Beginning-of-Year Procedures

Here are some answers to common questions and tips for beginning your school year with Alexandria. Please note that several of the procedures described here, such as updating calendars, advancing patron grades, removing graduated students, and updating patron policies, overlap with our End-of-Year Procedures. If you took these steps at the end of the previous school year, you don't need to do them again! Also note that procedures involving calendars and patrons overlap with Textbook Tracker, meaning you only have to do those procedures once to count for both Alexandria and Textbook Tracker.

1. Update Calendars
2. Advance Patrons
   1. Advance Patron Grades
   2. Update Patron Policies 
3. Import Patron Records
4. Remove Graduated Students
5. Update Expired Cards
6. Backups

Additional resources:

• Check out the Back-to-School Workshop video if you would like to be walked through the procedures mentioned here.

• Need a quick refresher on how to operate Alexandria? Read the Alexandria Refresher.

• If you're still using Alexandria v6, go through the Beginning-of-Year Procedures for v6 instead.

• Print out this handy Beginning-of-Year Procedures infographic to keep at your desk. It's a great reminder of what needs to be done!

Calendars

Calendars are used in conjunction with Patron Policies to accurately perform circulation-based calculations, like due dates, fines, holds and reservations, etc. Alexandria will not adjust the due date after an item has been checked out, so it's important to establish your Closed and Period Due dates at the beginning of the year, before any items or resources are checked out. Read Calendar Preferences to learn more.

1. Go to Preferences > Calendars.
2. Select a calendar from the list on the left.
3. Choose a date and click once for Closed, twice for Period Due.
   1. To close the same day of the week for the entire month, click on one or more day of the week headings at the top of the calendar.
   2. Click + to add a note to a particular date.
4. Click Save and move on to the next month, or the next calendar.
5. Repeat step 2-4 for each calendar.

Patrons are assigned to a calendar according to their Patron Policy. Go to Preferences > Policies and check that each patron policy is assigned to the correct calendar and that Apply Period Due Dates is checked.

Run the Remove Patrons utility to remove graduated students from the database. You may need to run it multiple times with different selections, depending on your needs.

1. Go to Tools > Utilities.
2. Select the Patrons > General category.
3. Choose the Remove Patrons utility on the right.
4. On the Selections tab, enter the criteria needed to select the individual patrons or groups of patrons you intend to remove. Make sure the correct status is selected (like Active or Transferred, or choose Any to include them all). Then depending on your method for tracking graduated patrons, you can use two different selections:
   1. If you keep track of graduation dates in patron records, enter the appropriate date range or relative date in the Graduation Date field. 
   2. If you use Last Grade in the Grade Table Preferences, enter the user-defined value for Last Grade in the Patrons in Grade field (most commonly "Graduated").
5. On the Options tab, choose if you want patrons to be removed even if they have items checked out or outstanding charges.
6. Click Run.

Do you use expiration dates for patron library cards? Run the Renew Patron Cards utility to update the expiration dates for the new year. It will reset and update the Card Exp. Date for all matching patrons to a date X number of days from when the utility is run, as specified in their Patron Policy.

For example, if the patron's policy has Days Patron's Card is Active set to 365 and the utility is run on May 30, 2019, the patron's new expiration date would be May 29, 2020.

1. Go to Tools > Utilities.
2. Select the Patrons > General category on the left.
3. Choose the Renew Patron Cards utility on the right.
4. On the Selections tab, enter the criteria for the patrons whose cards you want to renew. To renew ALL expired patron cards, leave the default settings.
5. Run the utility.

Finally, create a complete backup of your Alexandria Data folder. Unlike an archive, backups are considered a "last resort" in case everything else fails.

Don't store your backups on the same device as your library data station. We recommend storing your backups with a file hosting or cloud storage service, like Dropbox or CrashPlan, which are specifically designed to backup to other machines or off-site servers. If you use an external hard drive, we suggest storing it in a fire-resistant safe in an off-site location. It may seem extreme, but you never know what will happen, and we want you to be prepared for the worst.

This is also a great time to review and possibly revise your backup strategy. Read Back Up Your Data to learn more.