Hello:

We are in the midst of upgrading to Version 8. Due to growth in our organization, our acquisitions have become increasingly complex and the method as it is designed in DBText for Libraries (i.e, as a subsection of the catalog textbase) does not fully support our needs.

Has anyone developed a separate acquisitions textbase and would they be willing to share their design tips (including how they link it with the catalog & supplier textbases)?

Many thanks.

Becky

Hi Becky. I have done a rudimentary acquisitions textbase, linked to catalogue via the item ID. It works for us by recording supplier, price, cost centre etc of each order and allows a many to one relationship - ie many orders to one catalogue record. Please feel free to contact me off list for more detail. Raewyn.Adams@bopdhb.govt.nz. Raewyn.

Becky,

We have created separate acquisitions textbases for several clients. These vary in complexity depending on the needs of the client.

It is of course always best to link on an automatic ID field to ensure that there is a unique match. However this doesn't allow browsing from the acquisitions textbase and you would need to know the appropriate catalog ID. If this is significant, we have sometimes created a UniqueTitle field which is a combination of the title plus some other element that makes it unique - usually edition or ISBN.

You might want to take a look at Genie, Inmagic's web based library application. It was originally based on DB/Text for Libraries but the latest version has separate orders and items textbases. These allow for tracking the costs of individual copies, and not all items ordered need to appear in the catalog.

Kathy