Are any currently existing open source ILSs flexible enough to support this model?
I kind of doubt it. What are you are doing sounds neat, but is not typical library workflow. Tell me if I'm re-describing what you're talking about correctly: Every book in the library essentially belongs to one of the patrons. Patrons can both borrow books, and loan books to other patrons. The "library" is basically just a facilitator of patron-to-patron lending. So you need to know what books are out that are "owned" by a certain patron, as well as what books are being borrowed by a certain patron. You need to know what books are over-due that are owned by a certain patron, etc. Creating a "location", "branch" or "collection" code for each patron is going to be un-manageable with more than a few dozen patrons. I don't think most existing ILS systems -- open source or not -- are going to be set up to handle that system. On the other hand, many existing ILS systems are going to have all sorts of stuff you _don't_ need, like acquisitions, and serials tracking, and such. I wonder if you are better served looking for software that is NOT library software to handle the actual "circulation". Maybe there is some non-library software that is designed for "a network of people lending stuff to each other"? And then you could always put a Solr-based discovery system on top of that for actual _finding_ of books available to be borrowed, perhaps using VuFind or Blacklight or rolling your own. But the underlying tracking of "circulation" is actually the tricky part -- perhaps write your own custom software for that, if nothing open source can be found, but then export all items to a seperate Solr-based component for the actual search engine.
Jonathan ... wrote:
Reading my original post, perhaps I should have made the important point more clear. My question is about an ILS suitable for a library that does not own its books, but is borrowing those books from patrons. The books all have lease end dates associated with them. Book lenders are very similar to book borrowers, and they require end of day processing to see if any of the library's books are due back to them, in the same way borrower's books are due back to the library. So, in the last two posts which mentioned "simple borrowing", that is what I am wanting, but for the library to be simply borrowing the books AND for patron to simply borrow those same books out of the library. Book lenders and book borrowers are essentially the same, except lenders first check a book in, and the due date is when the book leaves the library, and book borrowers check books out and then back in again. Of course, many book borrowers are also lenders. Are any currently existing open source ILSs flexible enough to support this model? Sorry for the confusion, Elliot
