Barcodes and cards

Before students can be scanned at the desk, they need a barcode and, usually, a physical card. Every patron gets a barcode automatically, so the school roster’s bulk outputs are about printing cards for them and exporting the list as a spreadsheet.

A student’s card can also sign them in to the OPAC: the library can let students hold it up to the camera, type its number, or scan it, with or without their PIN. See Library card for how to turn that on.

Barcodes

Every patron has a barcode, the value you scan at the desk to pull up their account. Lyra assigns a unique one automatically whenever a patron is created without one, whether by hand, by roster import, or by roster sync, so there’s no separate step to barcode a newly imported group.

You choose the barcode when you add a patron, and change it later with menu item: Edit library card…. A patron added by hand starts on setting: Use the identifier as the barcode (see identifier vs. barcode); choose setting: Use a separate barcode to type a specific value, or choose button: Assign beside it to have Lyra make up a unique one.

Identifier as barcode

Some schools print the SIS student ID on cards as a barcode already. In that case set patrons to use the identifier as the barcode so a card scan matches the value Lyra has on file.

Downloading library cards

Library cards come from two places: the school-wide School level navigation path: Roster then Patrons list for a batch, and a patron’s own page for one card. What each covers:

• menu item: Library cards… in the toolbar’s button: Download menu downloads a card for every patron in the current view. The menu says how many that is before you press it.
• button: Download ▸ menu item: Library cards… in the school roster’s selection band downloads cards for just the patrons you’ve checked. The band appears once you check at least one row and is hidden when nothing is selected.
• button: Download on the card: Library Card card of a patron’s page in the Library level library downloads that one patron’s card, for a replacement or a new arrival.

The PDF downloads ready to run onto a card sheet.

Card options

Before the PDF downloads, set:

• field: Card sheet, which stock you’re printing on, so the layout matches: Avery 5371 (the default), 10 perforated 3.5” × 2” business cards per sheet, or Avery 5160, 30 adhesive 2.625” × 1” labels per sheet for sticking onto a card of your own, plus any of your school’s own sheets. Print at actual size, or the cards won’t line up with the perforations. If they still land off, adjust the sheet for your printer.
• setting: Include school name, print your school’s name on each card.
• field: Start position, which card on the sheet to begin at, so a partly-used sheet isn’t wasted. Select a card in the sheet grid, or type a number into field: Skip first.

The dialog opens on the school’s saved card sheet and school-name setting. An admin who changes either sees button: Save as default, which saves them as the school’s default wherever cards are printed.

Downloading cards is available to Limited staff as well, from the button: Download menu; it’s a read-only output. Limited staff can’t check rows, so the selection band never appears for them.

Exporting the roster

To download the roster, use button: Download ▸ menu item: Excel on the school-wide School level navigation path: Roster then Patrons list, or the same entry on navigation path: Roster then Homerooms. Both produce the same file. As with cards, where you reach it is what it covers:

• The toolbar’s button: Download menu exports everyone matching the current view: all patrons when no filter is applied, or just the matches when you’ve searched or filtered. The menu says how many that is before you press it.
• button: Download in the selection band exports only the rows you’ve checked. The band appears once you check at least one row and is hidden when nothing is selected.

menu item: Excel gets you roster.xlsx: one workbook with a sheet for each of the five things the roster importer reads — Students, Faculty, Homerooms, Homeroom teachers and Community — in that importer’s own columns. It opens in Numbers, Excel and Google Sheets, and uploading it back is a supported way to edit the roster in bulk: correct a batch of PINs or preferred names in the spreadsheet, then import the file as an Update.

With no filter applied, the file is the whole roster whichever page you exported from, so it re-imports as the school it came from. With a filter applied, the rest of the workbook narrows to match, so the file stays internally consistent: a filtered roster export carries the homerooms its patrons are in, and a homeroom search carries those rooms’ students and teachers and nothing else, so its Community sheet is empty. A teacher assignment is written only when both the room and the teacher are in the file, so no row ever points at something the file does not contain.

A filtered export is not a Replace file

An Update import touches only the rows in the file. A Replace import reads each sheet as the whole of its kind and removes anyone missing from it — so importing a filtered export as a Replace would delete everyone the filter left out. Use Replace only with an unfiltered export.

Edit the workbook, don't convert it to CSV

Every cell in the export is written as text, which is what keeps a 0001 PIN or an 0012340 barcode intact. Saving the workbook after your edits keeps them that way. Exporting it back out as a CSV does not — a spreadsheet retypes an all-digit cell as a number on the way out, and a number has no leading zeros, so 0001 becomes 1. Upload the .xlsx itself.

menu item: CSV files (.zip) downloads roster.zip instead: the same five sheets as five CSV files named for them, for a system that reads CSV. Each one uploads to its slot in the roster importer, but open them in a spreadsheet and the same leading zeros are at risk.

An export carries guardian emails and PINs, so it requires a full-roster role (Standard or Admin) on both pages; Limited staff don’t see it, and on navigation path: Roster then Homerooms, where the export is all the menu holds, they don’t see the button: Download button either. Exporting stays open to Standard staff even though editing the roster is admin-only; it’s a read of data they can already see. Like library cards, it isn’t offered on the Library level navigation path: Patrons list.

See also

• Managing patrons — set a patron’s barcode or use the identifier as the barcode.
• Patron records — filter and select the patrons you want cards for.
• Labels and printing — the catalog-side equivalent: barcode and spine labels for copies.