Keeping track of Borrowers

This feature of RefKeep allows to keep track of who has borrowed a particular book from our personal collection. Often professors forget the names of the students to whom he has lend books. RefKeep helps you to remember who has taken your books, when they took it and also their contact information. You can also view the borrowing history of a person; i.e. which all books has a particular person taken and when he had taken it.

In RefKeep borrowers are known by the name RefAssociates. A RefAssociate is a simply a person whom you know. You lend your books to only persons you know, i.e. to your RefAssociates. RefKeep allows you to store the address, phone number, email and other information about your RefAssociates. The information maintained is similar to that of an Author record. Please note that while Author records belong to a particular RefCollection, RefAssociates are not associated with any particular RefCollection. This means a particular RefAssociate can borrow books and journals from multiple RefCollections.

The RefAssociates window is launched through the menu View->RefAssociates. The window contains two tabs - one containing the RefAssociate information and another one for collection information about the organizations to which the RefAssociates belong. RefAssociates can be added, deleted and edited just like in the case of Author records.

To indicate that a particular Source (book, journal etc) from a RefCollection has been borrowed, go to the particular record and click on the CHANGE adjacent to the BORROWER field. You are presented with a list of RefAssociates present in the system. Choose the relevant RefAssociate. The BORROWER field now contains the name of the borrower as well as a timestamp indicating the borrowing time. Details about the borrower can be obtained by clicking on the VIEW button. When a book is returned, click on the button RETURNED in the book's panel. The BORROWER field is then blanked out.

In the RefAssociates window, you can see the list of all items currently borrowed by any associate in a drop down box titled BORROWED ITEMS. Clicking on the adjacent button named HISTORY opens a dialog box showing a table of all items borrowed by this particular associate borrower along with borrowing and returning timestamps. Double clicking on any row of the table takes you to the particular record. Please note that this happens only if the RefCollection containing the record is currently open. You will also observe, both in the BORROWED ITEMS drop down list as well as in the History table, that borrowed records belonging to RefCollections that are not currently open, can be identified only through their RefCollection ID and Record ID.

You can quickly see a list of all borrowed sources in a particular RefCollection through the menu View->All Borrowed Sources.