Readerware Newsletter - April 2015
Welcome to the Readerware® Newsletter
Readerware 3.45 Released
Readerware 3.45 includes major upgrades to the new Readerware Loan Client, thanks for all the feedback.
Readerware 3.45 adds a new duplicate search, easily find duplicate items in your Readerware databases.
Readerware Mobile has been updated to work better with new versions of Android and iOS.
Readerware 3.45 adds other features and resolves a number of issues:
New date handling, you can now enter dates in any format, i.e. Apr 20, 2015 or 04/20/15.
Support for new label stock when printing spine labels
When updating an item in the want list, Readerware was not setting the last updated date. This meant that the changes would not get synced to Readerware Mobile. Fixed some menu problems in the want list, not all options were displayed.
Count and date fields were not displaying correctly in the detail view with the new Mac OS X builds.
Added drag & drop support for Goodreads.
New Windows installers.
A full list of the changes included in Readerware 3.45 is available in the release notes. You can also access the release notes from Readerware itself, select the Help->Release notes menu item.
Finding duplicates
A question that comes up quite a bit is how can you detect duplicate entries in a Readerware database.
We have added a new duplicate search in all products to let you quickly find possible duplicates. Select Duplicates from the search by drop down list and click on the Search button. Readerware will display a list of possible duplicate entries. If you do not see the Duplicates entry in the search list, remember that you can customize the search list. You can hide the searches you never use and move the searches you use all the time to the top of the list. If you don't see the Duplicates search, you just need to enable it. Select the Preferences menu item, then Search list.
Before you use the new Duplicates search, there is one more question you need to consider, what is a duplicate? You have to tell Readerware how to detect a duplicate entry, you do this by selecting the columns Readerware should match on. Select the Preferences menu item, then Database, then Duplicates.
You might consider a duplicate to be a book with the same ISBN. You would select the ISBN column and then Readerware will display a list of books with duplicate ISBNs. The results list will include all books where two or more books have the same ISBN. However you could have the same title with different ISBNs, if you want to check for all copies of a particular title you could select the Author and Title columns. What about format? Would you consider a hardcover and paperback edition of the same title to be duplicates? If you have both CD and vinyl versions of a favorite album, would you consider them duplicates? If you do, then select the Artist and Title columns in preferences. If you do not consider them duplicates, include the format column too. Now Readerware will only display titles with the same format as duplicates.
You determine what constitutes a duplicate. If you are storing your books in different locations, you might only consider books in the same location to be duplicates, the same title in another location is not considered a duplicate. So you include the Location column in the duplicate check. This is a very flexible approach and you can always change the selection as the term duplicate may mean different things to you in different situations.
When Readerware displays the duplicates it lists only items that have two or more matches and it lists all duplicate items. If you only have one book with a specific ISBN, it will not appear in the search results. If you have two books with the same ISBN, both books are listed. Four books with the same ISBN, all four books are listed. You can then examine each book and decide what to do. If you want to delete duplicates, you can decide what entry to keep and what entries to delete etc.
An Update on the Readerware Loan Client
Firstly, thank you for all the feedback on the initial release of the Readerware Loan Client, we received a lot of great ideas and comments.
We have addressed a lot of issues in this release.
- There is a new overdue report which lists overdue books by borrower with contact information.
- We added a new borrower receipt with support for receipt printers. Designed for giving to users as they check books out. It will include a short list of all books they currently have out and highlighting any overdue books. You can customize the receipt with your organization name, web site, phone number etc. You can tell Readerware to always print the receipt at checkout or print one manually when needed.
- You can now check out multiple books in a single transaction, a lot of you asked for this one. Scan the Borrower ID, scan the first book, scan the next book etc., click on Loan to loan out all selected books.
- We added a new Clear toolbar button. This can be pressed at any time to remove any borrower or book information displayed. Designed to be used after completing an operation so that the next user will not see earlier transactions.
- When importing borrowers the loan client can now detect duplicates and update an existing borrower rather than always adding a new borrower. We detect duplicates based on the Borrower ID.
We received a number of requests for receipt printer support, it is a handy feature to have. The Readerware loan client can automatically print out a receipt as a user checks out. Similar to a receipt you might get at the supermarket, it includes all the books a borrower has checked out with their due dates. You can also include information about your library on the receipt. The first thing we had to do when you started asking for receipt printer support was to and get one so that we could test. We quickly discovered that these printers can get very expensive, many costing hundreds of dollars. We ended up with the Epson ReadyPrint T20 Direct Thermal Receipt Printer with a USB Interface
As the Readerware Loan Client is designed to speed up the process of checking books in and out, it is important to configure the program to match the way you have organized your library. Be sure to read the "Getting Started" section in the online help or manual before using the program.
The Readerware Loan Client is part of Readerware Client/Server Edition. This means that you can run both the loan client and Readerware at the same time on the same computer or on a different computer. One person can be building your database while another handles loans.
If you already have a Readerware Client/Server license you are all set, the loan client is a free upgrade. If not you can upgrade to Readerware Client/Server Edition for the difference in price. If you would like a free trial of the loan client before upgrading, please contact Readerware support.
In this release the loan client is still available for books only. Once things settle down we will be incorporating it into the other products.
Getting Started with the Readerware Loan Client
Readerware Loan Client Manual
Readerware Upgrade Ordering Page
New Windows downloads
With this release we have made several changes to the Readerware Windows installer.
The first thing you will notice on the Windows download page is a new Readerware Web Installer. This is now the recommended installer for all Windows users. It is a small program that will examine your system and install the correct version of Readerware for you. We provide both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Readerware for Windows. It used to be your responsibility to select the correct version but now the Readerware Web Installer will do that for you. Use the Readerware Web Installer and you will always get the best version of Readerware for your system.
The Windows Web Installer will examine your system and then download and run the correct installer. This means that you must be connected to the internet when installing. You may see messages from firewall software as the Readerware Web Installer starts to download the correct installer. Be sure to allow these requests.
The old installers are still available. If you will be installing Readerware on a standalone machine that is not connected to the internet, you will need to use one of the old installers. The basic rules are that if you have a 32 bit version of Windows, you must use the 32 bit version of Readerware. If you have a 64 bit version of Windows you can use either version of Readerware but the 64 bit version is recommended.
You will also notice some other changes as you run through the install:
- If the installer detects that Readerware is already installed, it will suggest uninstalling the old version first. This is not required but it is recommended. Windows stores 32 bit and 64 bit programs in different locations. So if you are installing the 64 bit version over the 32 bit version, the old version will not be replaced and you will end up with two versions of Readerware installed which can be confusing. Letting the installer remove the old version before installing the new version ensures that you only have the one version installed. Only the Readerware programs will be removed, the uninstall will not touch your databases or Readerware preferences.
- If the installer detects that the Readerware Server is running it will display a message and close the server for you. After the install completes it will ask you if it is OK to restart the server. We recommend that you let the installer stop and restart the server for you. Once the install completes your Readerware Server will be running again with the latest version. You will no longer need to stop and start the server manually.
- The installer now lets you select which shortcuts are added to your desktop. The default is to add the three main programs for books, music and video. If you are not using all programs you can clear the unneeded check boxes. If you are using the new Readerware Loan Client, you can add a shortcut for it. If you are using Readerware Client/Server Edition, you can add a shortcut for the RWServer Config utility.
We recommend that you use the new Readerware Web Installer and let it uninstall the old version of Readerware before installing the new version.
Readerware and dates
We have made a number of changes to the way Readerware handles dates in this version. Entering dates is now easier and you can set the length of all dates.
When entering a date in Readerware you can click on the down arrow to the right of the field and select the date from the calendar widget. You can also just type in the date if you prefer.
It used to be that when typing in the dates you had to enter them in the displayed format. Now you can enter them in any format. For example you could enter:
- Apr 20, 2015
- 4/20/15
- 2015
In the above example we are using US date formats. You must enter the date in your local format, i.e. 20/4/15.
You can now also set the length of any date. You used to be able to select the length of the release date to a full date, month and year or year only. You can now do this for all dates. Select the Preferences menu item, then Database, then Preferences.
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