Personal Librarian is shareware. Try it out for 30 days. If you like it, I ask that you send me a $10 registration fee. In return you'll receive my undying gratitude, a clear conscience, as well as notifications of updates as I produce them. I also give more weight to feature requests from registered users. :-)
Introduction
Personal Librarian is a FileMaker Pro 2.0 database designed to help you keep track of your personal library. With Personal Librarian, you can keep track of all the vital statistics of your personal book collection, including:
• Where and when you purchased your books.
• Where your books are stored.
• The current size and value of your collection.
• To whom you have books loaned out.
Personal Librarian sports a consistent and easy to learn interface, and it provides fairly powerful reporting and searching capabilities. No matter how many books you own, Personal Librarian can help you keep better tabs on your collection.
Personal Librarian requires a Full Page Display, or a 13” or greater monitor to display properly. I wrote it mainly for use at home with my Black & White FPD, but it looks just great on color monitors as well.
Using Personal Librarian is pretty straightforward. In fact, you probably don't even need to read these instructions to figure out most of its features. I've included 25 books from my own collection in PL so you can get an idea of how it works. If you like, just open up PL and explore. All the features of Personal Librarian are described in the following sections.
What’s New in Version 1.2
• The ISBN check field. I added a little field to the right of the ISBN that contains a zero if you’ve entered a valid ISBN number. If you enter an invalid ISBN, the number in this field will be from 1 to 10.
• A Sub-Summary by Location Code Report. If you sort the Inventory Report by Location code, you will get a subtotal of the number of books and value of those books in each location.
• A handy registration form. Clicking the “Print Registration” button in the “About PL” page prints out a registration from you to fill out and send in with your shareware payment (Hint, Hint).
• New value in the “Binding” popup menu: “Loose Leaf”
• Fixed a bug with the Tab order in the search layout.
• A new, cooler looking (in my opinion) main menu.
A Tour Of Personal Librarian
When you first launch Personal Librarian, you're greeted with a main menu screen that gives you the following options:
• Enter/Browse Books
• Search
• Detail Report
• Inventory Report
• Loan Report
• About PL
We'll look at each of these individually.
Entering and Browsing Books
Clicking on the “Enter/Browse” books button takes you the Personal Librarian's basic data entry screen. All the fields are pretty much self-explanatory. At the bottom of the screen, you'll find a row of command buttons. Pressing “New Book” creates a new empty book record. “Delete Book” deletes the book currently being displayed. “Main Menu,” surprisingly enough, takes you back to the main menu. The arrows on the left and right sides of the screen take you forward and back one record respectively. The arrow with the word “More” beside it takes you to the second page of the record. This page contains the “Comments” field, where you can enter any miscellaneous information about the book you like. Take a moment and flip through the sample records. They'll give you a good idea of how to fill in the fields.
Also notice the single digit field to the right of the ISBN field. This is the ISBN check digit field. If this field contains a zero, then you have entered a valid ISBN. If it contians any other number, then the ISBN you entered is not valid.
When you're done looking around, click the ”Main Menu” button to return to the main menu.
Searching
Clicking on the “Search” button takes you to the screen where you'll enter your search requests. Simply type in your search request and hit the return key. For instance, if you wanted to find all books you have that deal with computers, simply type the word 'computer' in the Subject field and hit return. Do that now. You'll now be taken to the “Title View” screen, which lists all the books that matched your search criteria. [From now until the time you return back to the main menu, you'll only be able to see the books that were found in your search. Just a little warning. This modality seems to confuse some people, but I couldn't really see any way around it.] At the top of the screen you should see three “checkboxes.” Clicking on these toggles between the Title, Subject, and Author views. Try each one out to see what they look like, then return to the Title view. While in any of these views, you can sort by any field in them simply by clicking on their field label at the top of the screen. For instance, to sort by Author, simply click on the word “Author.” Try it and see. Neat, huh? Across the bottom of the screen, you'll see that familiar row of command buttons. “Main Menu” oddly enough, takes you back to the main menu. The “Print” button prints the current view to the printer you have selected. The “Browse” button takes you to a screen similar to the one you use in the “Enter/Browse Books” area. Click on that button now. In this area, you can browse in detail the books you found in your search. The arrows, the “Main Menu” button, and the “Delete Book” button work in exactly the same way as they did in the “Enter/Browse Books” area. The “Tile View,” ”Author View,” and “Subject View” buttons take you back to those respective views. When you're finished looking around here, click on the “Main Menu” button to take you back to the main menu. [Hint: If you ever want to print out a Title, Author, or Subject List of ALL your books, simply enter * in the Title field when you do your search.]
Detail Report
Click on the “Detail Report” button to go to the Detail Report View. This view gives you most of the information on your books that you've entered in a format that's easy to read (well, for me at least). The main reason I included this report was so that I’d have an inventory for my insurance records. At the end of the report you’ll see a total volume count and total value calculation for all books listed in the report. As with the other views, you can sort on a field by clicking in the field label. The “Search” button allows you to select the records that you wish to appear in the detail report. Clicking on this button takes you to the same screen as when you click the “Search” button in the main menu. When you enter your search criteria and hit return, you'll be brought back to the Detail Report View, which will now show only those books that were found in the search. The “Find All” button, as it's name implies, finds all the records and returns them to the list, which is handy if you want to start over and do a new search. The “Print” and “Main Menu” buttons should be old friends by now. Click on that “Main Menu” button to take us to you-know-where.
Inventory Report
This report works basically the same as the Detail report, except that it only includes the information that I’ve found useful for doing inventories of what I have on my shelves and in storage. I print out copies of the inventory reports on what’s in which box in storage to tape directly to the boxes. Like the detail report, it includes a total volume count and total value calculation at the end of the report.
If you sort the Inventory Report by Location Code, you’ll get a subtotal of books and values by location when you print the report.
Loan Report
I've lost count of the number of books I've lost, having loaned them out to someone and then never seen them again (the person or the books). That's why I included in Personal Librarian the ability to keep track of to whom you've books loaned out. (Boy it took a lot of work not to end that sentence with a preposition. <g>) Clicking on the “Loan Report” button gives you a list of what books are loaned out to whom and when then were loaned. Click on that button now. You should see a list view similar to the Title, Author, and Subject views you saw when you did the search. As in the other views, you can click on the field label to sort by that field. The “Print” button does exactly what you think is does, as does the “Main Menu” button. In fact, why don't you click on that “Main Menu” button right now.
About PL
Clicking on the “About PL” button takes you to a screen that has just a short blurb on Personal Librarian, as well as the obligatory shareware notice.
Conclusion
Well, that's about it. As you can see, Personal Librarian is easy to use and provides you with a good deal of information on your book collection. If you've got any questions, comments, praises, or feature requests, please send them to the E-mail address below. And remember to support shareware! If ya'll don't register, then I really won't have much incentive to put in the extra effort to make this program useful to people besides myself. Send your $10 shareware fee to:
Ken Kirksey
741 Dogwood Rd.
Boone, NC 28607-4532
Many thanks for trying out Personal Librarian. I hope that you get as much use out of it as I have and that you find it as enjoyable to use as I found it to write.
