Pre-generate issues

Discover how to run a pre-generation process in OLIB.

►Titles

Serial title record: Management tab

Before generating the issues for Check in, you first run a pre generation process to ensure that the parameters you selected produce the correct labelling and sequencing etc.. for the issue titles.

  1. After selecting the Frequency and Citation Pattern, OLIB inserts default settings into the generation details grid.
  2. In 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. for each numeric or special citation pattern element, complete the Pre-Text, Start Number, Post-Text, and Increment After fields as appropriate:
Pre- and Post-Text
This defaults from the citation pattern settings, but it can be modified at title level if it is different for this title. For example, the citation pattern 1st element pre-text might be set to Volume_, but for this particular title the system should use Vol.. In this case, you should replace the Volume_ setting copied down from the citation pattern with Vol. in the 1st element’s Pre-Text field.

 Note: If you do not want any pre- or post-text for this particular title, simply delete the text which is defaulted down from the citation pattern.

Start Number
Enter the number at which OLIB should start generating issues. For example, to start generating issues at 'Volume 34, Number 1', enter 34 in the 1st element’s Start Number field and 1 in the 2nd element’s Start Number.

For citation pattern elements which are flagged as Numeric (Roman) or Alphabetic, you should enter the number corresponding to the Roman numeral or letter. For example, to start issue numbering with Part III, enter 3 in the relevant Start Number field. Similarly, to start issue numbering with Part D, enter 4 in the relevant Start Number field.

For citation pattern elements which are flagged as Special, enter the number corresponding to the entry in the Special Pattern Details at which issue 'numbering' should start. For example, if you have entries in Special Pattern Details representing Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter listed in that order, and you want to start issue numbering with the Autumn issue, enter 3 in the relevant Start Number field.
Incremement After
This field is only relevant if the citation pattern element is set to Increment. You should enter the number of issues after which the system should increment the element number. For example, if the serial is published with 4 issues per volume, you should enter 4 in the Increment After field for the volume number element.

 Note: If the next element in Citation Patterns is set to Reset, OLIB will reset that element to 1 when it increments the Increment element. For example, after generating Volume 1 Number 4, it will generate Volume 2 Number 1.
1st Issue Cover Date
Enter the cover date of the first issue to be generated. This must be entered in the standard Oracle date format (normally DD-MON-YYYY). The date can be any date falling within the 'period' of the 1st issue, but it is recommended that you standardise on the first day of the 'period'. For example, if the cover date says January 2002, the 1st issue cover date can be entered as any date in January 2002, but 01-JAN-2002 is preferable. Similarly, for a weekly, the 1st issue cover date can be set to any day during the week but Monday is preferable.

For regularly irregular and irregular frequencies, the 1st issue cover date must be set to a date on which an issue is expected. For example, if you use the standard 1st and 15th of the Month frequency, the 1st issue cover date must be set to either the 1st or the 15th of the month. If you enter a date such as 02-JAN-2002, an error message is displayed to indicate that the relevant cell in the frequency code has not been set for the 1st issue cover date you have specified and you should change either the frequency code or the 1st issue cover date.
Receipt Date Flag
Whenever issues are generated, the system includes an expected date of receipt for each copy of each issue. This is used by the claiming process to identify issues which are due to be claimed, and to generate claims for those issue copies at the relevant time. The expected date of receipt is theoretically the issue cover date, but in reality issues are normally received at a set time either before or after the issue cover date. For example, monthly publications are often received several days before the beginning of the month in which they are 'published'.

You can configure OLIB to set the expected date of receipt accordingly using the Receipt Date Flag. Enter the number of days before or after the cover date you receive the issues. For example, if you normally receive issues 5 days after the cover date, enter 5 in the Receipt Date Flag field. Similarly, if you receive issues 30 days before the cover date, enter -30.

The Receipt Date value can also be set at serial copy level. This is useful if you have several copies of a serial received at different times at different locations (or because they are in a different format). In this way, one copy of an issue can be expected at a different time to other copies of the same issue. The claims process will also claim for the different copies of the same issue at different times.

 Note: If the Receipt Date Flag is set at serial copy level, this is used in preference to the title level setting. If the Receipt Date Flag is not set (either at serial copy or title level), the expected date of receipt is set to the issue cover date.

Number To Generate
Enter the number of issues OLIB should generate in one go. For example, for a monthly publication you would normally enter 12 in this field to generate a year’s worth of issues.
Number to Retain
This is a numeric field where you can specify how many received issues of that journal should be in existence at any one time. E.g. for a 3 year holding of a quarterly journal, set this field to 12, and for a 6 month weekly journal holding set to 26.

It is a 3-digit field, so that the maximum holding period for any one journal will be 999 checked in issues. If nothing is entered in this field, no issues of that journal will be automatically deleted.

An overnight process identifies any issues due for deletion, e.g. if an issue of a quarterly journal with a holding period of 12 (i.e. 3 years) had been checked in that day, OLIB would flag the 13th most recently received issue of that journal for deletion. This is a 'retrospective' process - if for some reason the 14th most recently received issue of that journal had not yet been deleted, it would also be flagged for deletion at the same time. The flagged issues are then deleted.

 Note: An alert (the Serial Issues Deleted Notice) can be configured and sent to nominated members of staff to notify them of the deletions so that they can remove the physical copies from the shelf. A notice will only be generated if serial issues have been deleted from the system.
Language
Enter the language of the publication if you want the issue titles to be generated in a language other than the system default language (normally English). This uses OLIB's Serial Texts feature where it display days of the week, months of the year and other descriptors (week, supplement and index) in the specified language when an issue title is generated with any of these elements in it.
Concat.Title?
This field is normally set to No unless issues of journals are loaned in which case it may be advisable to set it to Yes so that overdue notices will include the Journal title as well as the Issue title. With the concatenate title flag set to Yes the Issue titles will include the full Journal title when the issues are generated – although this does not show at the Pre-generation stage.
Copy Settings
Set the Copy Category, Status and Shelf fields to the relevant settings if you want the system to default specific values for any copy records generated when issues of this serial title are Checked in. Otherwise values will be defaulted from system defaults.

The Copy Category field on the Serials Management Details screen currently specifies the copy category that is assigned to copies of an issue when they are checked in e.g. Reference, Loan, etc. To complement this, the Other Issues Copy Category field contains the copy category OLIB should change the other issues of that journal to, whenever a new issue is checked in.

At Check in, when OLIB creates copy records for the checked in issue and sets the copy category accordingly, it identifies other copies of other issues of the journal with the copy category specified in the Copy Category field, and changes the copy category of these copies to the one specified in the Other Issues Copy Category field. In this way the journal record can be configured so that OLIB automatically sets the copy category of all issues of that journal to reflect different loan policies, e.g. the latest issue can be specified as Reference and others can be specified as 7 Day Loan.

 Note: Only the copy category of other copies of the journal with the same copy category as that specified in the Copy Category field is changed. This means that, if library staff manually change the copy category of an existing copy of an issue to something other than the copy category specified in the Copy Category field, OLIB will not automatically override this change when a new issue of that journal is checked in.
Check in Popup
If a pop-up message is required when the Journal is checked in, then enter it here.

Example: Vol. 71 No. 1 May 2008

This is set up by amending the Pre- and Post-Text fields and inserting the Start Number in the 1st & 2nd columns as shown:

  1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
Pre-Text Vol._ No._        
Start Number 71 1        
Post-text _ _        
Increment After 11          

The underscore '_' inserts a space. There is no date in the 3rd element field as the date format has already been pre-defined as Month & Year on the Citation Pattern.

In this example Increment After is set to 11, as the volume number increments after a full year of issues. Increment After defaults to 1 for the issue, so the 2nd element can be left blank.

Pregenerate

  1. After you have set the above parameters, you can click Pregenerate. You need to be in edit mode to do this.
  2. The issues are displayed and should be checked. OLIB always generates one more issue than has been requested, making it easier to check if the volume/issue settings are correct.
  3. If they are not correct, change the parameters and re-run the pregenerate process.