Props for actually making it. I remember your original email to the list, it was brutal :P
I would suggest implementing renewals. This is a favorite for most patrons. But also imagine the scenario where a book is due to the original lender but doesn't mind letting you keep it longer. Currently, you must recatalog the item. With renewals, you could just renew the book instead. This feature would kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Brice Stacey Digital Library Services University of Massachusetts Boston brice.sta...@umb.edu 617-287-5921 -----Original Message----- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Elliot Hallmark Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2011 5:27 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] distributed library alpha server up, feedback welcome All, It was at the end of last year that I came here saying I was writing an open source ILS for a distributed (book sharing) library. While I had lots of enthusiasm and time for it at the time, our development computer didn't have the capacity to run a solr based discovery front end. Even though the back end was ready for feedback (though still very alpha), I dallied in posting the IP because there was no discovery layer. In the interest of moving forward, and since a complex discovery layer may not be necessary for a while (not for < 100 books), here is the IP. Please check it out and give feed back. Play around with whatever, this data isn't real. http://72.48.75.76 If this IP changes, I'll let y'all know on this thread. Soon I would like to use this system at our private alternative school<http://www.clearviewsudburyschool.org>in hopes that it would facilitate folks letting us use their excellent books, since they would be lending them, not donating them. Having a database keeping track of who owns the books would give a little peace of mind. in the future, setting up a network of libraries would be easy. notes: 1. This is a distributed library, where a book enters the system through a primal loan (from owner to library), and is due back at some point. The book or item can be further lent to a regular borrower, or to another library (which inherits lending privilages). extending lending privilages must be done through the administrative back end, so it wouldn't happen accidentally. 2. The "discovery layer" is severely crippled because I don't want to write a indexer for our MARC records unless it becomes necessary (ie, better searching is needed but writing a VuFind driver or integrating with Kochief isn't yet feasible). All books entered in this system also have MARC records associated with them, so a solr or other front end can be added later. 3. If you'd like to try uploading a MARC record, email it to me and I'll put it up for anyone to enter through the cataloging app. 4. This is written in django. Hooray for python! 5. This is not at all perfect yet. here is my todolist so far (please add to it): when checking a book out, do not allow a due date later than the current lease on the book. subtitle, does this really need to be limited to 100 characters? create an end of day script that: sends emails to books that are due back soon sends emails to books that are overdue activate fines model and add an Fine.calcuate() method make a legit zipcode field. current one accepts <5 digits thanks for reading, Elliot
