Sagebrush Corp. releases Athena 9.1 update in beta

Sagebrush Corp., a solutions provider for the K- 12 library market, has announced that the latest update for its Athena library automation system is now in beta mode. The Athena 9.1 update incorporates the following new features and innovations:

* Booking titles in advance to ensure availability

* Improved due date overrides Setting hourly loan periods

* Specifying a maximum fine amount

* Generating and e-mailing patron status reports and circulation summaries when an item is placed on hold, booked in advance, checked out, or a fine payment is made

* Renewing items by bar code number

* Spell-checking text entered in the Easy Entry or MARC Entry screens and while searching the online catalog

* Extracting patron or catalog data along with current or statistical circulation data

* Printing item bar code labels in shelf list (call number) order

* Enhanced reading program searches that can limit quick, advanced, or visual searches to reading program levels and point values

* Specifying a search term range to better limit search results

* Printing reports to a tab-delimited text file that can be viewed and modified in most word-processing and spreadsheet programs

"We reviewed thousands of customer suggestions for this release," said Kevin Sorensen, Athena quality assurance and product manager. "In addition to implementing new suggested features like Bookings and Hourly Checkouts, we created a great reading program search interface and selected many smaller suggestions that make Athena easier to use. Athena customers did themselves a great service by making their wishes known. This latest version of Athena offers the user the best possible experience."

The Athena 9.1 beta test started in October. For more information about the product, call 800/533-5430.

Athena is a fully featured, flexible Windows library automation program that allows media centers to build their system one add-on at a time. Athena can efficiently manage 200,000 materials or 2,000 materials in a large public library or a small charter school.

According to the announcement, an inviting interface makes MARC cataloging and circulation tracking easy, and lets students look through the entire collection with powerful search strategies, including an iconbased Visual Search and keyword search. Several Athena add-ons easily expand the media center's reach and resources.

Source: Sagebrush Corp., Minneapolis, 952/656-2999; http://www.sagebrushcorp .com.