Using Media Management

To use Media Management, you must be assigned permission 601 (View Media) and 602 (Add Media), 603 (Modify Media), or 604 (Delete Media), depending on the functions you want to perform. See Permissions Used by Sierra for more information.

The Media Management product enables you to provide media file access to patrons through bibliographic records in the WebPAC. To access, create, maintain, and delete media sets and files in these functions, use the Media Management window.

Media Management allows you to make the following media file types available to your patrons. If your library uses media file types that don't appear in this list, contact Innovative to enable those file types.

See Importing Media Files for information on importing and converting GIF image files in Media Management.

Each media file is contained in a media set, which is attached to a bibliographic record. A bibliographic record can contain multiple media sets.

If your library has acquired Copyright and Access, you also can use Media Management for:

For more information, see Entering Copyright and Access Information.

You can edit the prompts and printing charges that the Media application uses in the WebPAC with Advanced System Access & Administration, . See Media Management Options for more information.

Media Sets

A media set is a link attached to a bibliographic record. The link can contain media files, a thumbnail, and an indexed text file; note that thumbnails and indexed text files are available only if your library has acquired these functionalities. See the Media Management window for a graphical representation of a media set.

A media set can contain either multiple image files, or one media file of any non-image type (i.e., a movie, a sound file, a URL, etc.). You can add multiple media sets to one bibliographic record, which allows you to include media files of various types for one bibliographic record.

WebPAC users click on the media set link (or thumbnail, if you have acquired this functionality) to access the media files.

Media sets typically are y-tagged MARC 962 fields; however your library can use a different MARC field or index.

See Adding New Media Sets and Deleting Media Sets for information on creating and removing media sets from bibliographic records.

Media Files

A media file can be an image or a non-image (e.g., a movie, a sound file, a PowerPoint presentation, etc.). If the media files are images, you can include multiple files within one media set. For example, if you have scanned the pages of a journal article as a series of image files, all the image files can be included in one media set. When WebPAC users click an image or an image set from a bibliographic record, WebPAC displays the image or set in a new browser window. For TIFF image files, which can not be displayed by most web browsers, WebPAC provides a download link for each attached image.

Media Management allows you to perform simple image editing functions on images, such as rotating, cropping, and resizing. You also can reorganize multiple images within a media set by re-ordering them.

If your media file is not an image, Media Management displays a Launch Associated Application button. When you select the media file and choose this button, Sierra launches the application associated with the file through your PC's operating system.

You can add new media files to a media set using various methods, including importing, scanning, importing URLs, or linking to a URL. You also can delete media files from media sets.

Thumbnails

If your library has acquired the ability to create thumbnail images Media Management automatically creates a thumbnail (a miniature version) of that image when you add an image file to a new media set. Media Management stores the thumbnail as a file called Thumbnail in the media set, along with the images and indexed text file, if one exists for the media set. The thumbnail displays as an image link in the WebPAC and WebPAC users can display the full version of the image by clicking on it.

If you add multiple image files to a new or existing media set, you can set any one of the images as the thumbnail.

Document Indexing

If your library has acquired Document Indexing, you can index media set text files in the m segment of the Advanced Word Searching index. This enables users to search the data in the text files using the m: prefix in the WebPAC after you have updated the Advanced Boolean Search page (srchhelp_X.html).

For more information on adding indexed text files to media sets, see Adding Text Files to Media Sets.