The Journal is named for the cash register "journal tape," which is a roll of paper on which are recorded all the register transactions for a shift. When a clerk makes an error, or wants to check transactions for accuracy, you will see the clerk open a door and refer to the journal tape - the official visible memory of the register.
The Journal is AviSys' official visible memory of your sighting entries during a session.
When entering sighting data, you could be interrupted and forget which sightings you had entered; you could discover that you had made an error in a sighting; or you just might want to review the data you had entered.
Click the Journal main menu item. Now you see a screen listing of all the records you have entered since you started AviSys for this session, in the order in which you entered them. You can page or scroll through the records and edit or delete any of them you wish. This listing is actually a special Sighting File Listing.
At the end of an AviSys session, you can pull up the Journal and print it. (In fact, if the Journal is not empty, AviSys will remind you of that when you attempt to quit the program.) Then you can keep a binder, for example, of your birding activity in chronological order. After all, that’s what a “journal” is. Now, I know, the whole idea of AviSys is to eliminate paper. I dislike paper records as much as anybody (although you wouldn’t guess that by the size of the User's Guide), but there are some kinds of hard copy many of us like, and a Journal is my favorite. You press Escape or click the red X button to return to the main window.
The Options menu has a special item to cause the Journal to open at the last record entered -- some people prefer that. Just click it to change the Journal's behavior.
AviSys Version 6 introduced a Running Journal. Once it is implemented via the Options menu, it records every sighting entry you make, continuously, grouped by entry session, as a permanent record. (Any record edits you perform after the data entry process do NOT affect the Running Journal entries -- thus, the Running Journal is an exact replica of your data entry exactly as you entered it.) See Options.