What is Site Management?

If you manage a single site collection, you will only ever have information for your one site in the Sites management window; we call this the Union Site Record. However, Alexandria also has the ability to mange multiple collections stored within a single database; we call this a Centralized Catalog. In a Centralized Catalog environment, an operator must be able to quickly differentiate data belonging to one collection over another. In order to achieve this, our software embeds Patron and Item records with something we call a Site Code. All Centralized Catalogs have a Union Site Record within the list of Site Codes when logging into Alexandria as administrator. Typically the Union Site Record will be labeled as the school or district name that was registered with Alexandria. 

Difference Between a Union Site Record & a Site Code

This information is only applicable to organizations who utilize a Centralized Catalog for Alexandria. If you are on a single site license then your site is the Union Site Record.

A Union Site Record is a special purpose site, it does not operate like a normal site. It will not appear as a selection in Reseacher and any items assigned to it may only be checked out by System Patrons (Barcodes 1-100). It is used by Alexandria in two ways:

• As a place to assign Patron or Items records that do not have a designated site.
• Defining Preference default settings; when a new site is created the Preference settings from the Union Site are copied to the new site.

Site ID Codes are used by Alexandria in several ways:

• To identify the collection for which a copy belongs.
• To identify the site for which a patron belongs.
• To determine whether a book-droppped copy was returned to the correct location or if it needs to be placed in transit and returned to the owning library.
• To determine copy availability at particular locations when placing holds and reservations.
• To filter a patron's Researcher search results to display only a particular collection (or group of collections) for which they are interested.
• Other areas affected by Sites management include Subscriptions, Routes, Maps, and Bulletins. 

Sites Management Window

The Sites management window is where you configure or create the Site ID Codes and provide information pertaining to either your single school or each of the individual schools in your Centralized Catalog.

Your initial (or single) site record (including the default library name and address) is set by your registration information. Your address, city, state, postal code, country, telephone, and fax data is used for return addresses on patron notices, for information shown on Researcher Workstations, and is included in emails sent to COMPanion's Customer Support team.

This address information will also be used as defaults when creating a new patron if no city, state, postal code, or country information is specified. 

Once a new “site” has been created, it can be selected by any operator (depending on their Security Group and Site Access settings) using Site drop-down menus found in the Patrons and Items management windows, Subscriptions, Routes, Maps, Bulletins, and the Alexandria Researcher. Valid and available sites are always pulled from the Sites management window. 

In Sites Management, you'll be able to view, modify, add, and remove site information by using the current record fields and the commands in the Actions (menu. By default, only operators with District or Library Administrator security levels may configure site information.

The Sites management window consists of a similar two-panel layout found in many of Alexandria’s main management windows.

• The left-hand side of the Sites management window belongs to the Site Records List, used for browsing sites and other related tools. This section is only appears for Centralized Catalog catalogs.
• The larger, right-hand portion of the Sites management window consists of the Current Site Record pane where the currently selected site record is displayed, in full, along with associated tools in the Actions menu that help perform operations on said record.
• The site you are presently viewing is called the current site. If you are part of a Centralized Catalog environment, you will have multiple sites records to choose from. When you click on a site from the Site Records List pane, that site's record information will be displayed in the Current Site Record pane on the right. 
  
  

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