've prepared for the new school year!

• Improved Reservations interface. It's all new, easy, and flexible. Plus, there's a calendar.

• More customizable Reports. Choose multiple policies when making selections. Also, now you can pick the font size and number of rows for your 8x6 spine labels.

• Other anticipated updates. Include cover art when you print or send patron details. Sort your results by publication year in Search as well. 

Important

• If you self host on a Mac, hold off updating to macOS 10.15 Catalina. Alexandria will be 64-bit compatible in an upcoming release.

New & Improved

Circulation

• Enhanced Reservations with new tools that are easier to use, smarter, and more flexible. 

• Added an option to include cover art when you print or email patron details.

• Enhanced the Assign Keywords (V) Command to also support series (VE <Series>;<Volume>).

• Added the Check Out / In-Transit (CHX) Command to Textbook Tracker. This will place copies in transit and change their site. When bookdropping, the option to bookdrop one copy or the entire batch is given.

• Restored Item Validation to the Validate (VV) Command. The VV command will validate the current patron unless a different barcode is specified. This includes the use of VV= (where "=" represents the current copy).

Management

• The Clever GUID is now displayed in Patron Management, when applicable.

• Importing patron pictures via SIF is now possible.

• Authority Control suggestions can now be dismissed with the ‘esc’ key.

Preferences

• Removed the Use System Setting option from Preferences > Localization > Dates & Currency. In many environments, including cloud-hosted, the settings for the system where the server is running are not applicable. When required, administrators should configure the currency preferences for their database directly.

• Simplified the Reservations preferences as part of our larger improvements in this area:
• The Days in advance to check for reservations setting now applies to both notices and the period required between one reservation and the next.
• The settings specific to allowing reservations to start or end on closed days have been removed. Now reservations can never begin on closed days; they can end on closed days, but will never be due on a closed day.
• The preferences related to librarian and patron notifications were renamed for clarity.

Reports

• Added both tall and wide Copy Labels (8x6), Variable reports, which allow you to pick the font size and number of rows for your 8x6 spine labels.

• Added a Patron Balance report.

• Added a Title Available Copies report to both Alexandria Librarian and Textbook Tracker that shows the number of available copies at each site for each title in the selection.

• Patron reports in both Alexandria Librarian and Textbook Tracker now offer the ability to choose multiple policies when making selections. For future updates, we will be adding this capability to export, utility, and additional report areas, as well as additional selections.

• The Patron Payment History report now provides an option to include payments within a specified date range. The report now also includes the “reason” when applicable.

• Overdue Notice reports now offer both Due Date and Days Overdue selections.

• The Overdue Notice in Email format now supports the option to include Replacement Cost.

• Selections and other report parameters no longer show in report headers. Instead, they are included in the enhanced summary files, which are accessible from within Operation Management.

• The Accelerated Reader and Reading Counts Information Titles reports now include an option to select for titles with a test, without a test, or either.

• Fixed a bug that caused inaccuracies with the Titles with No Copies report after modifying title call numbers.

• Fixed a bug that prevented expired In-Stock Holds from displaying on the Expired In-Stock Holds report.

• The Lost Items Charge Notice report in the 2 Per Page format now shows a correct balance and "amount due this slip" for all lost charges. 

• Adjusted column widths on several Circulation notice reports to prevent overlapping text with long barcodes and call numbers.

Researcher

• The default Researcher Pane has been updated with new buttons. 

• Added a shortcut in Search to view hidden items: hold alt/option on your keyboard when you search.

• Added a Publication Year sort option in Search.

• Browse now allows adding items to a saved list.

System

• Improved performance and reliability.

• There have been substantial internal changes to the Alexandria Configuration Engine. Administrators need to be aware that certain configuration information must be stored outside of the database so that it is accessible during startup. This must also be the case before the web server, database engine, and other components can be brought online. This information is now stored in the GlobalConfig.json support file. The Configuration.txt and Config.txt support files have been deprecated. We suggest that you modify the contents of this file ONLY under the direction of COMPanion Customer Support, and when doing so, be aware that this file is sensitive not only to correct keys and values but also to proper JSON structure.

Utilities

• Added the Change Patron Location utility to Textbook Tracker to help with back-to-school operations.

• Enhanced the Check In utility to support check in for Temporary Items.