Periodicals and Journals are catalogued in a slightly different way to other resources in your library system. When cataloguing a book for instance, you normally scan the barcode of the resource, scan the ISBN and then proceed to cataloguing the resource by entering other bibliographic information. However, Periodicals are resources published on a frequent basis and as they mostly contain the same information as far as the library system goes, there would be a lot of repetition involved.
Normally, the only data that changes between periodical issues is the issue number and volume number. As a result, before creating a Periodical Issue you first create the main Periodical, which can be thought of as a template for any issues under that respective edition. Once the main Periodical is created you can create issues based on that Periodical, with different Issue and Volume numbers so they can be distinguished from each other.
The first thing to do when you have a new edition is to catalogue the periodical template.
Click 'New' to begin cataloguing a resource in Management then choose 'Periodical'.
Click the Periodical radio button and all boxes apart from EAN/ISBN and ISSN will be greyed out. This is because the Barcode number, Issue Number and Volume Number are not applicable in this context (remember that the template is catalogued first). The title is currently greyed out but this will be entered shortly.
Enter the EAN/ISBN of the Periodical. Notice that when you do this, the ISSN field will be automatically populated and then load the record card.
Enter any details as required on the catalogue record then click 'Save' when you are done.
The next step is to create a periodical issue.