Many of our Genie clients have asked how they can print just one label for a book from the Genie catalogue when they have several Item records. Typically, when selecting a Catalogue record, adding it to the InfoCart, and printing labels, a label for each Item record is produced. This is fine when initially adding multiple copies of a work to your collection, but if you later add another copy, you really only need to print a label for that additional copy.

A sharp-eyed Genie user noticed this entry in the Genie Technical Notes (p. 33 of the Genie 3.3 version):

Attribute	Required	Default	Explanation
ItemCallNumberRequired	No	"false"	If set to "true", only the labels with nonempty ItemCallNumber field values will be printed.

"Ah-ha!" we said. "This could be the answer."

For this client, we edited the label report in MyLabels.config to add ItemCallNumberRequired="true" to the label definition, and ensured the ItemCallNumber field (rather than the CatCallNumber field) was on the spine label area of the label. Their existing Item Records don't have call numbers in the ItemCallNumber field, only the CatCallNumber field in the Catalogue record. As they add additional copies of works already in the Catalogue, they will enter a call number in the ItemCallNumber field. With the changes made to the label format, a label will be generated for just that one new copy. Brilliant! And with the Edit link added to the InfoCart (described in this blog post), they can quickly fix errors in records before printing the label.

This won't work quite as well for everyone though. If you already have call numbers in Item records, a label will still be generated for all of them. Nonetheless, it's good to have an option that can be adapted to other situations.

The default myLabels.config file for Inmagic Genie comes with a section that can be uncommented out to also include Item specific information, ie. for the Gaylord Label form

<!-- Sample Configuration for Item Fields
<ItemInfo>
<Field Name="ItemVolume" Header="&lt;br&gt;"/>
<Field Name="ItemIssue" Header="&lt;br&gt;"/>
</ItemInfo>
-->

We ran across an interesting situation recently where the client has multiple offices and currently location information is just in the Catalog records.   Only a couple of the offices will will be printing label sets  and these offices will start populating Item records for new material.    They have set the Query Filter on in their myGenie config file with a cookie to keep the last used setting, as they usually only want to see their own holdings. 

We were testing printing the labels and at first everything worked fine but we needed to move the labels over and adjust the fields shown, so we started making some changes to their myLabels config file. Then they started getting a completely blank screen when displaying the record labels from the InfoCart for printing.  I could not replicate the problem and nor could Inmagic Support so we were temporarily baffled.

The cause turned out to be the ItemInfo section that I had uncommented out to allow them to print additional item specific location information on the spine label.  However we were testing printing with existing records in the Catalog (ie. with no Item records) and the client had started using using the Query filter. If using a Query filter and a label form with an ItemInfo section, then records must have an Item record with an ItemLocation field.  If they do not, a blank page results.

The solution for this client, for the moment at least, is to have two separate label forms and choose which one to use accordingly.   One for printing labels for existing records that only have data in the catalog, and one for labels for new records that will also have item information. This is easy to do in just a few steps:

• open the myLabels config file and copy the existing Gaylord label code and paste it just below the original
• rename Label Name="Gaylord" to Label Name="Gaylord for Items" in this copied section
• make sure to comment out the ItemInfo code on the original Gaylord label, and uncomment it on the new Gaylord for Items label
• Open myGenie config and add in a reference to the extra label to the <!-- Actions exposed to library staff in the Catalog InfoCart --> section, ie.
  • <Action Name="Gaylord for Items" Display="Print Labels (Items)" Type="Label" />
• Reset the Genie application from the About Genie screen.