The Patron Search Screen is a low-cost solution to allowing several people throughout your organization to search the resource library. This is known as an "OPAC"--Online Public Access Catalogue--and it uses your organization's computer network.

The Patron Search Screen is available regardless of whether the organization owns the Regular or the Plus version of ResourceMate®. Each Patron Search Screen station license is bought separately and allows the user to search the actual up-to-the-minute database contents.

Patron Search Screen is an ideal addition to a classroom, for example, or an associate's office. Using Patron Search Screens ensures that your library users cannot edit or delete your library data; they can only search.

Each installation of ResourceMate® includes the Patron Search Screen. It is not necessary to purchase a license for computers that have a full copy of ResourceMate® installed on them.

Patron Search Screen Features

• Show listing as well as Item details.
• Print the search results of one Item, selected Items, or all Items as either a Listing or detailed Report.
• Establish additional fields that can be searched.
• 2.0 allowed patrons to search by Exact Phrase Starting With (=) or Exact Phrase Containing (like), 3.0 allows patrons to search by these two options as well as:
  • All Words - Exact Word
  • All Words - Word Starting With
  • Any Word - Exact Word
  • Any Word - Word Starting With and
  • Keyword Searching.
• Fuzzy Searching is included as well - lewis, c.s., lewis c s , lewis, c s will all find Lewis,C.S.
• Plus version - See / See Also - searching will reference See / See Also that you have established. Patrons who search for "11th" can see "eleventh" and those who search for "whales" can see also "marine mammals."
• Boolean logic for searches now includes "and not", "or not."

See more screen shots here.

Installing ResourceMate® (or Patron Search) on a network - for the Network Administrator
ResourceMate® can be installed on a shared network drive and run from various stations on the network. These scenarios apply to the installation of the Patron Search Program and multi-user version of ResourceMate®.

There are 2 ways this can be installed and configured:

1) Install everything on the shared network drive
This is our recommendation. Choose the first option during the installation process of ResourceMate®. The "resourcemate.exe" file is only about 5mb. The "PatronSearch.exe" file is only about 3mb. ResourceMate® has the capability of automatically downloading updates from the web. With the "exe" file installed on the shared network drive, only one copy of the software has to be updated. You will have to create an icon on all users desktops that will point to resourcemate.exe (or PatronSearch.exe) on the shared network drive.

2) Install the exe locally and the data on the shared network drive
The reason we don't recommend this option is that each locally installed exe file will have to apply updates from the web before they can access the data that has already been accessed by an exe that is more up to date. This configuration becomes more complicated to maintain. If you want to still install this way, do the full install to the local drive (the first option in the install process), then move (don't copy) the data folder to the network drive. The next time ResourceMate® runs it will ask you where the database is now located.

For any additional stations that will be maintaining the database, choose the second option in the install process (ResourceMate program only - data is stored on the network). The next time ResourceMate runs it will ask you where the database is now located.
To install the PatronSearch.exe file on additional stations, choose the third option (Network Patron Search) during the install process.