Logging In

To start Athenaeum, you will need an account and password.

The Account tells Athenaeum what privileges you have. The password is your secret access to that account.

The Standard Accounts

When starting Athenaeum or re-logging in, you will be prompted for an account and a password. The following accounts are available for use with Athenaeum:

Account description
Library the standard library administrator account (note that you can create your own accounts of type "library"). administrators can peform virtually all functions
Issue an account restricted to issuing, returning, extending as well as search the calalogue
Guest a search only account
web a basic search only web account
authenticated web a web account that can log into the web search templates (if installed and configured to allow so) and reserve, review, view issues and overdues
[Basic Accounts]

Note that we no longer provide default passwords, but rather, installation specific passwords.

So we will advise you of your initial passwords at the time of installation.

Passwords are case sensitive. Accounts are not.*

You may change passwords at any time for any account in the Maintenance tab of Admin.

reset accounts here at the maintenance tab of admin

Options Password

The options password allows you, as the administrator, to authorise overrides, for example in the case where a borrower has exceeded his/her borrowing limits but wants to borrow another item.

By default the options password is fred7.

you should change this

Active/Open Directory

When hosting Athenaeum with your own FileMaker Server, you can configure FileMaker Server to authenticate against an external LDAP server or Open directory. See the FileMaker Server manual for details on this.

Then, you create appropriate groups and add users to those groups (don't add groups to groups). The groups that Athenaeum recognises are:

external groups for active directory

note that lib_student is the group to use, the others are placeholders only

The group(s) you create must be in the same domain as the FileMaker Server.

Finally, you must configure FileMaker Server to allow external authentication. In FileMaker Server 18, this is done by going to the admin console, clicking the Administration tab then External Authentication. Under Database Sign in, ensure you enable External Server Accounts.

Enabling external authentication


  1. "blog" is a term that appeared in 1999 and is a contraction of "web log" (that is, I'm posting my daily log to the web) and refers to a website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos, and photographs provided by the writer to their audience. 

  2. the popular link that used to be in the navbar is now deprecated and replaced by the optional custom lists menu. If necessary, it can be re-instated with a "navbar=" or a custom "widget=" blog post. 

  3. you can configure this key to show the list of titles or the list of copies in admin 

  4. you can configure this key to show borrower types instead in admin, if you wish 

  5. the formulae are stored in Admin->Customisation->Calculations 

  6. The borrower privilege does not define the item as “fiction”, “non-fiction”, etc. Rather it makes the statement: “when issuing this item, Athenaeum will count it as the specified type and compare it to the number of that type that the borrower is allowed” 

  7. those buttons do what you think they might. 

  8. Just for fun, you can embed the web search on the desktop client search screen! 

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