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Hi, Netters...

Just thought I would update you on an actual Unison conversion that I went
through over the Thanksgiving holiday. First, some disclaimers: My computer
tech lives with me (which can either be a plus or a minus) and I was able to
bring the server and a workstation home. That part really helped with the
tediousnes of the job.

Now for the facts: I have approx 11,500 items to convert. The server is a
486/40 with 8 mb of ram. The workstation is a 486/sx33 with 4 mb of ram. When
we start the novell network it tells us it has a speed index of 960.

The diagnostics took about 10 hours. The actual installation of the software
took 20 minutes. The conversion took about 12 hours and then the keyword
builder took another 6 hours.

Now for evaluation. Read the manuals for installation, conversion, and
utilities before you start. Be aware of what is in them. I found the manuals
for the most part to be ok, but I had to jump from this one to that one all
the time. Keep markers/ different colored pens around for making notes, etc.

The program itself I find to be quite good. Several great improvements showed
up immediately. Of particular note is the information from the catalog as to
when the next copy of an item is (was) due back. You also get the in/out
status from the initial list of materials in the catalog.

The security setup is still confusing. I would like to be able to secure part
of the circulation desk so that when ever someone goes to a particular part
(like check-out) it asks for a password (like it did in the old system).

A couple of real bugaboos that irritate me are in printing overdue lists: the
program automatically uses today's date for figuring what goes on that list.
There is no way that I have been able to figure out how to print out an
entire class list of transactions. (Let me regress here a bit...I am a
primary school on fixed schedule. Our philosphy is that if you bring your
book back, you get a new one. We have used Circ+ to help us with that since
1985 because we have been able to print out entire class transaction lists.)
Now all we get is a list of what is OVERDUE...not what is totally checked
out. (This should be easy for Follett to fix, as in printing individual
transaction lists, it asks if you want all checkouts included...) There are
many times that a teacher is going to miss library due to holiday, etc., and
wants to help her kids get their books back and we print an entire
transaction list with an overdue date of 9/9/99, which will include
everything. Unison does not give that choice.

Secondly, the price of books does not appear on any of the printouts: overdue
notes, transactions lists, and as far as I remember not even on bills!!! We
do not charge fines, but do ask for payment of the book when it is lost,
severely damaged, etc.

I have also noticed that the Follett established patron of Lost, Paid,
Bindery are gone...What happened to them???? There is only Special #1!!!!
What are the books that are in that??? If there was something in that I
missed it!.

The only other(???) difficulty is that my barwand is not working!
(minor???huh!!!) We have gone in and changed tha autoexec.bat., checked to be
sure the game card was actually being used, etc. As far as I can tell, we are
only using  "Follett Classic" barcodes, particularly for patrons, but NOTHING
works! I will be on the phone first thing Monday morning on that one!!!

I checked out Alliance autorecon and it was happily working away when I left
school this afternoon after taking all the equipment back. Haven't checked
out the PHD yet. That will come later this week. Since I have a "non
standard" printer (an old HP ThinkJet) we had to do some diddling with
printer set-up, but that is now working fine, also.

All in all, though, I think that I will be quite happy with Unison,
particularly when I get the lightpen working and when Follet gets those two
(as I see them big) problems with overdues fixed.  Will keep you guys posted
as I work with it a bit more...

anyone from Follett reading this???

Barb Baker
John Campbell School
Selah, WA

BarbBkr@aol.com


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