Help a beginner with an Access query/form

[Darrrius]

Hi

We are a small Library just opened in our community, and the first one in our local area.

We are putting together an access query that will help aleviate the problems when our main library systems go down.

The database is a library records db. I want the query to ask the user for an author and a site and then to list all the records that match that query. Ideally i would like the user to be able to select a number of sites (from a possible 5), perhpas from a drop down type menu or checkboxes, type in the Author and then click on a button to perform the query.

Any help would be gratly appreciated - we are all beginners with access here.

Do you need to see what I have done so far? if so I could upload it for you.

Kind Regards

 

[FoFa]

Start easy.
Lets start with sites.
Ideally you would create a table with an autonumber (primary key) and a site name and maybe site code. But maybe in your case using a value list might be better. But if the site names change later, harder to deal with.
What is the value for a site in the table you will be searching? Maybe not what you know them by, but the searched table?

 

[Darrrius]

Hi FoFA

Thanks for your help!

So far I have one table, with all the details in it (Author, Title, Serial Number, ISBN, Tyoe, Home_Site)

There are only 4 sites, Medway, Avery Hill, Maritime Greenwich, and Internet

So you are saying to create a seperate table with just 4 entries? the 4 sites - but include an autonumber as the primary Key? and perhaps a code for the sites too?

 

[tehNellie]

So far I have one table, with all the details in it (Author, Title, Serial Number, ISBN, Tyoe, Home_Site)

I'd suggest that you perhaps want to be looking at 3 separate tables.

Author
Books
Sites

you could also argue the case for a junction table between books and sites as presumably one book might be available at more than one site.

However if we step back a bit...

So you are saying to create a seperate table with just 4 entries? the 4 sites - but include an autonumber as the primary Key? and perhaps a code for the sites too?

In short, yes. At the moment you've only got the site name, But maybe you'll want to add some additional information like a phone number of email address so you can ring the relevant office up and check if they've got the book in or whether it's out on loan. if you've only got to do that once in your site table rather than for every book it will make life easier.

As for a separate site code, that's one of those "depends" questions. Does assigning a new site code make life easier for you? If it does you can just use the code that you create for a site and not use an autonumber fields. The site code become your "meaningful" Primary Key and can be more intuitive than the meaningless PK that an autonumber field provides.