1. Getting in
- You need the workshop access code. The facilitator will show it. Type it into the registration form along with a username, an email address and a password.
- Pick a username you will recognise. The facilitator uses it to find your account, and it is how you log back in.
- Working in a pair or at a table? Athenaeum has no concept of a team. The login is the boundary: register one account if you want to share a library, or one each if you want your own. Either is fine — decide before you start.
- You are logged in the moment you register. If you get disconnected, log back in with the same username and password; you will not need the access code again.
2. Your library is yours alone
Everybody gets the same titles in the same categories, so the whole room can work from one paper specification. But your loans, renewals, reservations and fees belong to your account only. Nobody competes with you for a copy, and nothing you do changes what anybody else sees.
Some items start out already on loan to people who are not in the room. That is deliberate: they are what gives you something to reserve.
3. TODAY — the most important control
Athenaeum has its own clock. The bar at the top of every page shows the date the application is using, and you can change it from the home page.
- Set it to any date and press Set. Everything the application calculates is calculated against that date.
- Reset it to the real date with the button beside it.
- The bar turns yellow and says “Time-shifted” whenever the date is not the real one, so you can always tell.
- The date is yours. Moving it does not move it for anybody else, and it stays where you put it — including after you log out and back in.
This is how you reach anything that depends on the passage of time without waiting for real days. Move the date, then look at the page again.
One thing worth knowing: some things the application does are events, not views. Once one has happened, moving the date backwards does not undo it. Whether that is right is a fair question to ask.
4. The catalogue
- Search by keyword, filter by category and by availability, and sort by clicking a column heading. They combine.
- Clear removes everything you have applied and shows the whole catalogue.
- Click a title to open the item, which is where every action lives.
5. What you can do with an item
The item page offers only the actions that are available for that item right now. If an action you expected is missing, or is offered and then refused, the refusal says why.
- Borrow — takes the item out and shows you when it is due back.
- Return — gives it back. If anything is owed you will be shown the calculation in full, step by step.
- Renew — moves the due date. The item page tells you in advance if a renewal would be refused, and why.
- Reserve — puts your name on something somebody else has out. When it comes back it is held for you for a while, and then it is not.
- Collect — takes out an item that is being held for you.
- Cancel — drops a reservation you placed.
6. My loans, My reservations, My fees
- My loans — what you have out, when it is due, how many renewals you have used, and what you would owe if you returned it today.
- My reservations — what you are waiting for, and by when you have to collect it.
- My fees — everything you have been charged, its status, and the working behind it. You can mark a fee as paid; no real money moves. Nothing is ever removed from the ledger.
7. Found something wrong?
That is the point. Log it where the facilitator asked you to, and say which part of the requirements you think it contradicts — that is the useful half of a bug report, and it is what makes the difference between “this looks odd” and something somebody can act on.
Three answers are possible when the application does not do what you expected, and it is worth deciding which one you are claiming:
- the software is wrong;
- the requirement is wrong, or says two different things;
- your model of the requirement is wrong.
All three happen. The third is the one nobody checks.