Skip to the content Back to Top

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.

Let Us Help You!

We're Librarians - We Love to Help People