RE: Creating lists - empty variable fields

["West, Barbara - HPL" <Barbara.West@xxxxxxxxxx>]

It took a long time and two passes, but following conversations with Judith
Clark over the past month, I have been using this strategy:

VOLUME <                           {many blanks}

This is not perfect, as it retrieves records with no volume field as well as
blank volume fields.

I have also found that the system doesn't recognize empty fields as
sortable, so it does no good to sort by volume in an attempt to isolate the
"empty" from the "nonexistent" volume fields.  So - I've been using rapid
update to delete ALL volume fields from the review file, having demonstrated
to myself that the strategy above does not retrieve records with usable
volume info.

Until November, I had been using a different strategy, which was posted
earlier on the list.  However, it mysteriously failed to produce usable
results when I resumed the project in November:

VOLUME not equal to [blank} and VOLUME <                              {many
blanks}
This strategy no longer excludes records lacking a volume field.


-----Original Message-----
From: Carol Gyger [mailto:gyger@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 3:46 PM
To: West, Barbara - HPL
Subject: Re: Creating lists - empty variable fields


Barbara,

If you get an answer that works, please post to the list.  I have had the
same problem.  I cannot figure out how to create a list of items with a
blank, but existing, field.

cg

Carol Gyger
Systems Administrator
Fort Collins Public Library
201 Peterson St.
Fort Collins CO  80524
(970)221-6716
gyger@xxxxxxxxxx

On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, West, Barbara - HPL wrote:

> I've been reading the suggestions about how to create lists of records
with
> blank fixed fields.  At HALAN we have a different problem.
>
> We are doing a massive cleanup of the Volume field to prepare for two of
our
> member sites initiating Automated Request Processing (aka Patron-Placed
> Holds.)  Lots of messy data came across when we migrated from our old
> system, so I've been creating multitudes of lists and using MilCat to
delete
> invalid volume data.  Any data in the volume field will prompt the patron
to
> select a specific item for hold rather than placing a title-level hold,
> which is all that is needed in the majority of cases.
>
> We have recently discovered, however, that even the presence of an -empty-
> volume field will trigger a prompt to select a specific item.  Although
the
> final step in my processing is to delete the volume field from records in
> each list, there are an unknown number of empty volume fields remaining in
> the database.  We think they were created because one of our members
> included volume in some of their item templates.
>
> So -- has anyone successfully searched for empty variable fields?  What
> syntax did you use?  Everything I've tried either pulls up records with
> volume fields that aren't really empty, or records with no volume fields
at
> all.  There are so many variables involved that looking for records that
"do
> not have [value]" is impractical.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Barbara F. West, Assistant Database Administrator
> Houston Area Automated Library Network (HALAN)
> 500 McKinney Ave.
> Houston, TX 77002-2534
> Phone:   832-393-1410
> Fax: 	   713-247-1182
> E-Mail:  Barbara.West@xxxxxxxxxx
>
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