Resource Categories

Each holding in your Surpass database is assigned one of the categories from Settings : Resources : Resource Categories. There are three main reasons why you will need to use distinct categories: for circulation rules, for public browsing, and for cataloging procedures. It is important to plan your categories now based on your library's needs. Careful planning will help you decide what categories you need, and also to keep them from being too broad or too specific.

Why Do I Need Categories?

Below are detailed descriptions and examples of each reason why you would need a distinct category. Once you decide what your categories will be, of course, you'll need to define them in Setup / Categories.

Circulation Rules

One of the main uses of categories is for the ability to define different circulation rules, such as the number of days allowed for checkout, the fines amount, or even if the item can be checked out at all. Whenever you will need to set different circulation rules for different types of items, you'll want to use a separate category.

For example, your normal books may circulate for 14 days. However, you might only allow your DVDs to circulate for 2 days and have a much higher per-day overdue fine. Or, you might allow your reference materials to be checked out only for a few hours at a time. In both of these cases, you'd need to use different categories for the different types of items (DVD or reference).

Public Browsing

As your library's patrons search and browse your collection through Surpass Cloud OPAC, one of the first things they will notice about each individual item is the category to which it belongs. Using categories is a great way to indicate to your patrons that they will need to look in a specific area of the library to find the item.

For example, your library may have books in three different rooms. The books all belong to one library location, so using separate locations for the three rooms wouldn't be appropriate in this case since you aren't using the software separately for each room. However, using categories is a perfect way to show your patrons which room they should visit in order to find the items they are looking for.

Cataloging Procedures

Each category is assigned a particular cataloging template. When you add, edit, or view an item in the Resources View Page, the "Form" tab show only the MARC fields and subfields for the template assigned to the item's category. This means that as you catalog or view items in your collection, you can control which MARC fields are automatically available for different categories of items.

For example, you would catalog an audio recording much differently than you would catalog a book. The book's MARC record will need book-specific fields like 020 (ISBN) that don't apply to audio recordings. By the same token, the audio recording's MARC record will need its own special fields, such as 306 (playing time), that have no place in the MARC record of a book.

Plan Your Categories

Now that you know what reasons exist for using different categories, you'll be able to actually plan the categories you will use. Each category has a caption and a shorter abbreviation of the caption, an icon, and various other settings. The number of categories you use, their codes, and their settings are entirely up to you.

• Tip: One of your categories will be considered the default category. This is used as a "catch all" for any resources that don't have a specific category assignment. You might want to use this category for the largest portion of your collection, such as hard bound books, or for all items that will circulate according to your common circulation rule. You can change the default category at any time without affecting existing resources.

• Tip: Try to avoid over-categorizing and having a large number of categories. This can make things more difficult for you and more confusing for your patrons. For example, avoid using categories to denote the subject of a resource in the same way you would use call numbers.

Surpass Cloud comes with a pre-defined set of categories to get you started. These include:

• Atlas
• Audio
• DVD
• E-Book
• Hardback Book
• Reference
• Software
• Video

Implement Your Categories

After you've planned the categories you'll use for your collection, you will obviously want to implement them. First, this involves actually making the changes to the category settings. This is done in Settings : Resources : Categories.