Last official class of the year today; still two weeks left (10 days, 9 with kids) in which I will wrap up and clean up the libraries.
Today, one of my fellow LTs had an inventory question (I haven't done inventory since they cut our positions, but she's HS so she has the time) via our mailing list. She was trying to inventory her graphic novels section which has the call numbers between GFIC AAA and GFIC ZZZ...but no matter what she did, it wouldn't show her the As. I was at smaller school so had no similar section I could try.
I suggested trying GFIC A-GFIC ZZZ, or just GFIC-GFIC cus when I looked at her school's opac and searched GFIC it was in alpha order. I also suggested she try GFIC 000-GFIC ZZZ. Why? Because numbers come before letters (unless your a mac product)--and I figured this would "trick" the program into letting her see the As.
It worked! But I'm not sure why she didn't think of it? To me it seems an obvious solution...then again the other day when she was trying to inventory the 000s non fic, she put in 000-99 for the range and wondered why it gave thousands of books in the inventory list. *sigh*
It's because the actual end for the 000s is 099 NOT 99--look at what would be on the actual spine label my friend. I posted the solution and a bit after that, Dude who wrote the program also replied, that my solution was correct--because just putting 99 gave you anything with a 99 in it--199, 299, etc, etc.
Sometimes, some of my fellow LTs are little light on the T part of our job. Or maybe it's that I've always been good at computers and the programs we use on them. I also like to play with things so I teach myself how to do stuff.
2 more weeks....