Library computer system

Screenshot of a Dynix menu.

A library computer system is the software used to catalogue, track circulation (where appropriate), and inventory a library's assets. It is intended for home, church, private enterprise, and other small- to medium-sized collections. Larger libraries typically use an integrated library system to manage the more-complex activities, such as acquisitions, interlibrary loan, and licensing online resources.

Some common examples include Libramatic and LibraryWorld.

Software criteria

Distributed software vs. web service

Library computer systems tend to fall into two categories of software:

With distributed software the customer can choose to self-install or to have the system installed by the vendor on their own hardware. The customer can be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the application and the data, or the customer can choose to be supported by the vendor with an annual maintenance contract. Some vendors charge for upgrades to the software. Customers who subscribe to a web (hosted) service upload data to the vendor's remote server through the Internet and may pay a periodic fee to access their data.

Data entry assistance based on ISBN

Many applications can reduce a major portion of manual data entry by populating data fields based upon the entered ISBN using MARC standards technology via the Internet.

Bar code scanning and printing

With most software, users can eliminate some manual entry by using a bar-code scanner. Some software is designed, or can be extended with an additional module, to integrate scanner functionality. Most software vendors provide some type of scanner integration, and some print bar-code labels.

See also

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/18/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.