Spine Labels, Customizing

This documentation explains how to customize Spine Labels with Print Templates.

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Explanation

Spine labels, referred to as Monographic Labels in Sierra, are descriptive tags added to the spines of items that commonly include the call number, title, and author of the work. Spine labels allow staff to identify where the item should be shelved in the library and provide helpful information to the patron when looking at items on the shelf.

These are sometimes also paired with what is called a pocket label. This is a much larger label with more information from the record that is sometimes attached to the inside cover of books, or used elsewhere depending on the library’s procedures.

The Sierra print template system is capable of creating either or both of these from an item record in Sierra, assuming you have a printer and label stock with the right configuration.

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Export a template

From settings you can select a template and export the file to your computer with the Export button.

Open

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Creating and Editing Templates

Sierra does not have any internal system to create or edit print templates. You have to do that in software outside of Sierra. The files are .jrxml files. Jrxml stands for JasperReports eXtensible Markup Language.

III recommends software called JasperSoft for editing jrxml files. You can also edit them in a simple text editor like Notepad++. This tutorial will show a template in Notepad++ so you can see everything that is going on.

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Parts of a Template

When creating a template it is easiest to copy a working template and edit it. You can ask other Marmot members for templates that might already do what you need. Such as if you want to do a pocket label, find an example of a working pocket label template and copy that as a starting point.

You will probably have to edit the template at least some what. You might have 2 inch labels and the one you are copying is made for 1.5 inch, for example.

These examples show a template in Notepad++.

Header

Open

The header is where you can define the overall characteristics of the label.

• name: This is a name you can give the template. JasperSoft will use this to set the file name when you save, but Notepad++ will ignore it and you can set the file name to whatever you want. It is required and should be unique to this template.

• columnCount: you can have multiple columns in your label

  • Usually there is only one, but you could use more for pocket labels for example

• printOrder: whether the text should be Vertical or Horizontal

• orientation: Portrait or Landscape

• pageWidth and pageHeight: define the size of the label. If these are too large it may try to add extra space on each label and push them out of aliment.

• columnWidth: how wide will the column be. This needs to fit in the page width you already defined. If it is larger than the pageWidth it will cause an error. If there is more than one column, the widths of all columns need to be less than or equal to the width of the whole page.

• columnSpacing: defines the space between multiple columns.

• leftMargin, rightMargin, topMargin, bottomMargin: These define the number of printer’s points in the page margin.

• There may be other fields in the template you copied.

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Declarations

The next long section is where the data elements you can use are declared so the system can use them. These are required. They very rarely change. They may change with a Sierra upgrade. In that case the new declarations will be in the new default print template and can be copied into old templates. If you copy from an old template, it is possible it doesn’t have the same declarations as the current system expects. This can cause it to fail.

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Body

This is where you define what will go on the label

• <band>: Each section has a band. This defines the vertical space for that section in the column.

  • The band takes the entire width of the column, so it only has a height characteristic.

  • If you aren’t using a section, like <title>, set the band for that section to 0 and it won’t effect the label.

  • The heights of all the bands need to add up to less than or equal to the total label height defined in the header (including the margins).

  • <textField>: This is where you will define your label. It is within the <band>

    • <reportElement>: this is where you can define characteristics of the textField. It is within the <textField>

      • x: this can be used to move the printing right this number of printer's points

      • y: this can be used to move the printing up by this number of printer's points

      • width: this is the width of the space where the label will print. It must be less than or equal to the width of the column.

      • height: this is the height of the space where the label will print. It must be less than or equal to the band.

      • key: a name for this text field

    • <box>: This is within the <textField>. It allows you to print a box around the <textField>. This can be useful if you are having trouble figuring out where are the boundaries of the <textField> on the printed label. If you create a box you can see what’s going on. Then remove the box before you go into production.

      • The box will only print if it has lineWidth greater than zero and a lineColor other than white.

        • lineColor is expressed in 6 hexadecimal numbers. #000000 is white. #FFFFFF is black.

  • <textElement>: This is within the <textField>. Here is where you can define the characteristics of the text, such as font.

    • textAlignment can be Left, Right, or Center

    • verticalAlignment can be Top, Bottom, or Middle

      • <font>This is within <textElement>.

        • size can be any number for your font size

        • isBold can be True or False

        • isItalic can be True or False

        • fontName is where you would put the name of the font you want

  • <textFieldExpression>: This is where you will actually define what will print on the label.

    • This is in Java programing language. (Not JavaScript)

Let’s look at this expression that prints this label:

Spaces and line breaks don’t make any difference, so you can add them to the template to help you understand what’s going on.

• $F{callSubf} This says to print whatever is in data element callSubf, which is defined in Data Elements below. It is call number prestamp. If there is no call number prestamp, then it does nothing.

• + This means do the next thing

• ($F{callSubf}.equals("") ? "" : "\n") This means if callSubf is blank, i.e. it “equals(““),” then print nothing. Otherwise, i.e. there was something there, then print a line break. So this will print a line break after the prestamp if there is one, and it will do nothing if there is not.

• $F{callNumericAll} Print whatever is in data element callNumericAll.

• " " Print a space

• $F{callSubbCR} Print whatever is in the data element callSubbCR.

• ($F{callSubbCR}.equals("") ? "" : "\n") If there was a callSubbCR, then print a line break after it. Otherwise do nothing.

• $F{callSubk} Print whatever is in the data element callSubk.

• ($F{callSubk}.equals("") ? "" : "\n") If there was a callSubk, then print a line break after it. Otherwise do nothing.

• $F{itemv} Print whatever is in data element itemv.

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Data Elements

The data elements are the components it is possible to extract from an item record into a spine label. Any of these can be included in the <textFieldExpression>. These are the only elements from Sierra that can be included on a spine label.

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Importing a Template

Once you have a template complete, save it as a .jrxml file, and you can import it in Settings.

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