[email protected] wrote: > On Wed, 20 Jan 2010, Tom Perrine wrote: > > >> John BORIS wrote: >> >>> Has anyone on the list seen or heard of any light weight software that >>> can be used as a small Library management system. By library I mean just >>> a catalog system that would be browsable (is that a word) and you can >>> track who has the book. Each of our High Schools has a System >>> Administrator and I sit in the middle as a quasi Senior Admin since I am >>> at the District level. While working on a issue today I noticed I had an >>> older edition of a book. I also had the latest version. So I got the >>> idea that many of the Schools Techs might be in the same boat and the >>> books just sit there until the need arises. I figure if I had small >>> repository that would be able to track the books (publications etc) and >>> then the Admins could "check them out" when needed. >>> >>> I think RT might be able to handle that with the Asset Tracker add on >>> but I am no wiz at Perl programming, thus the search for something >>> somebody has already wrote. I am currently searching Sourceforge. >>> Preferably something that lives in LINUX and uses MySQL. >>> >> Readerware is quite nice, and has Windows, Mad and Linux versions. It has >> the checkout/checkin feature, tracks location, >> etc. >> >> There's also a client/server version. >> >> Not free, but certainly inexpensive. I use it to track upwards of 1500 >> books at our home. (Too many years of SF, >> Fantasy and tech books :-) ) >> >> It can also take book info via barcode readers, and can often auto populate >> book date from just a title, certainly from >> any ISBN. >> > > I've looked at readerware in the past, the one problem that I have had > with it is that it indexes everything by the ISBN, which doesn't work if > you have multiple copies of the same book (or if you have a book without a > ISBN in it) > > I would love to find something that supported using my own item ID (it's > easy to print barcode stickers and find readers to read them) > > David Lang >
ISBNs (and ISSN for serial/periodical publicaions) are neither great for indexing, nor are they good serial numbers for your books (serial numbers are called acquisition numbers in library systems). It's been many years since I worked in a library (I've worked in three), but the way that most libraries deal with books is by Call Number (Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress are the most common in this country) for indexing nonfiction books, Author/Title for fiction, and by acquisition number (a unique serial number per book) to keep track of individual books. ISBN does neither of these well. The ISBN is not unique for multiple copies of the same book yet also gives you no clue to what kind of information is in the book either.. Andrew's message talks about issuing your own ISBNs for publications which don't have one, but how about just putting your own acquisition (serial) number in every book? You still need to index the books in some fashion if you want to find them, but that would be true if you used ISBN too. There are automatically-incrementing stampers with built-in stamp pads that make this simple to implement. Some of the stampers even have a selector for multiple hits so that if you set it to '2' you can stamp inside the front cover and back cover before it advances. Cataloging your books by Call Number is too great a task, but you might consider a simple index using keywords. You enter the book title, the author, and the keywords, you can use any simple text search tool (grep?) to find what you are looking for. Any little database (sqlite, mysql, postgres, etc) could also be set up to keep track of what books you have and who has borrowed them (and how much of a late fee that you're going to charge when they finally bring those books back). Google around for 'mysql "book catalog"' and such, you can find free software that does this. But if the number of books is small and borrowing is minimal, you could keep it all in a spreadsheet - columns for author, title, borrower, date borrowed - you're done! I've meant to get my books (somewhere upwards of 6000 when I counted them for a move a dozen years ago, but still growing :-) all catalogued and organised but it always remains as something-to-be-done-later. When you've got all yours done, you'd be welcome to come and index mine... - Richard _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
