Average age of collection

[Judy P Bright <JBRIGHT@WCPSS.NET>]

Some of you may find this set of instructions helpful in determining the
average age of your collection:

Step 1:  Create the Extract File in Athena

        1.  From the Cataloging Menu, select Export/Extract MARC Records.
        2.  Click on Extract MARC Records tab at bottom of screen.
        3.  Leave the Select and Sort By range blank.
        4  Under the Specify Tag Data to Extract, enter 260 in the Tag field, c in
the Sub field,
            10 in the Length and Pub Date in the Field Name.
        5.  Insert a disk in the A drive.
        6.  In Extract to File, name the file to extract:  A:\data.001
        7.  Click on the Extract button.

Step 2:  Importing the Extracted File into Excel

        1.  Open Excel.  From the File menu, select Open.  From the Look In box,
select
                     3 1/2 in. Floppy (a:).
        2.  Change the Files of Type to All Files and select the file you created in
Step 1.  Click Open.
        3.  Click on File, then Save As.  Save your file on your disk as a dbase
file, i.e. data.dbf

Step 3:  Removing "extra" characters from the Pub Date information

        1.  You will need to remove any extra characters such as c, (and)
        2.  Highlight the Pub Date column by clicking on the title bar above it.
        3.  Find the Edit menu, select Replace.  Enter the character you need to
remove, i.e. c, (, or) in
              the Find What: box.  Leave the Replace With: box empty.  Select 
Replace
All.
        4.  Repeat these steps for any other characters as needed.

Step 4:  Determining the Average Age

        1.  Sort the Pub Date column by ascending date.
        2.  Click in the box at the bottom of the column.  From the Insert menu,
click on Function.
        3.  From the Function Category  List, select Statistical.
        4.  From the Function Name List, select Median.  Click on OK.
        5.  In the Median box, you should have a range of numbers corresponding to
the Pub Date column          entries, i.e. A1:A10,657.
        6.  Click on OK.  This will give you the average age of your collection as a
date.


Judy Bright, Media Coordinator
Durant Road Middle School (Year-round)
Raleigh, North Carolina 27614
jbright@wcpss.net

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