Instructions for Average Age of Collection Athena Report

Step 1: Create the Extract File in Athena

1. From the Cataloging Menu, select Export/Extract MARC Records.
2. Click on Extract MARC Records tab at bottom of screen
3. Leave the Select and Sort By range blank.
4. Under the Specify Tag Data To Extract enter 260 in the Tag field, c in the Sub field, 18 in the Length and Pub Date< in the Field Name.
5. Insert a disk in the A drive.
6. In Extract to File, name the file to extract : a:\data.001
7. Click on the Extract button.

Step 2: Importing the Extracted File into Excel

1. Open Excel. From the File Menu, select Open. From the Look In box, select 3 ½ in. Floppy (a:) .
2. Change the Files of Type< to All Filesspan style='font-size: 12.0pt'> and select the file you created in Step 1. Click Open
3. Click on File, then Save As, save your file on your disk as a dbase (.dbf) file, i.e. data.dbf

Step 3: Removing “extra” characters from the Pub Date information

1. Sort the Pub Date column by ascending date.
2. You will need to remove any extra characters, such as c, (, and )
3. Highlight the Pub Date column by clicking on the title bar above it.
4. From the Edit menu, select Replace. Enter the character you need to remove, i.e. c, (, or ) in the Find What box. Leave the Replace With box empty. Select Replace All.
5. Repeat these steps for any other characters as needed.

Step 4: Determining the Average Age

1. Click in the cell below the last date in the column. From the Insert Menu, click on Function.
2. From the Function Category List, select Statistical.
3. From the Function Name List, select Median<. Click on OK.
4. In the Median box, you should have a range of numbers corresponding to the Pub Date column entries, i.e. A1:A10,657.
5. Click on OK. This will give you the average age of your collection as a date.
6. This year the AMTR requests that the info be entered as number of years; subtract the date listed from 2002, then enter this number on line 121 of your NCDPI AMTR.