One of our church members checked out a book. It clearly shows that it was checked out under her name.
When we checked it back in, it said it wasn't checked out.
We pulled up her name and there it was! Still checked out under her name.
I even checked it out to me and normally it will say, this book is checked out to, do you still want to check it out. It asks for yes or no.
Well, guess what it did! It checked it out to me but was still listed under her name also.
There is only one copy of this book, so I don't understand what the problem is.
Please help as we are going crazy trying to figure out what to do.
Thanks!
Replies
I called Concourse and they walked me through on how to "rebuild the indexes". They suggested that we do it every other month.
When we bought the program Concourse we had no one to show us what to do and how to do it.
After having it for 10 years, we are not experts but at least we have an idea of how to use it.
Thanks again for helping me with this.
Do the rebuild as Buford suggested but do a back-up copy of your data file first. That way if you do have problems with the rebuild, you can restore and try something else. Also get out your automation handbook (or go online) and see what their recommendations for rebuilds are. You can probably set it up to run automatically, if you want, maybe monthly or a few times a year, depending on how many items you circulate and patrons you have.
Back up is a good suggestion. Concourse has built-in back up. It should be done at the end of the each day's activity. In fact, if the rebuild works, back-up after rebuilding.
I make backups to two flash drives that are kept off-site at different locations. Some people keep the previous back up on a different physical device so as to be able to restore an earlier generation if the current one fails.
I assume you are using Concourse. If so, you might try the following.
Open Concourse, but don't log in.
Click File > Mantenance > Rebuild Patron Index
Repeat Rebuild Circulation Index
This might fix the problem. If not, you could try rebuilding the other files.
I don't believe that "we are going crazy" applies. I was already crazy to have gotten in this library business.
Dear Mr. Carter,
Thanks for helping me with this problem. So you are saying that I should rebuild the patron index, the circulation index, and the other files listed? If I do this, how long will it take?
Have you done this before? We haven't done it since the system was installed.
I enjoy working in the church library and have for almost 40 years. but ..... sometimes it can get to you, especially when you are dealing with computers.
Thanks again!
The times I've rebuilt the indexes have taken very little time. I don't know if rebuilding will solve the problem--just a hunch. Rebuilding has never caused me any problems.