TECH:>Hit Class Lists/Circ Software (Long)

[Ellen Dibble <ses@BLUEMARBLE.NET>]

ALEXANDRIA
We are switching to Alexandria this year. I am still transferring MARC records
so havent attempted to import patron records from the school computer, but
tech services assures me that it can be done.  We'll see, but I am excited
about the possibility of no longer typing each patron in singly.
Judy Jensen
Laramie Senior High School
Laramie, WY  82070
jensenjk@uwyo.edu

I have Alexandria and I converted the secretary's database from Microsoft Works
to Claris and imported all the lists without retyping. The trick was to make
sure to save it as a text file and then import. It was wonderful!
Barb Ehlers
Wings Park Elementary
Oelwein IA
EhlersB9247@uni.edu

From: wintersj@TEN-NASH.TEN.K12.TN.US
I had a computer person from our county technology dept. come and
download (or somehow) the names from the school office into a format that
fit my Alexandria circ. program.  The only thing I'm putting in is the
homeroom teacher and grade.
Jeannie J. Winters

From: KellerKS@aol.com
     We have imported our 5th grade from the office registration database
into our automation system, Alexandria, for 3 years.  This year the office
switched to MacSchool, and I was fearful of getting the job done, but with 2
calls to tech support, it took less than an hour to figure out how to
download 240 student records and upload them again!  I was so relieved and
thrilled!  As much as I dislike troubleshooting all the problems with the 150
or so computers in our bldg, this is one time that I would hate to be without
them!  The only thing we do by hand is to change the homeroom numbers on the
6th-8th graders.
Karen Keller, LMS, Johnston Middle School

We use Alexandria automation system. It is simple to get a class list from
the student rolls and import the information into out automation system as a
data base saved as a text file. This despite the fact that the offices use
Windows based machines and we are using a Mac automation system.
We also use a data base file to add our local call numbers or any other local
information to our catalog when it is advantageous to make a number of
alterations at once, rather than calling up each record individually.
Helen Seagraves   Hood River, OR   Hcgraves@aol.com

COLUMBIA
From: Barbara Goldstein <barbarag@umd5.umd.edu>
Some people in our county (Anne Arundel - in Maryland) use the Columbia
system which is the same software as the office staff.  They can import
the student's names and addresses.  All that has to be done is giving the
student a barcode number and entering their homeroom.  I am one of the
few in my county that still uses Follett which I really wouldn't trade
for the world.  However, I have to enter each name and homeroom teacher,
grade, school year one by one.  It takes a long time to do - I have 1100
students, but I still like my system better!!
Barbara Goldstein

By all means, *do* share any info you get on this topic!  It would certainly
be very welcome to all of us.  Last year someone wrote that if your guidance
office used the "Columbia" software, you could just import the files.  Of
course, our guidance office doesn't use that system so we have to type it
all in by hand.  It would sure save oodles of hours if we didn't have to.
Thanks!
Sally Lantz     sarahl@ccpl.carr.lib.md.us

From: cak@kuentos.guam.net (Cheryl King)
Yes,  I import student records from the Columbia School System directly
into my Columbia Library System circulation module.  It is one reason we
purchased it and it works like a charm. It saved us lots of work this year.
The records were ready at the beginning of the school year because the
office secretary in charge of the system has been putting in new records
over the summer as she received new registrations.   Both the Columbia
School System and Library System are sold by McGraw-Hill

From: "Deborah J. Stafford" <stafford@email.wiesbaden.army.mil>
We use the Columbia Library System which has a place to import student records.
 They can be imported with or without student numbers.  With numbers and you
get a generated bar code number (but not physical bar code unles you print it
yourself).  without numbers and you can line the bar codes yourself (or not use
bar codes at all).
The school uses the school system from Colubmia (McGraw Hill) but our sytem has
about 6 options for dowloading patron names.
So far it has worked really well.
Deborah Stafford

From: marthap@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
We used to have Osiris student data bases and it records could be
imported into the Columbia system.  This year, our school system has
developed its own data system, and we are being promised the it will soon
communicate with Columbia.  In the mean time, we have entered out
students by hand Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 08:06:27 -0500
ted the automated
process especially since we have so many transfers etc. and home room
changes.  My middle school teachers have never been really good on
keeping me informed.
Marthap

DYNIX
Ellen, I'm just converting to the Dynix system.  I sent them our student
list and they loaded it on.  I will be doing this from now on, but the
trick is that we have to make a few changes from the SASI system to the
Dynix system. It seems that the changes involve making headers and other
minor changes.   I'm impressed with what it looks like....Write me next
year and we'll see if they deliver!!!
(also)actually as I understand it, my (wonderful) school secretrary
downloaded the kids names and whichever fields I wanted onto a floppy disk.
That took all of 10 minutes or less.  I sent in this floppy to Dynix for
this first year.  Next year, I only have to  load on the names of the new
students and 'roll over' the promoting 8th graders.  I do not have to learn
unix but I do have some special instructions which have to be followed in
formatting the student names.   Now please understand that I have not done
this myself yet - my system is only now being installed (this week!) but
This is the procedure which I have been given as to how this all works.
hope this helps!
Connie Williams
Kenilworth Jr. High Librarian
998 E. Washington St
Petaluma, CA 94952    707-778-4710   cowilli@microweb.com

FOLLETT
I've just opened a box from Follett containing a conversion utility for our
district's school management software-of-choice, Osiris.  It's labeled
"Osiris->C+ Conversion Utility," FSC Product Number 92573A.  I believe it
sold for $79.95 . . and that's one fee for all the buildings in our
district.  If Follett has a utility for Osiris, maybe they've one to help
with your system.  FSC, 1-800-323-3337.
BTW, I asked questions of Customer Service before ordering.  This utility
has a limit of 9 numerals for the student ID;  Osiris uses 14 (lots of
zeros) . . but I was told all will be well.  :)  Time will tell.
Good luck, and have a great year!
Chuck Pauley, Media Specialist          pauley@InforMNs.K12.MN.US

From: Cletus Schirra <schirrac@lis.pitt.edu>
The technical support services of the automation software that you are
useing should be able to help you.  Follett has extensive information in
the Patron Maintenance manual which allowed the company that does our
scheduling, grades and student database to write code to perform that task.
I hope that this helps

I'm on Follette for the DK-12 DeRuyter Central School lmc.  Every year the
lmc staff changes grade and teacher designation.  It would be great if the
administration opens up  their secret files and allow me to download the
information.  After, listening to all the problems the school secretaries
have with the network, I think I'm going to stick to the good old typing
method.  I guess somethings never change.  But I can't wait.
Ira Tobak
itobak@aol.com

From: dwillia1@icis.on.ca (David K. Williams)
We, too, have Follett, and the program does import student data files.  No
individual data entry of student records is necessary with this program, nor
is it necessary to update home room, class, teacher, etc. for each student
as this is overwritten on import.
(Also)We use the S.A.S. system for our student management, and one of our board
computer programmers wrote a conversion utility for exporting studet data
from S.A.S. and converting this data into a suitable format for import into
Unision.  It may not be necessary for you to purchase Follett's utility is
you have someone capable of producing such a utility.

From: Ron McAtee <rmcatee@netnitco.net>
I agree wholeheartedly.  I have used Follette's Unison for a number of
years and have played around every year with importing from the School
System program to Unison.  Follette supposedly has a conversion program
for $80 that will do the dirty work.  I have ordered it and will let you
know.---

I know that Follett will allow you to download  student records from an
outside source such as our  attendance data base.  In practice I have never
done it because it takes a month to get the floppy from data processing and
I can type them in faster than that.  The files probably need to be saved in
ASCI text or as text in the save as box.  Why don't you call Follett and
ask.  If you don't have service I will send them an email for you - I do
have a service contract.  Who knows maybe it has speeded up since we started
using Follett and I could get the files faster from Data Processing.  One
other problem with their records is that they assign the barcode numbers so
it makes it difficult to reuse barcode numbers which we do.  Probably there
is an Import/Add records like there is for books???  Haven't
checked...emailing this to myself at school though and will look Tues
Margaret Hunt
mchunt@mindspring.com, maggiehu@aol.com

From: Becky Palgi <rdpalgi@nando.net>
I'm on Follett Unison, and my media assistant has been typing in student
records while everyone anxiously awaits the opportunity to check out
books. I would appreciate it iFrom owner-lm_net@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Thu Sep 12 
13:04:11 1996
s.

The Polk Co Schools had one of the programmers in the county office write a
program to do this, it took a few years to work out the bugs, but I
downloaded 1300 students in about 10 min and imported them into Unison just
as fast, it had id#, dob, addresses and 1st per teacher.
Sandy in Florida :-)
Preferred address-SandraG627@aol.com

MANDARIN
We have SIRS/Mandarin.  We downloaded our records from the school's
administrative database.  I didn't do it this time - a technology
coordinator did, but I hope to learn to do it.  They have to be
downloaded as an ASCII file and there seem to be particular symbols to
separate fields, etc.  Our library serves grades 6-12.  First the tech
guy eliminated 12th grade, then moved everyone from 5-11 up one year.
This year we were just installing the system, so the disk was then sent
to SIRS.  The tech person there had to manipulate the data in some manner
to make it work.  There was one problem.  Our library database has a
field for homeroom and teacher.  Well, of course we couldn't supply that
as homerooms and teachers were assigned much less than a week before
school started.  That means that all of that will have to be done by
hand.  However, name, address, guardian, phone number, graduation year,
barcode all went in.  Of course, there are a few mistakes, kids new to
the district are not entered, and since we are just learnig the system
modifications and additions are slow going for us!
I previously used Unicorn by SIRSI at another school.  There we had a
programer who wrote a program to transfer data from the Columbia system
to our library system.  It worked really well.  At semester time we
updated by downloading the students who had homeroom and teacher
changes.
It can be done - but all this is never easy to get going on.  I just hope
that I will be able to take care of this (with help from customer support
at SIRS) for next year!
(Also)I believe Mandarin intends users to load the patrons themselves.  The
reason they did ours the first time is that we were just installing the
system.  SIRS did both hardware and software - in other words, they
loaded the software on the server and sent it to us.  They then came to
the site for installation and training.  However, in our training we
talked about we would be the ones to load the patron database next year,
as well as delete (globally) the graduating seniors and others
(individually) who have left the school.  They do have a routine set up
for some of the most common administrative systems - I believe they
mentioned Columbia, and I know they mentioned SASSY.  We use RSCCC, a
database developed by one of Texas' Educational Service Centers for small
districts.  RSCCC collects data required by our state for
administrative/district and campus evaluation, etc.  They told us they
would help us develop a routine to do this from RSCCC.  I still don't
know how to cope with entering things like room and teacher, which isn't
available until after school starts.  We still had to get a roll sheet
from each teacher to do this.  In the past we have never had this
information for all patrons, and I don't see much improvement.
Diane Durbin
dianed@tenet.edu

From: "Palladino, Kathy" <KPALLADINO@mohawk-lib-auto.moric.org>
Yes, Mandarin imports student data in ASCII format.    KP

From: Trisha Barnard <trishb@garfield.leesummit.k12.mo.us>
Hi!  I am an elementary librarian that services two schools.  We
have Mandarin automation software.  It can import the office system
records.  That is the way we load in our student lists.  I can not
imagine hand entering 1200 students plus faculty!  Good luck in the new
year.  Trish

MOLLI
From: Betty Dawn Hamilton <bhamilt@tenet.edu>
Ellen, MOLLI (our circ software) has such a feature.  Of course, our
*new* population each year is not much of a problem because we are a
small school.       Betty
(also)snip>I'm not sure what our system is, but they pass along a 3.5
diskette with
student data on it. We just add one year at a time, so that's only about
200 students.<snip

SURPASS
From: Susan Brown <smbrown@mindspring.com>
Our office administrative software is Genisis and Osiris. Our circ
software is Surpass. Yes. My very able tech specialist can and has
imported records but there is a catch. It takes a month or two for our
office staff to enter the records of our new students (1st graders) and
change the homerooms of our  continuing students. I want to check out
books to students at least by the end of the first week of school.
Hence, I punch in my own records. What's funny is, the office always
comes to me to find out what class a child is in when there's a
question. Even the lunchroom asks for my list to check off free lunch
forms. I'm the lady that knows!
(Also)Surpass has an import function, and from what I understand its a matter
of exporting the appropriate data base, naming the fields properly,
being sure tabs and such characters are appropriate for where they're
being exported to and importing.
My tech specialist is a pearl of great price and a good friend. He's
one of those people that if there's not a way, he'll invent one and has
the intelligence to do it.

WINNEBAGO

From: Sarah Sanford <ssanford@atl.mindspring.com>
This may not help but we use Winnebago for our circ/cat catalog.  Our
district office purchases the software to translate the records of students
from their system to one that can be loaded into Winnebago.  They use the
same software for
all 17 schools which makes the cost much better to handle.  This may be
another good reason for all schools in a district to be using the same
automated catalog software.
Sarah Sanford

From: Melissa Davis <mbdavis@tenet.edu>
I have quite a bit of experience with dBase 3+ programming so am aware of
the possibilities here, but my aide still enters our new 6th graders by hand
each year. It just takes less of _my_ time. If I didn't have an aide I
would probably work out the process once, then document the heck out of
it so I could remember how to do it again the following years.

We use Winnebago and purchased (about 5 years ago) their "patron entry"
program that is designed to run outside the Winnebago system. (Basically
you can put it on any computer whether it also has the Winn program or
not.) When you run this program to enter patrons it writes what appears
to be a straight ASCII text file that is then imported into Winnebago.
Assuming that you can control the order in which the data fields are
written out by the secretary's program (and that may be a really big IF
depending on the software involved) then it should be possible to put it
in the same order (and include only the fields that Winnebago expects).
You would also have to be sure that the field lengths are either the same
or truncated automatically in the 'write out' process.
Another thing to watch our for is how the 2 programs handle names.
Winnebago uses 2 separate fields (1 for first and 1 for last names). If
the secretary's program uses only 1 field then you'll have to find a way
to separate it into the 2 that Winnegabo expects.
When our counselor's offices used dBase for their student data, I did
import the data from it. Now that they have moved to another program that
doesn't allow (as far as we can tell) as much local manipulation, it's
back to typing them in.
(Also)I suspect that the reason the 'big guys' don't do this (at least not
affordably) is the number of possible data programs they would have to
provide conversions for. Just think about it. How many different
relational databases can you name just off the top of your head? And that
doesn't begin to touch all those school specific programs out there that
someone has marketed heavily in a particular area but are unknown in
other parts of the country. And some of those aren't nearly as easy to
work with as dBase (or Alpha4).
And unfortunately, the 'big guys' have good reason to not want to confuse
us. The number of customer help queries that could be answered by simply
reading the manual is astronomical, and doesn't say much for our
compatriots ability to read much less manipulate databases.

From: Cheri Quillin <xvd000@mail.connect.more.net>
        Our libraries are all automated with Winnebago, so it is no problem
for the middle school teacher to put the 8th graders on disk and give it to
me to zap into my patron file (complete with ssn which she has used as the
patron bar code numbers). So simple for all (except for the elem. librarian
who has to type in the list).

From: Patricia Lee Wassink <wassinpl@uwec.edu>
One of my problems with student data is the fact that I not only have to
move the students up a grade, but they probably go from 1C to 2B or from
1A to 2C.  Since I use only minimal info (first and last names, room)
typing it in really doesn't take that long (470 students).  I usually
type very quickly, and then after barcodes are printed and in my book I
proof read them and edit mistakes--this can be done the 2nd or 3rd week
of school.  One 3rd grader came up to check out books last week (2nd time
to the library) and said "Oh! My name's right this time!"  So she had
noticed the typo the first week, but hadn't complained....most of them do!
Our HS libn enters all of hers by graduation date, so she only has to add
new students or delete those who have moved.
Pat Wassink

Cheryl Sturgeon <csturgeo@ohio.net>
After reading all of these posts about having to hand enter students I can
only sympathize.  I have had the luxury of using a Winnebago circ/cat system
that was purchased for every school in our rural county.  We have help from
our county board office and best of all we receive a student disk at the
beginning of the school year that has every student and their data on it.
Ohio requires that all schools keep this information and it is sent to our A
-site (LEECA) .  I'm not sure how it is done, but in order to load it into
our computer we use a disk called a "patron compatabilty diask.  A whole
school is entered in minutes.  Then we print out a patron list and check for
duplicates (where the same person is entered differently) or for missing
names.
Cheryl Sturgeon
Subject: REF: Barbara Bush
0:04 -0600
From: Campbell <complady@computek.net>

Hello,
 One of our counselors is doing a presentation for adults on birth
order and how it affects personality. She needs to know Barbara Bush's
birth order with her siblings, if she has siblings. Is Mrs. Bush an only
child, an oldest child, a middle child, or the youngest? She needs this by
Friday, Sept. 13, at noon. I am at an elementary library today that
doesn't have much of that info, so that is why I turn to all my fellow
information specialists.
 Thanks for any help you can give,

Linda Ellis     Director of Library Services    Slaton ISD, Slaton, TX
                                laellis@tenet.edu

I am eager to receive your comments with regard to automation systems
for a montessori school K-8 with a collection of 9,000 hardback titles
and 5,000 paperback titles.  The school is networked with Macintosh
machines, and I believe it would be best to stay with that platform in
the library.  Which vendors do you suggest? Any comments about
Alexandria (Companion Corporation out of Salt Lake City), Athena by
Nichols, or the Follett and Winnebago systems?  Any other advice would
be welcome, and I would very much like to correspond or telephone
someone in the Dallas area who has recently automated a similar size
library.